Following every men’s college basketball game during the NCAA tournament, reporters will likely look to the coaches to explain the outcome. To help explain the coaches’ comments, the media can turn to a Wake Forest University communication professor who has researched coaches’ post-game comments for nearly two decades.
“After a while, if you listen to enough coaches, you begin to think you’ve heard it all before,” says Wake Forest associate professor of communication, John Llewellyn. “The odds are you have.”
Llewellyn analyzed the professional vocabulary of NCAA Division I men’s college basketball coaches for “Coachtalk,” a chapter in the book “Case Studies in Sport Communication.” He says there is a pattern in what winning and losing coaches say after each game that reveals an underlying respect for each other and the world of athletics.
“The scoreboard is only the beginning,” Llewellyn says. “Coachtalk is the language coaches use to generate hope and explain outcomes. It sustains the culture of sports.”
Llewellyn is accustomed to interacting with broadcast and print media. He is available for interviews about his research and to analyze coaches’ comments during March Madness. For more information, contact Maggie Barrett at barretmb@wfu.edu or 336-758-5237, or John Llewellyn at llewelly@wfu.edu or 336-758-4511.
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