Wake Forest scandal will make coaches like John Fox more paranoid

After the Bears were done with the meaty portion of an indoor practice this season, media members were allowed in to eyeball the table scraps that had nothing to do with plays that might be used in that week’s game. State secrets had to be protected and all that.

We stood along a railing, and below us, as special-teams players practiced, Bears offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains chatted with Jay Cutler. Loggains did what coaches do during a game, which is to say he held a laminated play card over his mouth to prevent nosy observers from picking up whatever classified information he was imparting to the quarterback. Never mind that we media members couldn’t hear a thing or that we wouldn’t have tried to figure out the topic anyway. This is how football coaches are wired. There’s a good chance these people talk into play cards when making everyday requests at home, such as “Pass the salt’’ or “Honey, how about tonight?’’

As Loggains talked, I thought, What a ridiculous existence. And, There’s no way that kind of paranoia is warranted.

Then Wednesday dawned. I woke up to news that a radio announcer for Wake Forest’s football team had been fired for either providing or offering to provide proprietary game-preparation information to opponents. Tommy Elrod, a former player and assistant coach for the Demon Deacons, allegedly had done this several times since 2014, including before a game against Louisville in November, Wake Forest officials said.

Swell. This is going to make football coaches button up their operations even more, despite the fact that there are no buttons left, that there is no indication espionage is widespread or even that spying works.

Is Loggains paranoid on his own, or did he get it from the Bears’ chief paranoid, head coach John Fox? I don’t know. I do know that Fox keeps the media at arm’s length, the arm being approximately 100 miles long. Players’ injuries are not to be discussed. Neither is strategy. Fox often gives answers that have nothing to do with the questions being asked. The media is clearly the enemy. Interesting, though, that Fox is close to a few national reporters with connections.

Football is the most over-coached sport on the planet, so it’s no surprise coaches would think that stolen Xs and Os could lead to a defeat, if not to the collapse of world markets. There’s a significant amount of ego involved. It’s an arrogance that believes strategy and coaching, not athleticism and heart, win football games.

Coaches think a lot rides on secrecy, but surely more games are won and lost on time-management blunders or other bad coaching decisions. Worry more about brain lock than picked safes, coach.

It’s ironic that the fox in the henhouse in the Wake Forest scandal is not a reporter but someone who was considered loyal to the program. Coaches normally are more forthcoming with team broadcasters, who are seen as part of the club and thus trustworthy, though I’m told Fox is an equal-opportunity shunner in this regard. Reporters are seen as a threat and contagious.

If more spying scandals occur, the circle of people a football coach can trust will end up being the size of a nickel. It’s about a quarter now.

It didn’t used to be like this. Reporters who covered NFL teams once could watch every minute of every practice, but somewhere along the way, franchises decided it was too risky to allow media members/spies/reconnaissance pilots to watch the war games. I have never known a sportswriter who A) had any reason to give away the game plan or B) knew enough to articulate to another team what he or she had just seen. But trying to explain this to the Bears or any other team would be like having a conversation with a tackling sled.

It didn’t take long for the Wake Forest mess to be called WakeyLeaks. The real surprise is that we haven’t heard of more computer hacking, a la WikiLeaks, at the college and NFL level. At least that would cut out middlemen like Elrod, if he did indeed traffic in game plans. Teams would have their own in-house cheaters. How convenient.

In the meantime, we’ll have to settle for old-fashioned controversies like Spygate, the 2007 scandal in which the Patriots were accused of videotaping the signals of Jets coaches during a game. That incident didn’t involve reporters behaving badly either. Hmmm. Maybe we’re not the enemy. Imagine that.