meta

I Guess This Is Goodbye

By Anonymous Coward — June 7th, 2010 at 12:03 PM — 1 comment
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MSC shuts down, but only so Sean can run the Detroit SB Nation site.

Link: 
I Guess This Is Goodbye

I Have A Very Professional Reason This Time

By Brian — June 4th, 2010 at 10:26 AM — 8 comments
Filed under:

I am out today, though Tim will drop a post or two in my absence and that Mathlete Diary will hit the front page if you're too lazy to click through. I have a Very Serious Professional Reason for this: I will be at Blogs With Balls in Chicago this weekend. There are tickets; if you are interested in getting a beer your best bet is crashing one of the official parties, which I do not endorse at all and shame you for even thinking of.

Via the miracle of technology, this is going to be streamed live(!) by Justin TV, including my panel, which is the first after lunch and will probably go on at like 1 or 1:30 or something. Orson is moderating, so it will be alcoholically entertaining. I cannot vouch for the other panels' sheer quantity of drunken magnificence, but Orson brings the wood.

Our panel is entitled "Democratizing Sports Media: How Blogging Players, Fans & Leagues Are Changing the Game," but these things tend to wander a bit from the chosen topic and various other things will probably pop up. I plan on pimping the Mathlete, Misopogon, MCalibur, Jamiemac, Six Zero, Tom, FA, Tim, and others as an example of how a popular blog sits on top of this vast community that can do amazing things if given space in which their effort can be appreciated.

As long as we're meta-ing it up in here, here's my Ignite talk from earlier in the year (click the first bookmark to go directly to my five minutes):

And here's this article by the Stack Overflow guy about what motivates people, how money isn't always helpful, and what makes communities go. If your model is hoping people do things for small amounts of money you're probably not going to be very successful and if you are it will be depressing. If your model is organizing it such that people will do things for free, you could be very successful and it will probably be pretty nice. The whole reason this site moved to Drupal is that I would get emails on a regular basis saying "hey here's my new blog!" and they'd post a couple times and then they'd go dead because it's hard out there for a blog. So: put 'em around here and you'll probably get a couple thousand views and a couple dozen comments and you'll be motivated to continue. Along the way we might get a definitive accounting of how much attrition Michigan has suffered relative to its peers or a post on fourth downs that gets linked a dozen places.

My plan for the site has been focused on making it as convenient, attractive, and easy to use as possible*—so no pagination, full feeds, content in and pipe that will take it, jumps only when they're warranted by a desire to cut down on clutter, increasingly high hurdles to clear for user-generated content, post-Illinois caterwauling lockdown. Doing so has increased the audience to the point where "Democratizing" sports media means that this place sits on top of grass roots instead of being a single shoot.

/end harangue

I'm back Monday.

*(With the single exception of the ads that provide enough revenue for the thing to be a job, which is kind of a requirement.)

User-Curated MGoHallOfFame

By Brian — May 19th, 2010 at 12:06 PM — 0 comments
Filed under:

A Message to You, Rudy

Stop your messing around (ah-ah-ah)
Better think of your future (ah-ah-ah)
Time you straighten right out (ah-ah-ah)
Creating problems in town (ah-ah-ah)

Rudy
A message to you, Rudy
A message to you

- The Specials, "A Message to You, Rudy"

Here are some nice guidelines to keep you on the straight and narrow and avoid any problems in this here virtual town:

Upon Further Review:

UFR FAQ. Click the opponent's name for Brian's game column.

2012
Bowl Game Offense Defense
THE Kent State Bobhawks Offense Defense
Iowa Offense Defense
Northwestern Offense Defense
Minnesota Offense Defense
Nebraska Offense Defense
Michigan State Offense Defense
Illinois Offense Defense
Purdue Offense Defense
Notre Dame Offense Defense
UMass Offense Defense
Air Force Offense Defense
Alabama Offense Defense

 

