A first for this reporter
1:44 pm, May 11, 2011 | Written by bkoch

I’ve dealt with a lot of different coaches during my years covering UC and have gotten along fine with most of them. In basketball, there have been Tony Yates, Bob Huggins, Andy Kennedy and now Mick Cronin. In football, Dave Currey, Tim Murphy, Rick Minter, Mark Dantonio, Brian Kelly and now Butch Jones. Each relationship has been different depending on the coach and every coach at one time or another has gotten mad at me to varying degrees for something that I’ve written. That’s the nature of the job.

But I have never had a coach do what Butch Jones did last week. I offer this to UC fans only to serve as an illustration of what kind of guy Jones is. It’s not meant to be a comment on his ability as a coach.

Jones grew up in Saugatuck, Michigan, a little resort town on Lake Michigan where his dad was the police chief. While researching a story that I wrote about Jones last summer, I checked out Saugatuck on the Internet and thought it looked like a nice place. My wife and I are driving to Milwaukee this summer to visit friends and watch the Reds play the Brewers for a few days, so I proposed taking the ferry to Michigan and going to Saugatuck for a few days.

I asked Butch if he knew a good place to stay. He said he would check with his mom to see if a few places he knew about were available that week. The next time I talked to him he said those places were already taken, but his mom said we could stay with her. He was serious.

“She has two rooms upstairs that you could use,” he said.

That might have been the first time that has ever happened between a coach and a beat reporter in any sport at any school in America.

Of course, I politely declined the offer. The paper wouldn’t appreciate me taking such favors from the head coach that I cover – or from his mom. But it told me something about what kind of person Jones is, about how he was raised and about his roots.

I just thought it was worth sharing.

http://news.cincinnati.com/ucblog