Tuesday night was the season debut of the long-running HBO NFL documentary “Hard Knocks” and it features the Cincinnati Bengals once again. Pittsburgh Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert was guest Friday morning on DVE Radio and was asked to give his thoughts on the show as it relates to his team.
“There\’s probably positives to an HBO Hard Knocks, there\’s probably a lot of negatives,” said Colbert. “As a fan it might be interesting, I know when the Penguins did 24/7 I was interested in watching it, so I can see where the fans are interested in that type of deal. They want to see the inner workings of a team.”
Colbert when on to talk about the intrusiveness of having the cameras around all the time and the negatives involved in doing that.
“There are things that are still protected as far as I\’m concerned, “said Colbert. “The conversations when a player gets cut, it makes for good TV, but I don\’t like because it\’s embarrassing. First of all, you\’re going to be a little guarded when you do it if you try to do it for TV, so it\’s really not the real situation, it will be a little protected. So I can see the value of it, I know the fans would like it, but just as an administrator, I\’d still be a little protected about some of it.”
While Colbert thinks it might not be good for the Steelers to be featured on Hard Knocks, he does watch occasional in an effort to see if they reveal something they shouldn\’t.
“If we\’re playing one of those teams, you just try to gain some insight,” he said.
There has been talk this offseason about Hard Knocks ultimately being mandatory for teams to be part of in the future and Colbert addressed that as well.
“I know they\’ve talked about internally in the league about making it mandated, to move it around and do some different things and they\’ll probably try to expand it to get everybody involved like they do the Hall of Fame game.”
As it stands right now, the Steelers don\’t appear to be interested in taking part in Hard Knocks, but should the league ever make it mandatory, something I don\’t think will ever happen, Colbert won\’t necessarily be thrilled with having to do it.
