Texas A&M, the SEC, and ESPN's questionable journalism

The one thing I do wonder about is ESPN's being in bed with Texas and how it might influence it's reporting on the issue. Seen a few network talking heads ripping the deal on twitter. You'd have to think it would be better for ESPN to preserve the Big 12, since it's giving Texas $300M over 20 years.

edit: though that horse is probably pretty far out of the barn with its various conference and league deals

 

I think you've chosen to take a particular position on this thread, which is a mistake. You know better

Read the story. Really read it. Seems oddly patched together, doesn't it?

ESPN had a bullshit story early this morning courtesy of Doug Gottlieb - a basketball announcer - and Thamel beat the shit out of it with his own reporting for the NYT, which ESPN chooses to bury that reporting - which is far more definitive - seven graphs in, still clinging to the Gottlieb reporting at the top. Which makes for a bizarre little passage contradiction. Consider in bold:

<i>The SEC official said there was still a 30 percent to 40 percent chance the Aggies would not get enough votes for an invitation to the league, The Times reported. And the issue of needing to add a 14th team along with A&M remained, the newspaper reported.

<b>"We realize if we do this, we have to have the 14th," the SEC official said. "No name has been thrown out. This thing is much slower out of the chute than the media and blogs have made it."</b>

The official told The Times that Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin called SEC commissioner Mike Slive three weeks ago and said the Aggies regretted not leaving the Big 12 for the SEC last summer.

Two weeks ago, Slive and SEC lawyers met with A&M officials, when the league requested that the school work out the possible legal ramifications surrounding its contract with the Big 12, the report said.

"They have a contract now," the SEC official said, according to The Times. "We're very sensitive about being part of breaking a contract. What we asked them to do was to go settle their issues and not have us be on the table as the agent of causing them to leave."

<b>The SEC now likely will pursue Florida State, Clemson and Missouri, a source told ESPN's Gottlieb, though Missouri athletic director Mike Alden said the school was not in talks with any conferences about a possible move.</b></i>

That's just a stupendous mash up. The SEC official is talking about 14th team - maybe. Gottlieb's "source," - whoever the hell that is, he or she apparently can't be identified as anything other than a "source" - is throwing out 4 teams to get to 16.

This reads like some editor with half a conscience did their damn best to run roughshod over Gottlieb's reportage without pissing off Gottlieb by erasing his source entirely. The story might as well say "Doug Gottlieb was told something this morning and it seemed like bullshit, but he works for us so..."

ESPN has a phalanx of CFB reporters. Some with terrific SEC ties. And it's Gottlieb's reporting they're gonna stand on? Seems like classic ESPN: Shoot from the hip, butter up the TV talent, realize that you overshot, cover tracks, but still hold on to a strand of the original story.

I'm stunned that ESPN didn't tell Gottlieb: Thanks. But this isn't your story. You're an contributor, and we'll absolutely cite you, but we're not running with this on Saturday morning. Because Thamel handed ESPN its ass.

 

Alma,

I respect you, so I will answer you honestly: A LOT of stuff on that site is patched together. It's part of the job. When you have as many college football writers/analysts as ESPN does, you have to piece together what they each have, along with what else is out there. It's a staff report, not a bylined story.

Is it choppy? Sure. But I'm willing to bet that desk is even thinner than it was when I was there. Asking someone to write four grafs of pretty words between sources when they have 30 other recaps/news stories on their slate is a bit much. But every side of that story is in there. Would you rather ESPN NOT have included the NYT stuff? They have their people's stuff (which isn't just Gottlieb, BTW, but several of their people) in there, along with the other side of the deal. It's called reporting all sides of the deal.

But yes, they lead with what they have, because it's theirs. I honestly am not sure what you're trying to say.


EDIT: Also, the headline is that A&M INTENDS to join the SEC. Not that they will, or that the SEC will invite them. I intend to win the lottery tonight. Not sure it will happen. But between Gottlieb's source, the NYT saying there will be a conference call and Katz's point about the Big 12 meeting, I'm not sure the beef.

 

To be fair, Nick Saban also wasn't going to be the Alabama coach.

 

Thanks. I'd say this: ESPN needed to hold that initial information from Gottlieb. Not even run with it. Get more confirmation. Or, if it had no control over Gottlieb's blowing his wad, it needed to remove that reporting, put the real reporters on it, and write a real story.

At 9:15 a.m EST - early as hell on a news cycle like this, so 8:15 A&M time - Gottlieb tweets this:

<i>High ranking source at Texas A&M confirms, going to SEC.Clemson,FSU,Missouri likely to join.</i>

then at 10:54 EST

<i>Again other 3 teams are all per A&M source-not sources from those schools- But A&M is going per source</i>

then at 12:15 EST

<i>To re-state-A&M source said that Mizzou,FSU,Clemson likely to be first discussed & in his opinion likely adds-SEC will not stand at 13-</i>

You know as well as I do how that the tenor of those tweets changed. The first one is patently (but probably not intentionally) misleading. Who is some source at Texas A&M to predict the SEC's expansion plans and other schools likelihood to join? There isn't a soul there who could possibly be more authoritative on that subject than someone from the SEC. And you'd think that, I dunno, you'd pay a courtesy call to the schools that the A&M source threw under the bus, wouldn't you? That you'd sit on the story for two hours to do that. But Gottlieb's not a reporter. He's some guy who knows somebody who got a hair up his rear end to call Gottlieb or respond to a call.

