It’s possible that Notre Dame football faithful might need to dial back the vitriol aimed at Dan Wolken. That includes myself.
The reporter has come under fire of late for comments he made directly after the Notre Dame football team lost to Ohio State. The USA Today reporter took to social media to proclaim the Irish locker room “amateur hour” and drew more than a little hate due to the comments.
Later in the week, Wolken claimed he had some Notre Dame football players make some “threatening comments” as he was leaving the locker room. And for most of the week he’s largely stood alone in those allegations. However, on Saturday, InsideNDSports publisher Eric Hansen essentially corroborated some of Wolken’s report while adding needed context to the situation.
Notre Dame football locker room had some issues after Ohio State
After explaining that both locker rooms were open to the media after a brief “cooling off period,” Hansen explained why he hadn’t written about Wolken’s saga for a few days.
“Telling the story of other media members’ experiences in that open-locker room setting, and gathering the resources to do so, was not a priority,” Hansen wrote, explaining that he had to focus on talking to players and coaches on his own in the short period allowed for access.
“The controversy revolves around some media trying to interview Notre Dame’s Christian Gray, a sophomore cornerback who was on the coverage for a key third-down conversion by Ohio State late in the game…From what I was told, Gray was sobbing with a towel over his head, convinced he had lost the game for his team. When he was questioned by the media about his play, he couldn’t gather himself to answer. And I was told when the media persisted, injured cornerback Benjamin Morrison got involved and tried to protect his friend.”
This is where the incident where players yelling at media members started.
“I heard him call a media member “a coward” and told him to “get out of the locker room,” Hansen wrote. “His tone and his words were way out of character for anything I’ve experienced with Morrison before.”
“Having said that, as I turned the corner to the other path through the locker room and found linebacker Drayk Bowen and interviewed him, you can hear on my recording of that interview Morrison shouting in the background — and other voices, some from other players. Morrison’s anger apparently fueled that in other players.”
Hansen went on to say that at one point, defensive backs coach Mike Mickens volunteered to step in and answer questions. This appears where Wolken got his “coaches telling people not to ask certain questions.”
Summing up Hansen’s comments, he believes that the Notre Dame football sports information staff should have prepared Gray better for the moment. Even finding him a way to get a little more time to calm down. Hansen also believes that some of the reports from media members he’s heard were “way overblown,” and that some members of the media could have also behaved a bit more professionally.
He didn’t name Wolken specifically, but it felt at the very least he felt like those like Wolken might have gone a bit far in the way they described the scene. What is clear is that things were not great in the Notre Dame football locker room, that the situation wasn’t that different to other games, and that the athletic department didn’t do a great job in getting the team ready to deal with what was coming after the National Championship loss.