PHONE'S RINGING -- IT'S URBAN ON THE LINE
•Football Schedule•Basketball Schedule•Forum•About•ContactIt remains absolutely staggering that ESPN analysts can marvel over Alabama's depth and ability to 'replace one great player with another year in and year out' without even once hinting at the issue of oversigning.
The depth and breadth of this hypocrisy and conflict of interest is enough to make me nauseous.
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Conflict of interest? Is Lee Corso Nick Saban's Great Grandfather or something? I can't hate on teams with great talent that reloadevery year. That will be us in the near future my friend. Go Bucks!
Perhaps you don't understand the concept of oversigning?
In case I'm right: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203716204577016110526669958.html
That still isn't a conflict of interest
Conflict of interest in terms of ESPN being in bed with the $EC on their future network and the huge contract they signed.
Promoting the subjects that pay your paycheck isn't a conflict of interest.
Indeed, but the issues arise when you are known as a "news network", as well as an event promoter. Being heavily invested in the prime subjects that you're reporting on makes unbiased reporting a fool's errand.
Most of our complaints of "conflict of interest" are overreaction to what we perceive, but the real evil is that it obfuscates clear conflicts of ESPN's "journalistic" interest like the Longhorn Network, who's contract stipulates that they can drop ESPN's coverage if they report on their program too negatively (summarization).
Ok, I suppose that fulfills some loosely ambiguous and abstract definition of "conflict of interest", outside the parameters of it's actual context, but when we're actually applying it to normative business practices, the situation isn't a conflict of interest.
I do see you're point, but I suppose I was being less semantically lenient.
Just perusing the interwebs (Wikipedia) yielded this definition:
This can apply just as much to ESPN's coverage of Ohio State (which I don't believe to be negatively biased) that it does to the SEC. Many choose to dwell on the SEC thing because it's salient in today's marketplace, but the fact that ESPN promotes and broadcasts (and is therefore invested in the ratings said teams/events generate) the same subjects that they're responsible for broadcasting news on easily fulfills the above definition. The bottom line is that the time they devote and the objectivity with which they report on events are directly correlated to what their network is promoting--which is my beef with a lot of news coverage (across non-sports markets, as well) in this country as a whole.
*EDIT: Just saw your last line. I suppose that, as you said, we're debating what the phrase entails.
yeah but there still aren't any actual obligations for ESPN, or any news organization to be completely objective. Thus, ESPN, a subsidiary of a corporation, is expected to strive towards profitability, rather than objectivity.
It's not the same as say, medical research in which the researchers hold Big Pharma stock.
True enough, there are no obligations for any news media to be objective (as truly unbiased news is almost completely impossible to produce); I was remarking upon the conflict with their (admittedly abitrary) "responsibilities" as a news producer, which social and cultural norms desire to strive toward objectivity.
Your point is absolutely correct, in that as a buisiness, they also must strive for profit. Ironically, that perfectly articulates my aforementioned issue with American news media as a whole, and especially ESPN; with profit comes bias--attained in the pursuit of maximizing the former at the expense of the latter.
Right, and to recognize it as an inherency is to accept it as part of daily life and to not constantly complain about it, as often occurs on this site, as if ESPN is somehow obligated to represent our interests.
Unfortunately to take away the profit-seeking side of the news would be to also take away the efficacy, and the opposite extreme would have opposite results. There really is no winning, more like accepting what exists.
Yuuuuuup. But as long as the disparity exists (read: Ohio State isn't treated like the SEC's elite), we'll call foul play.
Personally, I think we should all embrace the hate. I like the fact that--despite a lot of the national media pissing on us last year--we're strong as ever. I hope we keep getting "slighted" by talking heads, because I just find it funnier when we pwn the teams they think are better than us.
There's too much good surrounding our program now to get hung up on what pundits think. Quite frankly, I think the discourse on this site is far more intelligent and insightful than what the (villified) talking heads have to say; this conversation is a prime example.
I agree, but for every one of these conversations there are 10 that are "ESPN hates us OMG Mark May OMG I don't understand" and everything sort of just devolves from there. As arguably the largest fanbase in college football, we're inherently going to pick up the counterparts of what some refer to as "Wal-Mart Wolverines" and I think this site does a good job sorting through everything, but it still doesn't feel good to see it when it's there.
I agree with Hodge. To me, the longhorn network to ESPN is the equivalent of the New York Times giving political donations to a candidate. Obviously, there are differences, but I think that is the most egregious alck of journalistic integrity from ESPN. The financial incentives are certainly there to promote the SEC, but they're not as much of a factor as we all think. Basically, I think ESPN is an awful example of a news organization, but that that is a seperate issue from their touting of the SEC.