2011
Sugar Bowl n/a n/a
Golden Bonobos Offense Defense
Nebraska Offense Defense
Illinois Offense Defense
Iowa Offense Defense
Purdue Offense Defense
Michigan State Offense Defense
Northwestern Offense Defense
Minnesota Offense Defense
San Diego St Offense Defense
Eastern Mich. Offense Defense
Notre Dame Offense Defense
Western Mich. Offense Defense

 

2010

Wisconsin

Offense

Bloody Murder

  

Purdue

Offense

Defense

  

Illinois

Offense

Defense

  

Penn State

Offense

Defense

  

Iowa

Offense

Defense

Errata

Michigan State

Offense

Defense

  

Indiana

Offense

Defense

Errata

Bowling Green

Offense

Defense

  

UMass

Offense

Defense

  

Notre Dame

Offense

Defense

Errata

Connecticut

Offense

Defense

Errata

 

2009

Ohio State

Offense by stubob

Wisconsin

Offense

Defense

  

Purdue

Offense

Defense

  

Illinois

Offense

Defense

  

Penn State

Offense

Defense

  

Delaware St.

Offense

Defense

  

Iowa

Offense

Defense

  

Michigan State

Offense

Defense

  

Indiana

Offense

Defense

  

Eastern Mich.

Offense

Defense

  

Notre Dame

Offense

Defense

Addenda

Western Mich.

Offense

Defense

  

 

2008

Ohio State

WLA's UFR parody

Northwestern

Offense

Defense

Minnesota

Offense

Defense

Purdue

Offense

Defense

Michigan State

Offense

Defense

Penn State

Offense

Defense

Toledo

Offense

Defense

Illinois

Offense

Defense

Wisconsin

Offense

Defense

Notre Dame

Offense

Defense

Miami (NTM)

Offense

Defense

Utah

Offense

Defense

 

2007 (WVU)

Rutgers

Offense

 

2007

Florida (Citrus)

Offense

Defense

  

Ohio State

Offense

Defense

In 1k Words

Wisconsin

Offense

Defense

  

Michigan State

Offense

Defense

  

Minnesota

Offense

Defense

  

Illinois

Offense

Defense

  

Purdue

Offense

Defense

  

Eastern Mich.

Offense

Defense

  

Northwestern

Offense

Defense

  

Penn State

Offense

Defense

  

Notre Dame

Offense

Defense

Yackety-Sax II

Oregon

Offense

Defense

  

The Horror

Offense

Defense

Kittens

2005-06 is a Work in Progress. For the time being: http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/upon-further-review-archive.html

 

2006

USC (Rose)

Offense

Defense

Ohio State

Offense

Defense

Indiana

Offense

Defense

Ball State

Offense

Defense

Northwestern

Offense

Defense

Iowa

Offense

Defense

Penn State

Offense

Defense

Michigan State

Offense

Defense

Minnesota

Offense

Defense

Wisconsin

Offense

Defense

Notre Dame

Offense

Defense

Central Mich.

Offense

Defense

Vanderbilt

Offense

Defense

 

2005

Nebraska (Alamo)

Offense

Defense

Ohio State

Offense

Defense

Indiana

Offense

Not charted, because somewhere out there is somebody who desperately wants to root for Indiana so this would be cruel.

Northwestern

Offense

Defense

Iowa

Offense

Defense

Penn State

Offense

Defense

Minnesota

Offense

Defense

Michigan State

Offense

Defense

Wisconsin

Offense

Defense

Eastern Mich.

Offense

Defense

Notre Dame

Offense

Defense

Northern Illinois

Offense

Defense

 

 

Brian's Songs

The 2000s: Of The Decade

MGoProfiles by Six Zero (and of Six Zero )

 

Front Page Gems Not Penned by Brian (FPGNPBB)

Reason and the Statue of Liberty -- BiSB man crushes hard for Trey Burke... and who can blame him?

 

 

Humor

Followed by the first user-submitted link. [citation needed]
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/members-only

Six Zero's Wife Day opus

Meet the (Korean) Parents...and Grandparents...and Sister (aka, the CRex saga)

The greatest video posted, ever.

