You’d think more difficult questions would have been lobbed at Brent Venables and Ben Arbuckle during this season of seasons in the wrong direction. You’d think it, but they’re hard to come by, especially given the way the press conferences are run.
It was once a free-for-all:
Get your question out front in hopes of getting it heard.
It took a little training, inferring an answer’s final period. But I was pretty good at it and what it allowed for, particularly, was a follow-up question (or two).
Now, and it’s been this way for a while, you get called upon and unless things run very short, you get called upon only once. So, what to do, follow up on an evasive answer or ask the question you came to ask for the story you came to write?
I’d mostly enter without agenda, wait for an answer to take an interesting turn, a high bar, and nail the timing to follow up, compound the interest or, sometimes, to remind that a real answer to the question had yet to be given.
C’est la vie.
Well, it may not have been a perfect question, but SoonerScoop’s George Stoia went there and Brent Venables did, too, and as soon as Tuesday afternoon it had grabbed real attention because, kind of, sort of, Venables finally pointed a finger at offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh.
Here was the question:
Bill Bedenbaugh has coached the offensive line here for some time. It seems over the last two or three years, you guys have had some instability with that position group. What do you maybe attribute that to, and what do you like about the development and trajectory of that position group under Bill going forward?
