Like most teams, the Colts have held reportedly held informal workouts during the lockout. Unlike most teams -- but not all -- they have gone out of their way to keep the practices a secret.
Bob Kravitz, the dean of Indianapolis sportswriters, wrote a column about it Wednesday in the Indianapolis Star.
“I’m looking for the right words to characterize the players’ -- and by that, I mean Manning’s -- insistence on working out in utter secrecy, keeping fans and media at bay.
“Ridiculous.
Dumb.
Idiotic,” Kravitz writes.
We like Kravitz’s writing a lot in general and the points he makes in the column are largely true. The secrecy seems out of habit more than anything. The paranoia is great enough that Dallas Clark reportedly complained when cameras were at a facility where Clark works out. The cameras were following Deion Branch, who also works out there.
Paul Kuharsky of ESPN.com writes that fans have reportedly complained that Kravitz comes off as a whiner, which is a fair point. Is this an issue worthy of a column?
It sounds partly like a writer frustrated with one of the most difficult organizations in the league for the media to deal with from the top down. The fans do suffer -- reporting on the Colts is consistently inferior to other small market NFL teams in quantity and quality of coverage.
It’s a media strategy the organization is obviously comfortable with, and one that won’t change until the team starts losing again.