E-mailed 3/31/11
I didn’t walk to my car last night in the rain, I walked to it through freezing rain. I stopped at a gas station and it cost $70 to fill up my car. I got home and realized I still didn’t have a basketball coach. All things that suck but all things that suck infinitely less than dealing with nuclear fall out, escaping genocide, or trying to live through a civil war. In other words, I guess its good to try and keep things in perspective.
Today there are a lot of asshole journalists who sat on the sideline yesterday (not making a call and not reporting) who are asking pretty smug and a lot of people who jumped in, reported, and got things wrong who are eating crow. Basketball links and baseball prediction at the bottom of this e-mail, feel free to skip to them. But first, a commentary on the events of yesterday.
Yesterday was a fascinating day for many reasons. One of which was how the story unfolded and who made what calls when during the day. So for my J-Heads on this list, the anatomy of the making a Call:
I can still remember the day in high school and always will: the day my dad came home from work with the St. Louis paper’s sports page and I found out Joe Torre was fired as Cardinals manager and Todd Zeile was traded to the Cubs for Mike Morgan. Back then news happened once a day…when my dad brought the newspaper into the house.
Now because of Twitter, or “The Tweeter” as one prominent Congresswoman likes to refer to it as, news happens all the time. Before my new job, for me Twitter was only good for following sports commentary during or right after games and procuring essentials during snowmageddon such as a snow shovel, food, and most importantly, booze. I rarely and still rarely tweet myself and when I do, I’m particularly bad at it (boring).
Fast forward to March 23 at 4:58 pm when I Tweet “I’m buying what Painter is selling” and from that moment forward began a quest to try and figure out who was going to be the next Mizzou coach. After I took my new job at Georgetown I started using Twitter differently. I found, if properly managed, Twitter can be a very efficient way to synthesize lots of information. For instance, by following the news sites you normally get your news from you can get all of the important links they post, generally before they post them on their sites. Therefore, no need to click from website to website, you can get all of the important links in one place: on your Twitter feed. With the tragedies in Japan and Lybia news sites would retweet from sources and journalists on the ground (drawback: some of them wouldn’t be in English). You could then start following the direct sources rather than the news sites to get even quicker first hand updates. Even more interesting, you could compare those updates with how the news sites reported the stories and compare the two.
The same principles (only in all English) apply to sports. You can follow all of the major reporters in Missouri and in Indiana and you can also follow all of the blog sites (like Rock M Nation). Finally, if you are neurotic enough you can also start following athletic department staff, facilities staff (who set up for an announcement), faculty who are on intercollegiate committees, major donors, and all the members of the Purdue basketball team who have a Twitter account. Unlike journalistic reporters, I don’t these people and don’t know which ones are reliable sources and which ones are bat-shit crazy. So I have to evaluate the sources. That’s why when former Hall of Fame and past President of the College Basketball Writers Association, now currently an Ass Hat, Dick Weiss, called Painter to Mizzou with SPECIFIC information (7 years, 14 mil)…it seems like it was true. Why would the former Hall of Famer now Ass Hat put that out there if it wasn’t true? Who knows. But lesson learned: have multiple credible sources who each site different sources themselves before making a call.
Fast forward to yesterday. One of the lead journalists at the St. Louis Post Dispatch calls Painter to Mizzou around 11:15 am and bases it on a source claiming that (1) Painter called Alden at 10:45 am, (2) Painter headed to Purdue to tell players, and (3) will be introduced to crowd at Busch Stadium today and then on to Columbia for a presser before Final Four action starts tonight. Fascinating report with very specific details, but no one else jumped on it. Conflicting reports came out saying no decision yet. Then KOMU gets involved sighting a source saying “100% done deal, presser Wednesday night in Columbia.” Could be the same source Post Dispatch used earlier…I didn’t call it. Text messages then come in sighting people on campus saying prep was started for a press conference. Sounds sketchy. Still no call. Finally, leaked e-mails between members of the Intercollegiate Sports Committee (faculty committee) at Mizzou congratulate Alden on finalizing the deal. E-mails in the hands of KOMU. At that point, it’s a new credible source. And I called it. And I was wrong.
