MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (WBZ-AM) -- You know that sick feeling you get in your stomach when you see a football player take a particularly devastating hit?
Reporters get that same feeling when they see one of their own get shut down by Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick at a press conference--the guy can be brutal if he doesn't like your question.
With reporters from across the country getting their first exposure to the coach at media avails in Minnesota this week, WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Kendall Buhl asked Belichick presser veteran Adam Kaufman if he had any advice that might spare his colleagues some pain.
"Don't ask the dumb questions that you know he's going to have no time or interest in, because those, he'll give you a stare-down like you've never encountered before," Kaufman said. "Nobody wants to be on that side of the icy stares or silence, and I can tell you I've been on that side of those stares."
"It's a very unpleasant feeling, it's like being scolded by your grandfather," he adds.
But Kaufman also knows that even those questions that aren't dumb can result in a chill from Bill.
"A lot of the time, they're questions that he doesn't want to answer," he said. "Case in point--Bill Belichick is still not early in the week going to address whether or not Rob Gronkowski's going to play in that game, but still, it is the media's responsibility to ask that question."
"And it'll seem like he's annoyed because he is annoyed, because he knows he's not going to give you an answer, you know he's not going to give you an answer, but you still, journalistically, you have to ask that question."
Yes, it's not all glitz and glamour at the Mall of America food courts, where the world's sports media is camped out this week.
But the uninitiated will find they will survive Belichick's bluster--just about every Boston sports reporter has at one time or another.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Kendall Buhl reports