Doesnt bother me, keep the Longhorns where they are, recruiting top 5 every year and finishing outside the top 25 with the coach that owes Vince Young his paycheck for the last 7 years. Good job ESPin, keep hyping them up. I hope Mack Brown stays at Texas for 10 more years. Lets be honest, if you cant expect a news channel to be unbiased, why would you expect the largest sports network to be? As long as you are intelligent enough to know the slant it shouldnt matter or bother you.
EXACTLY.
Take a look at how big Texas A&M class is and you don't hear anything about it. It's never going to stop unless the NCAA steps is and until then it will be ignored by ESPN.
35 total in the class... Some schools don't even have that in 2 years...
They actually didn't oversign. They just backcounted their early enrollees to last years class.
Oversigning has less to do with violating any one-year limit (whether 25 or 28) and how you count those. Oversigning has more to do with the 85 current scholarship players a team has at the end of one season, how they add x number of players through HS recruiting, and how they thus get back down to 85 before the next season starts.
We've done this before too...just last year.
The difference is that in the B1G you can only go over by 3 players and only with written consent from the league. The consent is contingent on facts that show that you will be down to 85 through a normal circumstance such as an injury that isn't yet public, or a transfer that is pending the finish of the school year.
The SEC has no such rule.
There are 2 (possibly more) sets of rules that clearly favor SEC teams.
I agree that over signing should be a bigger issue than it is. Certain teams, such as Alabama, are able to take more risks on players and don't have to worry if they don't pan out because they sign so many others that will. Still, you have to respect their coaches for how much talent they send to the pros every year.
Whether we like the practice or not it's not against any rules so why would ESPN mention it? It's irrelevent because it's a perfectly acceptable practice. I'm not going partake in a huge debate about the topic, but the bottom line is, it's allowed, they do it and we don't. It just sounds like sour grapes every time people complain about it to me.
When Delaney and commissioners from other conferences who don't oversign join together and put pressure on the NCAA to outlaw the practice then I'll get more excited about it, until then it's just not something I can get riled up about.
I agree with BTALBERT25 it is not agianst the rules and honestly we are over signing this year if we get to that 25 commit mark like Alex and the insiders say we are going to do.
I see what you are saying but if you compare the oversigning practice to anything else that allows you to discard what you don't want anymore and keep what makes your lot look more appealing then I hardly call that sour grapes. If it were all about kids choosing to go elsewhere because of the depth chart then I wouldn't pay as close attention. When you have more medical redshirts or medical hardships than almost any other team in Div 1 then you are deserving of the scrutiny. I see your point and understand its not illegal. Things don't have to be illegal to be wrong. I hope we don't operate like that and I hope change occurs and loopholes close.
I agree 100%. We arent allowed to claim the higher road of self imposed conference regulations and then bitch about the conferences who dont in the same breath. You are either proud of your ability to accomplish the same results with more difficult conditions or you need to adopt the same practices and quit crying.
It IS against the rules, actually. NCAA bylaws outlaw the practice but schools have found a way around it through the use of Medical Hardships and other ways to shuffle unwanted players off the roster.
So if they find away around it without breaking the rules, its not breaking the rules. If Alabama was breaking the rules the NCAA would be all over it.
Numerous examples in the last 5 years with major rules violations that the NCAA doesn't investigate. They pick and choose who they punish.
There are also teams who routinely oversign and their teams are freakin terrible every year, but no one talks about those, it's only an issue when teams who oversign win the national championship. They've always oversigned and no one cared about it when the B1G was succeeding. I know now everyone is supposedly morally opposed to it, but I have a feeling the PAC or B1G were dominating college football no one would give a damn about oversigning and there would be no oversigning.com and all that. It's only an issue because LSU and Bama are good most years.
But there are 2 sets of rules. If the B1G could oversign, OSU might do it and would be just as dominant as those SEC teams. Of course the better teams are going to be better, when they oversign it helps them more than teams like Ole Miss, just like it would help OSU more than Purdue.
Here's hoping that Urban can figure out a way to compete without these shady practices.
I'm against some of the practices of oversigning. Miles basically kicking a kid out of the dorms the night before school started was pretty horrible, but most of the time it's just built in attrition. They'll take a chance on someone like Foster or Gibson before his grades are in order and many times they won't qualify academically. I don't see any problem with having that flexibility. Urban is basically doing the same thing, he'll sign 25 and hope for attrition to open up those scholarships.
yes.
Our Heisman Trophy winning QB (Troy Smith) was suspended games for taking money -
Our Big 10 freshman of the year running back (Maurice Clarett) was declared ineligible
We are currently under NCAA probation and scholarship reductions.
Love the Buckeyes, but we should worry about ourselves first.
You are spot on brother.