The difference between me being wrong and e-mail my friends (biggest consequence = one of you calling me a dumb ass) and a credible news source calling it are rather big. What we won’t know, I think, is what really happened. Alden won’t tell and if Painter’s smart he won’t tell either. They have similar characters. While we don’t know what really happened, I’m rather confident Painter accepted, talked it over with his players, and couldn’t do it. He went with Purdue’s promise to get more money into the basketball program and opted to stay at his alma mater.
So believe what you want. If you are a humanoid type cat-fish or a j-major not doing anything related to journalism, feel free to blow up my cell phone with text messages or my Facebook page with comments about how I got things wrong (neither are or were ever on the this e-mail list). I wasn’t in it to get it right, I was in it to give my friends information who might not…how do I say…currently have the amount of free time I have during the hours of 8 am to 5 pm.
Regardless, I feel bad for the people at the Post Dispatch and KOMU who made a call based on information they had and in the end made the wrong call (regardless of if he changed his mind or not). Life was a lot easier when news happened once a day at 5:00 pm and not every 5 minutes.
Before we get to the basketball links, here are some other tidbits to get you through your day:
(1) Some smart Nebraska fans threatened to kill Dan Bebee. Deets here: http://espn.go.com/blog/big12/post/_/id/27166/tom-osborne-weighs-in-on-beebe-threats
(2) Its opening day!!! My picks:
NL East: Phillies
NL Central: Too close to call. I’d guess Cardinals. I think the Reds will fold. Too old and too many hurt pitchers with unproved track records. For those of you not covering my response to the Pujols contract, I’m now a Reds fan.
NL West: San Francisco
Wild Card: Braves or Rockies, probably Braves.
AL East: Boston
AL Central: White Socks
AL West: Texas
Wild Card: Twins or Yankees; its comes down to the health of Twins hitters versus the ability of the Yankees make-shift starting pitching.
World Series: Phillies vs. Red Sox (and hope a bomb explodes in the stadium)
(3) I quote from Rock M Nation about Missouri fans: “…the fanbase is demoralized (and when the insecure Mizzou fanbase gets demoralized, it gets embarrassed ... and when it gets embarrassed, it gets angry).” Don’t be angry. Its still a good day to be a Tiger. And as one person on the list text messaged me: Third time’s a charm, right?
And now, the basketball links:
Why Painter ultimately brushed off Mizzou and what could have been: http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/jeff-gordon/article_829c4d5e-5b93-11e0-9ac7-00127992bc8b.html
Key paragraph: Jeff Goodman, FoxSports.com: “Painter is a rare breed in the coaching fraternity, valuing toughness and defense over glitz and glamour. He’s a man’s man, a rare guy who actually looks good in black and maize. He's all about three-hour practices, no BS and the mentality that you win games by playing harder than the opposition. Painter is old school. Ultimately, that’s why he’s still at Purdue. Loyalty won. Sure, there are more bells and whistles at Missouri, the place Painter flirted with over the last few days. He could have gotten more money for himself and his assistants — and maybe even had a more realistic opportunity to go to a Final Four — in Columbia. Just imagine Painter coaching guys such as Marcus Denmon, Kim English and Phil Pressey at Missouri. But he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t leave home. Couldn’t leave (returning senior) Robbie Hummel.”
Why the people at CBS Sports are assholes and an explanation why they are saying our job is worse than NC State (which can’t get anyone to agree to go there) and only slightly better than Oklahoma: http://gregg-doyel.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/5881996/28162513
A good overall summary with some new names to add to the list (read this if you want it straight from them and not filtered through me: http://www.rockmnation.com/2011/3/31/2081483/mizzou-basketball-coaching-search-now-what
Key paragraph: You're Mike Alden. You almost pulled a humongous upset in the Matt Painter chase, but since you came up short, the fanbase is demoralized (and when the insecure Mizzou fanbase gets demoralized, it gets embarrassed ... and when it gets embarrassed, it gets angry).
No comments:
Post a Comment