In my senior year of college at the University of Georgia, I had the good fortune of covering the Atlanta Flames of the National Hockey League for an FM radio station in Athens, Ga. The Flames moved to Calgary, shortly thereafter (and Atlanta has even lost a second NHL team, the Thrashers).
My job was to go to the games, sit in the press-box, and conduct post-game interviews. It was truly a great experience, but I was far from being a professional interviewer. I have many vivid memories from that experience. Most of the players were really classy human beings. Jean Pronovost, for example, was always willing to give an interview, even after a bad loss. He was polite, and gracious, despite the fact that I was a 20 year old college senior, pretending to be a sports reporter. Some players, on the other hand, were not as nice. One defenseman took great pleasure in disrespecting reporters, doing things I need not mention on this blog.
One of my favorite players to interview was Bill Clement. Clement was one of the most intelligent players in the league, and he always did his homework. I was not surprised when he went on to do broadcasting on a national level, when he retired from playing. After one game, he quickly exposed my lack of depth. I asked a teammate of Clement’s how it felt to be scoring goals this year, since he was not known as a goal scorer. Clement called out from across the locker room, “check the stats.” If I had done my homework better, I would have seen that the player I was questioning had been the second-leading goal scorer on his previous team. Bill Clement then kindly pulled me aside, and told me that he wasn’t trying to show me up, he simply wanted to make sure I got the facts right.
As I read Matt Leichter’s post regarding overproduction of lawyers, and the posts about Law School Transparency on the Faculty Lounge, I want to call across the room, “check the stats.” Much of the information coming from those sources is contradicted by the facts reported by law schools to the ABA, including placement rates and costs.
More on this to come.