Now - what you may know better than I is what an ESPN desk looks like on Saturday morning at 8:15. I assume there's somebody present. Does that somebody have any clue that Gottlieb is tweeting some bombshell about Clemson, FSU and Mizzou joining the SEC? Does that person have authority to say "Hey, Doug, let's pump the brakes here?" or "Uh, did you call anybody else?"

And once somebody with authority got ahold of this story - which must have been around the time Gottlieb started clarifying his tweets - Thamel's story wiped the floor with Gottlieb. And since then, Gottlieb's reporting has been viciously rebutted elsewhere. And for good reason: It's entirely possible the "high-ranking A&M source" was speculating. In fact, it seems likely. Instead of junking the Gottlieb stuff, tho, and going after a story that rivaled Thamel's ESPN just filched Thamel's story, and pretended the real lede was Gottlieb's 48-hour-old reporting about A&M's "intentions."

The original critique is actually rather valid after it's all said and done.

Originally, Gottlieb theoretically had a scoop: That A&M was gone, and the SEC was expanding to 16 teams. The latter half of the sentence justifies the first half, see: <i>We know A&M is going to the SEC because the SEC already has the other ducks in a row.</i> But once Gottlieb's tweet was reduced to: "Oh, some A&M guy told me those schools were likely to be looked at first because the SEC wouldn't have an odd number of teams," it became a bullshit story. It became common sense.

What's galling is that someone at ESPN insists on holding on to Gottlieb's original reporting, despite it getting beaten like a rag doll all day.

 

14 months ago, many were reporting that the Big 12 was dead, that Texas and others were joining the Pac-10.

Like Yogi said, it ain't over until it's over. And this isn't a STORY until the A&M president is standing at a microphone with Mike Slive and they're talking about how great it is that A&M is joining the SEC.

The "reporting" on stories like this laughable. It reminds me of the speculation on a high school recruit or whether a player is leaving college early for the pros. Nothing is final until the kid enrolls at a college or the kid gets drafted.

 

Like I said on the other thread, I'm not sure why anyone would buy into Gottlieb as a trusted news source anyway.

 

In full disclosure, I didn't see this story until my first post on this thread. I was offline from about 2:30 ET this morning until I logged on for work at 1 p.m., and I was all NASCAR all the time at that point until about 6 p.m. ET. Also full disclosure: I don't really read ESPN.com any more because I really couldn't give less of a shit about most sports any more, now that I don't have to.

So I can't speak to his Tweets, or who saw them, or when. BASED ON WHEN I WAS THERE, which was nearly a year and a half ago, on a morning, there is usually one senior editor and two associate editors working. Probably one that came in at 6, one at 7 and one at 8 or so. That staffing will hold until the night crew starts rolling in. Knowing who used to work Saturdays, I'd say one of them was probably on Twitter.

What you don't understand, and I didn't before I got there, was how things that appear on ESPN.com are not always up to the ESPN.com desk. Gottlieb is a TV guy. Therefore, his story/whatever would have gone through the TV desk. When there were conflicts on stories, or questions about veracity, we went to them. Never the other way around. TV runs that shit, and if you think differently, you're sorely mistaken.

So let's say Gottlieb calls the TV desk, says "this is what I've got, I'm sending it to you, then I'm tweeting it." Well, TV MIGHT have told the .com desk. It might not. Well suddenly it's on the ticker, and it's on SportsCenter, and it's on ESPNews. So at that point, the .com desk is kind of behind the 8 ball, so to speak. They're e-mailing their own guys, trying to shake something loose, but once it's on TV, it's out there. And not having it on the site isn't really an option, or you guys would have been just as much up in arms.

So those deskers took two sentences from Tweets plus whatever they got from the TV desk, reached out to Schad and Katz and god knows who else, looked around the wires, and tried their goddamndest to put together the most balanced story they could. I've been in those shoes, though never on a story quite this big. You're trying to cover ALL angles since you don't know the sourcing on Gottlieb's stuff.

Is the story perfect? Hell no. And the editors who busted their ass to try to make it so would agree. But it's the best damn chicken salad they could make out of what they were given.

 

The public is freaking out ... because a college might play in a different conference?

Freaking out? Really?

 

Texas A&M is tending on Twitter in Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville and Orlando. Somebody is taking it pretty seriously.

 

Thanks for the background. It's useful.

I wonder why ESPN's TV folks thought that was an OK scoop to run. Gottlieb's gonna have to answer for it Monday on his show. Maybe they're just that...whatever.