What's even more surprising is that these scenarios seem to only happen at non-SEC schools... USC, tOSU, Oregon, Miami, to an extent PSU. I remember a while back where S Carolina athletes were blatantly being given handouts and it completely seems like the NCAA just turned their backs all "nothing to see here" kind of deal. /end rant. Smh
edit: in the end it just totally seems and feels like they (the SEC) are playing by a completely different set of rules.
theDuke
I'll ask it, what is the problem? Sabin literally warns every recruit it might happen. They take that risk by going to a school that does it. Don't want that risk go to different school. I don't like the practice personally, but it's well known who does it and who doesn't.
Actually what A&M is doing this year is perfectly legal. Look at their previous class(they "undersigned with 19) and you'll see they have more than enough room for this class with early enrollees and graduating seniors. I don't agree with the concept of over signing but that is not the case here.
Where do they have the room. I don't care so much about the per year signings, but tell me how many players A&M currently has on scholarship (I assume it's in the ballpark of the 85 scholarship limit), then subtract the number running out of eligibility and the number that are going pro.
Assume they have 85, do they have 20 seniors graduating and 15 underclassmen going pro? If not, then someone is losing a scholarship.
There was a good Article from back in the summer that broke down A&M's situation. They were saying back then because of undersigning last year and early enrollees, plus attrition 31 or 32 was likely, it's conceivable that since then they've had more attrition.
One of the best debates I've read on 11w without someone going stupid with a stfu comment.
Well done gentlemen.
Nothing like dancing on the field in 02...
Haha we are doing our best pal. We are all civil Buckeye gentlemen here.
It's on the kids going to the school as much as the school. The coach tells them, hey you have an offer here, on the table, come and play here, but I can't guarentee you'll be here in the fall when we start the season. If a kid can hear that, and still feel good about signing his LOI, then it's on him just as much as the coach.
Just a life long Buckeye fan wanting to talk to other lifelong Buckeye fans. Our honor defend, we will fight to the end for OOO HIIII OOOOOO!
Agreed.
You think coaches actually say that to the recruits? There is no way any recruit has ever heard those words (not even preferred walkons). Secondly it usually isn't the incoming recruits that get screwed it's the ones that have been there for a year or 2 and haven't "progressed" as much. Now I will agree that if I were a prospect I would take that into consideration, but when you believe that you are the best in the world, you also aren't thinking it would happen to you.
Sabah just said it for the world to hear.
According to the Alabama Athletics website, they have 116 players on their roster. 31 is an enormous amount of non-schollies if indeed 85 is the limit.
http://www.rolltide.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/alab-m-footbl-mtt.html
Sorry, I just don't get the complaining about oversigning. It seems like practically an outright admission that players would rather take their chances with Alabama's depth chart than go anywhere else, including OSU. That seems like a problem with everyone else, not with Alabama.
Look, I'm not advocating a race to the bottom in terms of treating football players as commodities. But let's be realistic - this practice is just one in a LONG list of ways college football players are being used. For the value they bring to the universities for which they play, their scholarship is a trinket. Oh, and it's not like they can make very good use of that scholarship either. Cardale Jones' tweet may have been impolitic, but it was the God's honest truth. I'm all for fixing the ethical problems in CFB, preferably without turning all of CFB into Harvard-Yale, but as long as the myth of the student athlete, at least in football, persists, the ethical problems will persist as well.
Until then, I'd like to see OSU's coaching staff do a good enough job of coaching and selling the program to recruits to beat the best of the SEC on the field.
Scholarships are year to year. Some folks forget this. It's just rare that a coach will clean house to fit some new blood in the locker room. It happens. Maybe that's why most people think Saban is an arrogant POS??
But that doesn't go with the spirit of the scholarship - And a lot of schools have been making formal commitments that scholarships are for 4 years, not just 1.
I still think ND had too many days off. You cannot face that type of talent with so many days off.. It happened to us in 06, it happened to them tonight.. God I hate the SEC!!!!
Hey, it makes our 41-14 loss in '07 look not so bad.
for me it's the medical hardships that Saban is using that pisses me off, in 10 years Tressell used it 4 times...In 4 years at bama Saban used it 12 times, I guess players must break down quicker at bama then anywhere else. I think an independant NCAA physician should be appointed in passing out these medical hardships so that coaches are not forcing kids out of football for their own Self-sErving-Candyasses
If this is, in fact, a story for ESPN then it's a story for Tom Luginbill and I just don't see it coming. Johnnyfootballmania and Kevin Sumlin have made A&M a sexy name again with recruits, so much so that a recent decommit is now being pursued by Texas; lone star heads are spinning. Also, it's improved. I think if you look in a month at class sizes, most SEC schools will be around or under 25 kids, with Georgia and A&M being the outliers. With that said, when this year's class is settled, the Aggies will have looked to have signed around 55-58 kids in two years, even with last year's small class, which of course would be too many for any two-year span, regardless of the rationale. This should raise eyebrows. Whether it deserves a story or not, I don't know.
