(Written by kencraw)

There’s been a bit of a swirling controversy regarding California Golden Blogs posting pictures from the open to the public spring practice on Cal Day, April 12th. See the message board post by GrayBear and this post at CGB for background. I’ve thought a great deal about this matter (I was reluctant to comment at first). The more I think about it, the more I believe this issue was mishandled by both BearInsider and the Athletic department.

As has come to light, these pictures were taken at the open to the public, Cal Day practice. For those who went to the Cal Day practice, since it was open to the public and the fans would have no other guidance to go on, there was no instruction regarding taking pictures or anything like that. While I think it is a fools-errand to try and stop pictures from the open practice from being taken or being posted publicly, I know that California Golden Blogs (CGB), myself and most other bloggers would respect whatever rules they wanted, had they been stated/posted. But nowhere was it stated to anyone (I can’t emphasize this enough). I mean all they had to do was post a sign, give out a handout, say something over the loudspeaker, say something in the e-mail invitation to the event that went to all season ticket holders, anything like that. But they didn’t.

It’s unfair to CGB to force them into a situation which such negative publicity (look at all the misinformed comments on the BearInsider message board that think/thought they posted pictures from a closed practice) and compromise the hard work they’ve done to promote Cal football (the post in question, even though it has nothing to do with spring ball, is useless until they can find alternate photos, which they surely would have done initially if they knew those pictures were off limits) when they were given no reasonable guidance on the subject.

Even if they had attended the Bancroft Hotel event, which I didn’t so I can’t speak to, unless it was explicitly stated at that event that these rules apply to the Cal Day practice, it was a reasonable assumption that the rules were different for this open to the public event. As someone who gets access to the closed spring practices, although I didn’t post pictures from the Cal Day event, I made that exact assumption.

Hopefully this can be avoided in the future through better communication to the fans by the athletic department.

I would also have hoped that BearInsider handled the matter with both more clarity and more charity. While GrayBear admits the pictures were “probably as a result of Cal Day” he launches into a discussion of the Bancroft Hotel event which is wholly irrelevant if the pictures were “a result of Cal Day”. He then bases the rest of his post on the foundation and premise of the Bancroft Hotel event. There are no gray areas here as his message indicates. The pictures were taken at the Cal Day event. There was no information presented about photography at that event. CGB made the reasonable assumption that open to the public meant they could post pictures of it. The fault lays with the athletic department communications.

A more appropriate post would have said something along the lines of “I’m sure they were acting in good faith thinking the Cal Day event was unrestricted, but the athletic department has communicated to me that all pictures from the Cal Day should come down even though that wasn’t well communicated at Cal Day itself. We apologize for the confusion.”

What bothers me most about this is that just about everyone involved has the same goal: the promotion of Cal football. But because of poor communication and a lack of clarity and charity, this issue has erupted into something far bigger than it would have been. It could have been easily avoided.

(note that this same post, minus a few edits, was made on the BearInsider message board)