Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Sports / Woods ESPN Disses Vol Nation With Yet More Yellow Journalism
Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:40 AM
"Now, Kiffin's arrival has brought several secondary NCAA violations. It is entirely possible that you just saw another one. Remember the scene where Lane Kiffin is speaking with a recruit? Well, in the infamously thick NCAA rulebook, Rule 13.0.1, (it states) media members cannot observe recruiting contact by coaches. Tennessee tells Outside the Lines it is reviewing this matter. The NCAA is reserving comment until the story airs, so we look forward to hearing from them today (Sunday)."Gotcha! Do you think ESPN asked to film the recruiting scene knowing that it was a violation? Nah, they wouldn't do that, would they? I think I'm going to hand a joint to some unsuspecting state legislator tonight at Brandon's and then do a story on how I saw the poor schmuck with it. ESPN can kiss my orange ass, and I'm proud to report solid support on this matter from the rest of Vol Nation. In an online poll, 59 percent say ESPN's got it out for our beloved orange-clad warriors.
Comments (8)
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Woods, are you sure you're the right person to bitch about media bias?
Your entire rant here, as you indirectly admit, is based on a question for which you don't know the answer. Did ESPN ask Kiffin to stage the shot with the recruit? You obviously believe they did. Or did they happen to be there when Kiffin was meeting with a recruit?
You also overlooked something obvious: However this went down, the best thing you can say for Kiffin is that he was unaware of the NCAA rules about meeting a recruit in front of the media. And you'll recall that Kiffin was chastised by Mike Hamilton during his first week on the job for this very thing -- not knowing the rules, which, as Hamilton said, is something expected of all their coaches.
In the past, ESPN has definitely shown a bias against UT -- most specifically, with the "trailer park frenzy" comment some years back and then with the College GameDay commercial showing the UT family getting off the hotel elevator with a piglet while brother and sister kissed incestuously in the background.
But I didn't find anything obviously biased in the Outside the Lines report. The fact is that Kiffin has raised eyebrows not just around the SEC but around the country both with his brashness and with the spate of (admittedly minor) rules violations. It certainly is worth the media's attention when a club like the Oakland Raiders issues the harshest statement about a former coach that most of us have ever seen. And ESPN allowed Kiffin's wife and others to make the case that what he's doing is all part of a calculated effort to put UT football back in the national conversation.
Had they wanted to, ESPN could have been much harsher. For example, they didn't give all the details behind Kiffin's charge that Urban Meyer had cheated in contacting a recruit while he was visiting the UT campus. The kid had made a verbal commitment to Florida. Kiffin persuaded him to visit UT but instructed him not to tell Meyer about it. So when Meyer called, he actually had no idea that the kid was in Knoxville, and it was utterly disingenuous that Kiffin suggested that Meyer was cheating. Rather than go into all this detail, the ESPN story simply said that Meyer had not cheated and that Kiffin apologized.
You know, it's one thing to come into a new job and make some bold statements about beating Florida next fall. It's another thing to accuse other coaches of cheating, as Kiffin has done now with three different SEC coaches. This makes Kiffin's behavior a legitimate story, ESPN's past sins against UT notwithstanding.
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"I think I'm going to hand a joint to some unsuspecting state legislator tonight at Brandon's and then do a story on how I saw the poor schmuck with it."
Actually Jeff, as you may well remember, similar territory has already been covered by the Nashville Scene.
http://weeklywire.com/ww/10-06-97/nash_cl-desperately.html
Yes tom, I was thinking of that incident when I wrote this post. But I didn't mention it because I didn't want to revive memories of Liz Garrigan's terrible betrayal of the public trust, nor Henry Walker's web of lies.
Oh, Vol fan. Such an easy mark. Maybe if your players weren't thugs, drug peddlers, and vehicular homicides waiting to happen, you'd get a little respect. As I see it, you don't deserve any better than you get and most of the time, much, much worse.