Mechanized Recruiting:

Football Analysis

Hello Again, Old 4-3:

Larsonlo's Intro to the 3-3-5 Defense:

Misopogon's Decimated Defense series:

Hennegraphs:

The Mathlete:

MCalibur:

Space Coyote's Fundamentals of Football:

 

 

MGoBlog Introspection

Coach Schiano:

An Ode to Michigan 

The Most

God Awful

The Great Posbang of Aug 18, 2010

Meltdowns

Big house 500s string of rants on the Red Wings.

Alter Egos EXPOSED!!!

McFarlin

The biggest assclown in the history of MGoBlog deserves his own section.  If your thread is listed here and you're not McFarlin, only you know it for sure, because holy cow, you sure do a great McFarlin impression.

The Annals of MGoBlog

Tacopants earns a spot here.  Jonesing for a recent version.

Photoshop/MS Paint

Epic GIFs

MGoBlogerati Demographics

Ann Arbor is Quite a City and it Has an Awesome College Football Stadium

Stadium and things to do

Food

100+ +1's

1 +1000000's

formerlyanonymous:  Formerly's Football Inferno

'Nard Wars: Episode IV - A New Hoke

MGoOrigins

"Very telling"

Epic Videos

Unverified Voracity Goes Eeee Once More

By Brian — April 5th, 2010 at 11:50 AM — 24 comments
Filed under:

More meta UFR stuff. Biological fun fact: because of Chris Chelios, Mike Comrie, and my loose affiliation with the Wings due to a childhood spent in then hockey-free Colorado, I migrated my NHL fandom to the Edmonton Oilers a while back. How's that working out? Just fantastic, thanks.

One of the compensations of following the sort of team that would sign 70-year-old Nikolai Khabibulin to a four-year deal without giving him a physical is that the blogging community around the team is spectacularly good. I've read Lowetide and MC79 for years and have just stumbled on the SBNation Oilers blog. It has a post called "Groupthink, Confirmation Bias, Hockey Fans And Microstats." I put in in the feed reader three times.

Anyway, here's UFR motivation in a nutshell:

In the world of sports fans, confirmation biases abound.  It's impossible for individual fans to record, catalog, process, analyze and interpret the results of hundreds of independent events occurring constantly throughout a game, but it's much easier to pick out those events and sequences of events that support their conclusions.  Any hockey fan that has sat silently shaking their head while the crowd piles on an undeserving player recognizes this immediately.  It's a powerful psychological force, especially in a setting like sports.  Fans can confirm their biases for themselves and immediately fall back on thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of fellow fans to confirm what they already know.

It seems that the Michigan fan's groupthink these days has been pretty accurate. Most of the people who have come in for internet horsewhippings have subsequently fluttered in and out of the lineup (Mike Williams, JT Floyd, Obi Ezeh, Jonas Mouton, Dorrestein/Huyge platoon) or been moved to less terrifying spots for their athleticism (Kovacs). Even so, it's nice to have UFRs around for when it's unjustified, like when Steve Breaston was getting killed for dropping about the same number of balls as any other receiver on the team.

And yes, I will UFR the Ohio State game, probably about a week after spring practice finishes up.

Right, I forgot about the pablum. So Da'Sean Butler suffered an ugly ACL tear in his Final Four game against Duke and then had that uncomfortable moment with Huggins.

butler-huggins

But before that he said a bunch of nice things about Beilein:

"Everybody has to buy in, and you have to get the right people," Butler said, referring to Beilein's offense, which requires discipline and precise shooting. "You've got to get the absolute right people for that system, because if you have even one person that doesn't understand or doesn't care to understand, a cancer on the team of some sort, then it can throw everything off, honestly.

"The system works. That's the best system I've ever been part of in my life as far as just running an offense. It suited me so well. I think everybody kind of gets into, you've got to get all these five-star and whatever recruits, and for him, you just need to find the right players who can obviously make shots, but who will work hard. And if you find that right group, and not like prima donnas, it could be a very good system."

I guess that's nice but I bet the "whole lot of nothing" quote Butler dropped a few days ago resulted in a sharp thwack on the head and a reminder to never say anything that could be construed as not wildly positive. On the other hand, Huggins is still running Beilein's 1-3-1 regularly. That does seem meaningful.