Are you surprised that they are fighting fire with fire after joining the SEC? If you were incharge would you lay down and take it with a preacher mentality or adapt to the environment and employ the neutral practices required to be successful? C'MON MAN!
If oversigning were banned across the board the unethical coaches would still find shady ways around it by grayshirting or abusing the preferred walk-on or whatever method they use to skirt the recruiting cap. You'll never see a story about oversigning on "Outside the Lines" because it would shed the SEC in a negative light and that just cannot happen. That is where the ESPN bias becomes part of the problem. There is a definite fundamental ethical injustice going on with oversigning and the only news outlet with the power to help change it brushes it under the rug. One could say their willing ignorance causes the problem in the first place. Maybe ESPN/Disney is doing it to create a dynasty/villain to boost ratings. People will tune in to see someone try to take down the mighty SEC, a conference it helped build. Seems like basic manipulation to me.
"Sherman ran an option play right through the south" - Greatest.Civil.War.Analogy.Ever
In fairness, "Outside The Lines" has run a story on this.
Why doesn't BTN just run a program on how the B1G doesnt practice this, and looks out for the well being of our athletes to counter espn?
Dustin Fox was our leading tackler as a corner.... because his guy always caught the ball.
they might want to throw in the bit where B1G schollys are 4 year commitments from the school too. pretty sure that is not the case in the SEC. They basically have a tryout every year except for real studs.
theDuke
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:5935634
Well-stated, OP.
If there is an advantage for Alabama to oversign and pare down its roster (through medical hardships or whatever), this most certainly does NOT benefit the athlete's health or their attempt at playing time. So, even if it's legal by the SEC's rules, how is it that Alabama is able to keep recruiting these athletes to come to Alabama and risk life and limb (again, Saban's overuse of the medical hardship scholarship), and subsequently your opportunity to play football.
It seems counterintuitive to me that they're able to sign top athletes to the place where the deck is stacked against them more than anywhere else. How are they doing it?
Kids in the southeast want to play for Saban. Why did Landon Collins go against his mothers will and go to Alabama. Because he knows Saban is a better coach than Les Miles, and Saban would be his position coach, and help him be NFL ready. I worry about us not getting Vonn Bell for this reason. Kids want to play in elite competition. If you were trying to become a professional who would you rather play against??? Iowa, wisconsin, PSU, MSU or georgia, tenn, aub, georgia??? I hate the SEC, but even kids that aren't quite good enough to play for Alabama would rather go to another SEC school to compete against Alabama/LSU/Florida to get them pro ready.
I've been saying for years that Miami and FSU are to blame for SEC dominance. When those 2 schools started to fall apart, it made the SEC what it is recruiting wise. Also Virginia Tech being in a talent loaded state and not doing more doesnt help. It all comes down to coaching in the end. The SEC pays more, so they have better coaches from top to bottom.
Dustin Fox was our leading tackler as a corner.... because his guy always caught the ball.
Well considering we have had more starts in the NFL than any other university in the country over the last 10-15 years (don't remember exact time frame), I would say that our players do just fine playing against the lowly B1G.
FSU played in the weak ACC and Miami played in the weaker Big East. Their downfall started when they started to play in the same conference. That and some team from Ohio who beat the unbeatable in the 2002 NC game. And..... Bobby got old and UM was always looking for another NC coach killed them. The SEC is dominant because its teams geographically sit in-between Texas and Florida with Georgia included. Thats 3 of the top 5 talent producing states in high school football. Its not a riddle, its not a secret and its not a mystery.
The other point about SEC dominance is that maybe we created this. I think up until BTN was formed the playing field between conferences seemed pretty level.
Dustin Fox was our leading tackler as a corner.... because his guy always caught the ball.
No. You said it yourself in response to my comment, it's the coaches. The SEC is shelling out top dollar to get the best position coaches and coordinators that they can. They are paying practically NFL money at the mid-tier level, and the rest of the conferences are not following suit. But time after time, you see that a large number of these coaches got their training at B1G schools. They just aren't getting retained or hired on at places like Purdue or Illinois because Purdue and Illinois are paying their coaches what Texas high schools pay their coaches.
They arent only leaving for more money. Its less regulatory guidance mandates and a more fertile recruiting ground. So, I can make more money, have to travel less to recruit with more options and I dont have to follow as many rules? Yeah, Ill take that job.! Thats going to work out for everyone but BUTLIMME at Arky who is going to feel the pinch that far west sandwiched by Bama, LSU, A&M and the BIG12.
Some needs to make a shirt "mere buckeyes"
Sounds perfect for Mariotti
theDuke