Cold weather has been a central storyline of this year's NFL playoffs. Yet, while temperatures in Detroit are expected to be below freezing when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers head to town to take on the Lions this weekend, both teams (and their fans) have no need to worry. Detroit plays indoors — a fact that, astoundingly, is not known by every Buccaneers reporter.
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During Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles' media availability session Tuesday, one local reporter asked him, "The weather has been a factor in some of the playoff games, even for the most prepared teams. ... Any special plans to acclimate the team to not only endure but perform in those kind of frigid temperatures, should you face them in Detroit?"
Oh no… A reporter asked #Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles about how the team is preparing to get acclimated to the weather in Detroit ahead of Sunday’s game.
The Lions have played in a dome for nearly 50 years. pic.twitter.com/O9cHduRKCN
— Dave Connelly (@DaveConnellySG) January 16, 2024
To which Bowles — clearly keeping himself from laughing — politely replied with, "You do know we play indoors, right? They got a dome [in Detroit]."
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Bowles went on: "Um, no, nothing planned. We're indoors, and we only have to be outside for 20 seconds getting off the bus and getting in to the [stadium], so we'll be OK."
While we unfortunately can't see the anonymous reporter's reaction to Bowles' answer, it's hard to not feel at least a little bit bad for her. She seemed to have put a lot of thought into the question and delivered it to Bowles flawlessly.
Alas, she clearly didn't do her due diligence before Tuesday's media availability session — or, at least, she didn't do enough of it.
If she had, she would have known that the Detroit Lions have played at Ford Field in downtown Detroit since 2002 — and that it has been domed that entire time. Before that, the Lions' home stadium was the Pontiac Silverdome (which, as you might have guessed by its name, also had a dome) since 1975. Therefore, the Lions have been playing their home games inside a weather-controlled domed stadium for nearly 50 years.
Still, as some fellow sports reporters have pointed out, this is probably more of a larger issue in sports media. Newspapers across the country are cutting their sports departments, like the New York Times did in 2023, and local TV reporters who may not follow sports are being asked to cover subjects they wouldn't normally.
A lot of people are using this as an opportunity to dunk on the reporter.
When the macro-level issue is sports departments being cut or sending a news reporter to cover.
The TV station this reporter is from used to carry a 3-person sports team & now don’t have a sports person https://t.co/Kt4eJ6qOZe
— Eric Henry (@EricCHenry_) January 17, 2024
Still, sometimes lessons can only be learned the hard way. While this reporter's lesson could have easily been avoided, at least nobody has said yet who exactly she is. That — along with Bowles' classy response — makes this lesson a little bit less embarrassing than it could have been.
Yet it was still very embarrassing.