Might be time for another "eeee" tag. Yes, more David Brandon hype ahoy:

“I don’t put a disproportionate amount of emphasis on any one year, but clearly this year was a year we hoped for better and certainly lost a little bit of momentum in terms of our improvement,” Brandon said. “But that doesn’t detract from my belief that going forward we can regain that momentum, and our program is going to get bigger and better and stronger when we get those practice facilities in, and we do some things that will afford us to be able to recruit a little more aggressively. It’s going to help both those programs a lot."

He manages to strike a balance between acknowledging things have been disappointing and offer public support of his coaches in response to the machine-gunned "when can we fire this guy?" questions he appears to field 24/7.

That comes from an article that focuses on the future of the basketball program with a couple of Brandon quotes that give an indication of what the U has planned for Crisler:

“We need wider concourses, we need more restrooms, we need better amenities in terms of food service and service opportunities for our fans,” Brandon said. “We need to re-seat the bowl, think differently about the kind of seating that we use and probably put in some kind of club-seating opportunities to give special experiences to people who are willing to take advantage of those.

“Probably come up with a different game plan as to where we put the media and just how we professionalize that arena.”

Emphasis mine. That sort of talk would be an anethma about Michigan Stadium—though it is basically undergoing the same process—but is welcome in reference to Crisler, which is what you'd get if you took Joe Louis Arena and turned off half the lights. If Brandon can fulfill his goal of having the broadcaster who declared Crisler one of the worst in the country return to eat crow*, Michigan's facilities renovations will be essentially complete. The last thing to do would be another Yost renovation that brought in video boards and some other things.

*(This has to be Bilas, right? I imagine this happened during one of his many defenses of Tommy Amaker.)

This was a Malcolm in the Middle plot. MVictors has detailed Michigan's tumultuous 1909 on his blog and in HTTV, and now we have a postscript thanks to mgouser and extremely unusual person Alaska Hokie. Michigan QB Joy Miller was the Demar Dorsey of his day, except with academic laziness (the classes: he had none) substituting for juvenile robberies. He was eventually booted from the team and ended up cleaning pots for a horrible woman in Alaska. Or something close to that:

QUARTER BACK LOSES HIS MIND

Famous Football Player on the Wolverine Team is Located at Walla Walla Working as Laborer.
HIS MIND IS TOTAL BLANK
Disappeared Months Ago From His Home and All Trace of Him Has Up to the Present Been Lost.

WALLA WALLA, March 19.—James Miller, the famous quarterback of the Michigan team last year, who has been missing from his home for several months, was located in this city yesterday working as a laborer. His mind is a total blank and he is quite unable to recognize his friends. He was elected to the captaincy of the Wolverine team for next season.

The end. It was Washington, but same difference.

Assessing Spartans. Dr. Saturday has struck upon Michigan State in his ongoing series of previews. In doing so he breaks the cardinal law of predicting the Spartans:

Man-for-man, his isn't the most talented offense in the conference, but given the close-to-the-sweatervest approach at Ohio State and widespread inexperience at Penn State, I'd put my money on MSU leading the conference in scoring at a little over 30 points per game. Just like last year, though, part of that will be out of necessity, to overcome the growing pains of a pair of new and/or ineffective cornerbacks, specifically, and a back seven in general that just doesn't have the horses to seriously contend for the conference title or one of the floating BCS slots. Assuming the offensive line holds up, though, the passing game will have a few eye-popping afternoons, and a Gator or Outback Bowl bid likely awaits after a borderline top-25 finish in the neighborhood of 8-4.

That is not within a game or two of .500, which will be its undoing. Spartan .500 gravity is one of the universe's most powerful forces.

Etc.: Devin Gardner is walking around campus in a sling. He's still practicing, though. Canadian hockey writer/broadcaster person Bob McKenzie sent his son to St. Lawrence to play college hockey. The younger McKenzie has just played out his eligibility, causing the elder to post on his experience with college hockey. Browser-crippling version of Inside Michigan Football #3 up.

