Questionable

 The dumbest question I ever heard a reporter ask happened in the run-up to the Fiesta Bowl in 1989, when Notre Dame won its last national title and dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

It was a question for Major Harris, West Virginia's star quarterback, and I don't recall who asked it. Nor do I recall the exact wording. But it was something about what "percentage" of the "Notre Dame mystique" would be a factor in the game.

Harris looked at the reporter like she had two heads, as well he should have. Hell, a lot of us did.

This comes back to me now because of something that happened after the Buffalo Bills lost Monday to the New England Patriots 14-10 on a windblown night in Buffalo. The Patriots threw just three passes, a concession to the foul conditions. Afterward, a reporter asked Bills safeties Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer if they were embarrassed to lose to a team that threw just three passes.

Hyde and Poyer looked at the reporter -- a TV guy from some local station -- like he had two heads. As well they should have.

"I mean, what kind of question is that?" Poyer said. "I think we allowed seven points. Fourteen."

"Yeah, 14-10, was that the final score?" Hyde added.

"We made big stops when we had to, they had one big run, I mean, they've got good backs," Poyer went on. "They kept coming back to a couple of runs. I mean, I don't know how you want us to answer that question."

Mind you, none of this came out angry and defensive. Mostly Poyer's and Hyde's tone was honestly bewildered. They handled it about as professionally as you could expect them to.

Of course, sports blab radio took this and ran off the usual cliffs with it, saying dumb questions like this wouldn't happen if the NFL abolished postgame pressers. Champion blowhole Colin Cowherd even went so far as to smear the entire sports reporting profession, saying being a reporter isn't that tough a job.

Which is about what you'd expect from a guy who isn't one. And whose own job is, what, yapping on the radio for three hours every day?

Lord give me strength.

Also, give me the ability to explain the rationale behind postgame interviews. 

It's true catching players and coaches in the raw minutes after a win or loss will not generally get you sober analysis. From the coaches especially, it will get you a lot of "I'll have to look at the tape." That's fine, because sober analysis is not what you're expecting in most cases anyway.

What you're looking for are eyewitness accounts of a crucial play or sequence of plays, imperfect as those accounts often are. It's why you ask "What did you see on that play?" The answer, even if it's "Not much," lends context to your account. And sometimes brutal  honesty instead of TranscriptSpeak.

Without that, your game story is simply a stat line gussied up with verbs and nouns. 

The goal, if you're at all serious about your job, is to give the reader as full a picture as possible. And so you ask your questions in the postgame presser, even if some of them are dumb. Or if they're not dumb but your interview subject thinks so, as frequently happened with Bob Knight.

In any event, it's all about story. And story is more than just the aforementioned stat line.

Back in the day, for instance, before Knight closed the IU locker room to media, there was a certain night when the Hoosiers played abysmally and lost to Illinois in Assembly Hall. After the usual cooling off period, the locker room door swung open, and in we trooped.

The players were all sitting in front of their lockers like toy soldiers, their heads down, their slump-shouldered postures identical. I was working for the late great Anderson Daily Bulletin then, and so I sidled up to hometown guy Ray Tolbert. Usually an exuberant soule -- no one ever loved playing basketball as openly as Ray Lee did -- his handshake this time was listless and limp, and his answers were whispered monosyllables.

Nothing better illustrated the lowness of the night for Indiana. And I'm pretty sure it all went into my gamer.

As would have the bewilderment of Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde, after a game the Bills fought hard and lost.