Let’s get this straight right away:
Despite some offseason chatter, the Giants were never going to be the team this summer to appear on HBO’s “Hard Knocks.’’ No how, no way. There were reports that if no team volunteered to be featured on the show that offers an inside, behind-the-scenes look at training camp, the league would assign a team; as the Giants have never appeared, it could be them.
That’s not going to happen, but the Giants opened themselves up for some speculation when for this year’s NFL Draft, for the first time, they allowed cameras from the NFL Network inside the draft room. There was no audio and the shots of the Giants’ draft room revealed nothing — just a bunch of team executives and coaches sitting around a table.
“There were a few more ties,” Tom Coughlin said of the impact on the room, alluding to a few more people wearing nicer clothing.
Cameras in the draft room is one thing, appearing on “Hard Knocks’’ is something else entirely.
“Do you think it has anything to do with whether I say yes or no?” Coughlin said. “First of all, realize that I would have absolutely no say in this, but if it came down to me? Absolutely not.”
What, pray tell, would happen if the league forced “Hard Knocks’’ down the throats of the Giants? Coughlin said HBO would not be happy with the results. HBO always gets coaches to agree to unprecedented access, giving viewers in-depth insight into personnel decisions and personal issues players deal with in training camp.
“You wouldn’t get what you normally associate with that show,” Coughlin said. “I’d go the other way and they’d fire us in a minute. Canceled. Nobody would watch it.”