Say you want to talk to Batman, but you’re just an ordinary taxpayer in Gotham City.
Maybe you can walk through dark alleys, hoping to get mugged. Or you call the Justice League, and leave a message. Good luck with that, but should your words to Batman get by all the gatekeepers, then, oh, reach Aquaman, Aquaman might think: “Gotham City is in trouble!”, and the wheels are in motion.
If Gotham City police commissioner Gordon wants to talk to Batman, he picks up the Batphone, boom, direct line. Unless Batman just lets it ring through to Batvoicemail or whatever.
The first is like dealing with an athletic department within the Pac-12 Conference, or the NCAA. Wrestle through red tape, make additional phone calls, you might wind up talking to the desired people.
The second is like having Coach Roberts in your contacts list. Last May, I had the lovely thought to get a headstart, because THIS IS THE YEAR, after all. Coach’s phone was broken, and when she called me, I was about to play chess.
Six months pass.
Today, Coach returned my call from an hour earlier. I said: I shouldn’t have to learn things about your program from ESPN, like her broken arm. Now that I think about it, she might’ve been driving one-handed, so maybe that wasn’t the safest or most law-abiding time to talk.
It used to be that following a loss wasn’t the safest time to talk. One night after a loss at Colorado State, Coach Roberts was steaming, which blasted the snow clear on the walk to the team bus.
“We were awful”, Roberts said about Utah’s 84-77 loss Tuesday at Baylor. “Maybe it’s on me. I thought we were prepared, but were just unprepared for the intensity.”
Roberts could say last season that the Utes are young, still growing together as a team. This season, that isn’t so suitable. “It didn’t help that we lost (Wooden watch-listed senior forward) Alissa Pili for 18 minutes in the first half. That knocked us back on our heels, but we’ve got kids who’ve been here two or three years now. They know what we do, and we didn’t do it.”
“I’m not happy with how we played, but if they respond in the right way, react in an appropriate way, this will be a good loss”, Roberts said. “If it refocuses them, and they stop this pursuit of perfection, it could be a very good thing.”