My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana University examined Christin Cooper’s with Bode Miller.

From the column:

Usually the postgame interviews are replete with forgettable snippets of athletes answering the how-does-it-feel questions in the heat of the moment. He or she mutters clichés about giving thanks to God and saying they couldn’t have done it without their teammates. Blah, blah, blah.

However, there are times when the postgame interview dives off the deep end and becomes more discussed than the event itself. Nothing likely will ever top Jim Gray’s World Series game “apologize now” interview with Pete Rose. Recently, ESPN’s Heather Cox took considerable heat for her excessive questioning of Jameis Winston’s off-the-field situation just minutes after Florida State won the ACC title game.

Then Sunday night, Twitter blew up in the aftermath of Bode Miller’s emotional interview with Christin Cooper during NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. After the skier won the bronze medal, Cooper persisted with questions about Miller’s dead brother until he finally broke down.

ESPN’s Keith Olbermann on his show called the interview “excruciating.” He slammed Cooper’s approach as only he can:

It was tantamount to holding up his late brother’s photo. When that didn’t get him to collapse, pointing to a picture of his late brother’s grave. Then when he finally started to break up, cutting to a live feed from his late brother’s grave.

Richard Sandomir of the New York Times wrote:

I doubt it was her intent to make him weep, but that was the effect of question overkill. Taken one at a time, each question is reasonable, and if she had asked only one of them, Miller might not have wept and fallen to his knees. But the takeaway of asking all three was that she had badgered Miller, not asked him well-chosen questions gauged with a real-time understanding of his emotions. NBC milked the situation further by keeping its cameras on the scene for more than a minute, as Miller walked away, as he was comforted by various people and as he was embraced by his wife, Morgan.

It is interesting to note that writers and broadcasters who encountered Miller a few minutes later barely touched on the brother issue during his mass interview session. Chris Dufrense of the Los Angeles Times wrote:

Here’s what I do know: Miller was fully composed when he finally got to the U.S. press station in the mixed zone.

“To hang on to a medal today, I feel really lucky and fortunate,” Miller said.

It had been well chronicled that Miller lost his brother last April to a seizure.

Miller was more emotional than usual in the mixed zone and said ”this was a hard year,” but he did not cry. No one really pushed Miller on the issue of his brother.

Miller, frankly, was not the lead story. Even he was more interested in talking about the amazing run by U.S. teammate Andrew Weibrecht, who stunningly won the silver medal.