Why does locker room access matter?

Some thoughts on a curious gap in the sports journalism academic literature

Let’s start in Houston, with my friend Tim Graham’s column in The Athletic after the Bills’ loss to Houston: 

We won’t know what those guys think for a few days because the only targeted Bills wideout at his locker stall after the game was rookie Keon Coleman, who turned a fourth-and-5 stop route into a 49-yard touchdown to make the score 20-17 with 4:20 left in the third quarter. Tight end Dalton Kincaid exited the locker room as reporters were permitted entry.

There are two ways you can read that. 

One is that it shows the frustration around a Bills’ season suddenly going cattywampus. It also points out a lack of public accountability — which sits at the core of all journalistic conversations about access. 

Another way to read it is that players were understandably upset after a close, frustrating loss and didn’t want to answer questions about it from outsiders or — especially in a space that is sacred to them — and they shouldn’t be forced to.

Last week, the NFLPA announced that it was seeking to move all interviews out of team locker rooms. 

Players feel that locker room interviews invade their privacy and are uncomfortable. This isn't about limiting media access but about respecting players' privacy and dignity.

NFL writers, of course, have pushed back on this idea. And I wanted to explore this idea a little bit. Not the idea of access - the specific idea of having access to the locker room. 

I’m of contradictory thoughts on this one, so buckle up. 

Let’s start with the NFLPA’s statement. 

“This isn’t about limiting access.” I mean, it is about limiting access. By the very definition of their ask, they are asking to place limits on the access reporters get. We can discuss and argue whether or not those limits are fair or not — that is, in fact, the entire point here — but it is about limiting access. It’s also worth pointing out that players don’t seem to mind the ubiquitous cameras from the team’s social media teams in the locker room, recording celebratory moments in the locker room.¹ 

And teams and athletes do get really weird about the locker room. A few years ago, the first day of the IACS Summit on Communication and Sport was held at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. We got a full tour of the stadium, including the Eagles locker room. Before going in, we were warned not to step on the large Eagles’ logo in the carpet in the middle of the room. Keep in mind — this was in March. There were no players in the locker room, or the stadium. And yet, this was the one rule we had to follow being in the room.²

Being in the locker room gives a reporter a chance to observe the team, to move beyond the canned interviews on a platform or at a podium. To use the parlance of our times, it’s a way to capture the vibes around a team. 

Part of me knows this is an overall true sentiment. The great reporters use locker room access well, to build relationships and take us behind the spin to see what’s really happening with our favorite teams. In a great segment on Hang On and Listen, Lindsay Gibbs pointed out that locker room access provides reporters with informal access to players which is useful for covering a beat and building relationships for future stories. Also, reporters are allowed in the locker rooms for all of 45 minutes a time, three times a week.

On the other hand … it is the player’s space. A work space, for sure. But every pro or elite athlete you talk to will describe the locker room as a sacred place for them. A sanctuary for them and their teammates. Yeah, they get a little weird about the logo thing, but we can respect that this is their room that reporters are getting access to. 

And there are few reporters in any genre of journalism who get the kind of mandated, regular access to sources that sports journalists do. There’s nothing inherently special about sports journalism.

There’s also a part of me that can't help but wonder if the reporting, relationship-building, vibe-checking aspect of sports journalism is the equivalent of the idea that people working from home eliminates “opportunities for collaboration in an office.” Does it happen? Of course. Does it really happen regularly, or are reporters more often than not getting in, getting out and not using access to the extent they use to justify it?

When I started researching this post, my goal was to look at what the academic research had to say about sports journalists and locker room access. What I found was that this seems to be a bit of a gap in the research. 

There are plenty of studies about women sports journalists’ access to the locker rooms, rightfully so. There are studies about the sources sports journalists use in their stories, and the impact that COVID-19 had on access.

But the specific importance of locker room access is addressed mostly in media blogs, social media posts and in sports journalists’ memoirs.

What you hear from sports reporters is that access is what matters. Talking to players outside of a formal press conference setting is what matters. Building relationships with players is what matters. 

The locker room matters in a way, but only because that is the place where interviews have always happened. The locker room is where you get to see and talk to the players. It dates back to the early days of sports journalism, when the daily newspapers were the publicity machine that fueled the growth of sports in America or the only way for fans to keep up with their favorite teams. Digital and social media have changed that.

Dan LeBatard made this point on a podcast on Monday:

I want that access, but more and more, these athletes are understanding that they don’t need us to be so close to them all the time. It prevents us from doing the job as well as we’d like, but we have now more ability to be close to the athlete because they control their own social media.

Whether you see the NFLPA’s request as a necessary re-examination of practice that may not fit the modern media world or as the start of a slippery slope that will lead to independent journalists getting less and less access to their sources, locker room access is a classic example of institutionalism in journalism. 

This will be a longer post in the future, but for our purposes here, institutionalism comes from organizational sociology and can best be understood as anything you see in an organization or a field that’s described as “the way things have always been done.” It’s neither intrinsically good or bad. 

And that’s the core of locker room access for reporters. For good or bad, right or wrong, it’s the way it’s always been. 

My friend Joe Posnanski turned his Substack over to Melissa Ludkte, the sports journalists who was at the center of the landmark court case that led to women journalists being rightfully allowed to access the locker room alongside their male colleagues: 

Ludkte wrote: 

Still, I ended up as the named plaintiff in the groundbreaking 1978 court case, Ludtke v. Kuhn, which changed the course of sports history by giving women sportswriters the equal access we needed to interview the ballplayers, manager and coaches in the locker room. That was where male reporters had talked with baseball players for decades.

To do my job, I had to be there too.

1. Yes, these are team employees so that is a big difference. But it is still a camera in a locker room, and it’s not like ESPN or local media outlets are airing any intrusive footage of players in the locker room.

2. We absolutely all followed the rule, too. Take that as you will.