Photo courtesy of UNC Athletics)
I’m not a coach, so it should come as no surprise that I do not watch film like a coach. I don’t self-scout, trying to identify skill deficiencies or gaps in understanding that need to be addressed in practice. I don’t scout opponents, looking for areas of weakness that we can exploit in an upcoming game.
I’m also not a local reporter, which means I don’t watch every single one of a team’s games, charting their storylines throughout the week.
As a national reporter or analyst, I think my job is to have as broad a perspective as reasonably possible, to try to draw comparisons among teams and players and have a good general sense of the landscape. Week to week storylines, eye-popping performances, conference races, NCAA Tournament forecasting and title contenders, end-of-year awards — those are the types of conversations it’s most important for me to be informed about, and watching film is important to doing a better job of all those things. But as I said in my initial ScoreBreak Film Study, being able to do that efficiently and then being able to share that work with you, dear reader, is how we go from good to great.