Take This Survey For The Naked Man

By Brian — December 15th, 2009 at 12:39 PM — 15 comments
Filed under:

Hey. Remember last April Fool's Day when the banner on this site mysteriously changed to this guy?

tobias-hopp

Toby Hopp is the guy who sent that banner in. So you owe him. He's a grad student at SDSU studying user-generated content and he's got a survey for you. You should take it, because it will help him out.

----------------------------


My name is Toby Hopp and I’m a longtime college sports blogger/blog reader. I’m also a graduate communications student at San Diego State University who is interested in studying how and why Internet users generate content online. What precisely, you may be asking, is “user-generated content?” Well, “user-generated content” includes comment sections at the end of news/blog articles, messageboards, diaries, polls, and the like.

To me, one of the great parts of the blogosphere is the interaction it enables between readers. As a community, we’re able to provide feedback and discuss issues in real time. However, the concept of “user-generated content” and its subsequent social applications has not, at this point, been thoroughly studied by communications researchers and is, in my estimation, completely misunderstood by the mass media.

So, if you have 10-15 minutes to spare and support empirical media research (and the social sciences in general), please click the survey link below. Even if you NEVER create/read content on blog or newspaper websites, PLEASE consider taking the survey as your answers are as important to me as the answers supplied by individuals who DO regularly create content. Rest assured that all answers and provided information will be strictly anonymous and kept totally confidential.

Survey Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2

For those of you interested in statistics, all collected information will be scientifically analyzed and utilized to create an inherently unique structural equation model. To that end, I’ll send a report out to each participating blog which details general trends and reader utilization issues of note.

Again, please consider taking this survey (Survey Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2) whether or not you ever create or read “user –generated content” on blogs or newspaper sites. The survey itself will take 10 – 15 minutes and, I promise, will be quite painless. As stated above, research on the topic of “user-generated content” is incredibly sparse and your participation will go a long way in understanding the environmental factors that encourage meaningful intra-community participation. And, of course, you’ll be doing me a great and immeasurable favor.

The survey will be active from Monday, December 14 through Friday, December 18. Please feel free to e-mail me at thopp@mail.sdsu.edu if you have any questions relating to the survey or my over-arching methodology/conceptual framework (obviously, there’s a lot more to the study that can be reasonably described here).

Thank you for your time and please know that your participation really does mean a great deal to me on both a professional and personal level.

Survey Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WSQGPZ2

------------------------------------

Survey!

  


  

    
    




  
Transparency Is Honesty; Nothing Else Is


  

      By Brian — December 7th, 2009 at 1:57 PM
    — 
         23 comments      
    


      
Filed under: 

  
  

    
So your favorite former collegiate head coach, the guy in charge of your favorite team, one of college football's top coaches, and a guy with a meathead haircut all found themselves on the receiving end of various kinds of unfair, incorrect, or nasty-but-deserved media attention. A confusing allegorical play in four mostly unrelated acts:


It's Just A Flesh Wound


Last week on The Sporting Blog I called Bob-Stoops-to-Notre-Dame an "unkillable zombie rumor" after Stoops had to make four progressively more emphatic announcements that he wasn't going to make an unprecedented leap from a program he built into a national power to one that's been no more successful than Purdue over the last 15 years. 


It has now graduated to Black Knight status, though: 


Saturday's edition of the Chicago Sun Times reported that multiple sources told the newspaper on Friday that "Stoops hasn't said 'no' to Notre Dame." 




This was an interesting take on the words "I will be at Oklahoma. Any reporting to the contrary is completely unfounded." Technically, the words "wild elephants could not drag me to South Bend" are not in that statement. That, however, doesn't make it any less definitive. "I will be at Oklahoma." End of story. Unless you're the Sun-Times and you're bound and determined to keep after the dumb rumor you're almost singlehandedly responsible for perpetrating in the mainstream media. 


Bob Stoops on saying no to Notre Dame: 


"For the third, and hopefully final time, let me again state that I will continue to be the coach at Oklahoma. I appreciate the history and tradition of Notre Dame. I also appreciate the history and tradition of Oklahoma, and I have been part of building that tradition here. 


