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 th