Is the NY Times beating a dead horse with today's G-Town story?

I'll start by saying that I've been very impressed by Pete Thamel's coverage of diploma mills over the past year or two.

But I read today's story and felt as if he was reaching a little bit. In fact, I'll go as far as to say I thought the story was extremely one-sided. It seems a little unfair to me to indict an entire program, as well as Binghamton's hiring of a G-Town assistant, because of one kid...

Thoughts?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/sports/ncaabasketball/30georgetown.html?_r=2&ref=sports&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

 

I can't believe you're questioning this story.

What's better than Thamel exposing schools like Georgetown chucking their ENTIRE admissions process and profile to admit a kid with what's essentially a fake transcript.

That's journalism, son.

The kind we all should be doing more of. Maybe if Thamel does enough of it, the next Georgetown president will tell the basketball coach he'll get fired for trying shit like this. Probably not, of course, but I dare to dream.

 

Anyone who points to a single paragraph about Pat Ewing Jr. as the reason they don't like the story, well, that's just dumb and they're missing the point.

And it's not an indictment on an entire program. It simply describes one incident involving one player and one assistant coach.

Great work by Thamel. As usual.

 

Story not a "reach" at all, but I do question the (late) timing. Maybe Broadus isn't hired at BU if this is reported earlier. Does seem like this story is lined up to coincide with G'town making the FF, but I don't know when PT learned what.

Anyway, more nice work on his part.

 

I question how the Times got the kids transcript. That's private information. Somebody should be sued.

 

Great story, but sadly, it'll get lost.
Won't be mentioned on any of the big websites (yahoo, fox, sportsline, espn, etc) and obviously won't be brought up on air Saturday.

All anyone is talking about is Hibbert-Oden and the rematch.

But excellent work, for sure.

One can only hope somebody is working on a similar story about Mayo, who has been to multiple schools in the last few years, and is associated with extremely shady folks.

 

Boots there are so many ways to get those things. There's likely nothing under-handed imvolved here.

Admissions staff can generally print those things out with a press of a button, untraced.

 

The question, I guess, if there is one, is how much of this is new? Didn't this all come out a while ago? It was an interesting read for me, but maybe someone else followed it more closely the first time and it's not to them. That'd be the only thing I would see.

 

Granted, the "concept" of this isn't new, but since the team is in the Final Four, the assistant just got a job, etc., makes it interesting.
But I see your point on this fact: Now that the degree mills have been shut down, how many of these stories are out there? Maybe a couple per major conference. Every time somebody breaks something like this, it won't be "new" but it will be "news"