"I work for a wonderful president (David Boren) and athletic director (Joe Castiglione), who have created an incredible work environment at OU. There haven't been any plans for a meeting or negotiations with Notre Dame and there will not be. Any reporting to that fact is completely erroneous. I will not be the next coach at Notre Dame."




This is how plains Indians must have felt after the United States broke yet another treaty with them, right? 


Checking Is For Commies


bielema-nd 


Fake email that started minor Bielema-to-ND meme that would probably still be going on if ND sites hadn't posted the reveal.


All right, lolmsm and all that. But Stoops isn't the only guy batting away meritless rumors about his involvement with Notre Dame:


UW athletic director Barry Alvarez, who's with the team in Hawaii, said Friday morning that he has no knowledge of any interest on Notre Dame's part in speaking with Bielema.


"I haven't heard anything," Alvarez said when reached on his cell phone. "He hasn't said anything to me, and nobody's called me for permission."




Bret Bielema? No offense to a guy coming off a bounce-back year any Michigan fan would kill to have, but NDNation would have a meetup just to kill and eat each other if Bielema became head coach there. And, lo, the faintly plausible rumor was created whole cloth by one guy emailing a disreputable web site that just posts whatever crap someone sends in:


2. Friend composes a very short, but specific email: I used to work in the athletic department at Notre Dame (a lie), and I have heard that Jack Swarbrick is interested in Bret Bielema, the head coach at the University of Wisconsin. This was at 6:56pm last evening. The email is sent from a free gmail account. There is no other email sent from friend, no attempt to "sell" the rumor beyond the initial communication, and nothing else to back up his credibility.


3. Meanwhile, friend has another buddy randomly tweet a few times about the Bielema rumors, and goes to bed.


4. FootballCoachScoop does not reply to the email. FootballCoachScoop does not ask any followup questions. FootballCoachScoop, to friend's knowledge, makes no attempt to verify emailer's bona fides in any way.


5. The next morning, FootballCoachScoop runs the rumor almost verbatim. Friend chuckles and shares the development with a few friends.




This expands, getting picked up by "the Examiner," which is like a Bleacher Report that people haven't figured out is almost always garbage yet, then hit rumor first, accuracy later College Football Talk—an offshoot of Mike Florio's Pro Football Talk—and poor Rittenberg's Big Ten blog before the hoax was widely known. (BGS had actually already posted it.) 


Your blogger has a couple emails in his inbox that might be innocent but look pretty hoax-y declaring that Rich Rodriguez will be fired the Monday after the Ohio State game, by the way. 


This Direct Quote Is Out Of Context


Meanwhile, Charlie Weis ceased speaking to the media in the final days of his regime. I get this. If I was a head coach who knew his head would be on a platter in a matter of weeks, I wouldn't waste my time with a bunch of tedious questions about what went wrong. I might even call a special press event type substance with five hand-picked media members, and I might even go all FootballCoachScoop on tales of Pete Carroll's mysterious grad student affair: 


Q: Is it frustrating to Pete Carroll, for example, portrayed in one way...      


CW: Let me ask you this question: You guys know about things that go on in different places. Was I living with a grad student in Malibu, or was I living with my wife in my house? You could bet that if I were living with a grad student here in South Bend, it would be national news. He's doing it in Malibu and it's not national news. What's the difference? I don't understand. Why is it okay for one guy to do things like that, but for for me, I'm scrutinized when I swear. I'm sorry for swearing; absolve my sins.




At this point I would diverge, though, since attempting to take something off the internet is pointless and once you say stuff it's impossible, and a little dishonest, to try to take it back. Weis said it and he meant it and if it was supposed to be off the record that's only 5% less of a nasty move. He's then put this thing in the heads of five people off the record and set Pete Carroll's Grad Student on the same path as Rich Rodriguez's Impregnated Cheerleader, a zombie meme that lives in dark corners and emerges every time School X has a problem with Coach Y.


This One Really Is Out Of Context


I didn't mention the "Rich Rodriguez doesn't care about black people" moment from the bust in anticipation that a fuller picture of the comments would come out. WTKA's Ira Weintraub mentioned via email that Rodriguez's faux pas was a reference to an earlier speech by a regent. And lo, Dave Birkett provides:


Regent White talked earlier about, uh, it’s really kind of ironic that the New Orleans Saints overcome the hurricane a few years back. And I used to live in New Orleans, coached there for a couple years (at Tulane), and I know how devastated that city (was) and how they overcome and rebuilt their stadium, rebuilt their program from the ground up. And we’ve had a few hurricanes of our own. And we had a big hurricane in August and it kind of hit us like a ton of bricks. But you had 120 young men and a bunch of people on staff say this is not going to tear our program apart. In fact, it’ll do just the opposite, bring us together.




So, yeah, I wish Michigan had a coach that didn't misuse the world "ironic" and am pretty sure at some point in his life Rich Rodriguez has used the word "literal" to emphasize a literally untrue assertion. But Rodriguez is making a nod at one of the regents' Michael Scott impersonation and then riffing on it extemporaneously in a fashion that probably seemed unwise to him as the words were coming out of his mouth. (This has happened to me, plenty.) No one bothered to mention it except one of the two freakin' guys who wrote the piece Rodriguez is referring to, and that guy removed important context that would have taken one sentence to provide. Too good to clarify, I guess. 


As for how much this matters, TSB colleague Andy Hutchins provides the right comparison:


These comments may actually match Nick Saban's penchant for grabbing Pearl Harbor and September 11th as metaphors for tragedy, what with Rodriguez talking about the human cost of Katrina purely in the prism of football, but it's less outrageous than it is ineloquent.




What difference does it make? It makes none.


Conclusion-Type Substance?


I don't really have one. I just had all this media stuff in my open tabs. 


I do think there's some common theme here about partial information being evil: Stoops rumors are utterly baseless but go out of control so much that Stoops has to issue five separate denials of varying strengths, Bielema is momentarily implicated in the ND coaching search and only the hoax reveal keeps him from being hounded further, Weis throws a nasty rumor into the pool that will stick with Carroll forever, and Rodriguez's comments are removed from their context by a guy with a stake in public opinion of Rodriguez. In the one instance where the comments are a full transcript of the words spoken, the speaker's problem is that his comments were not elided from the record and leaked as a whisper campaign.


I guess the thrust is this: I don't believe Weis's retraction for a second because his response to it was to have the offending passage excised from the Rivals transcript instead of demanding that the context be irrefutably provided by one of the guys who was taping the conversation. The evidence is there. Release it. Similarly, Rodriguez's inelegant statement was made to look worse by the omission of information. The Sun-Times failed to clarify just why they thought Bob Stoops was going to be Notre Dame's next head coach at any point; by now they owe the public a detailed explanation of why they kept beating the drum long after any sane organization would have stopped. And Coach Scoop Unsubstantiated Football Site just posts unconfirmed stuff without any attempt to confirm or clarify the origins of the rumors, and doesn't even respond when hoaxed. 


Because they're just "rumors," right? You can term whatever you want a rumor and be free from judgment when that rumor fails to come true. 


My advice to internet publishers is be as honest and transparent as possible, and people will give you the benefit of the doubt as long as you show good judgment over the long haul. This philosophy has been in place at MGoBlog for as long as it's been around. The first bit of news the site ever originated was a report that Morgan Trent had broken his hand and would miss the Minnesota game in 2006, which Rivals snarkily dismissed in premium content, causing me to post a retraction. When several people reiterated that no, seriously, Morgan Trent's hand was broken, I posted the chain of events and provided enough information for readers to judge for themselves with some guidance—I believe me. Morgan Trent's hand was indeed broken, and I've tried to follow that template ever since. That managed to get this site through the coaching search and Sam McGuffie's Cuban Transfer Crisis stronger. I don't think you can say that about the Sun-Times above.


My advice to consumers of information on the internet is to look for this sort of transparency in the things you trust, and look dimly on anyone who would misrepresent information, intentionally or not, and refuse to apologize or clarify when called on it. 

  


  

    
    




	







 






  

  

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