Do Not Pay Attention To The Bleacher Report
I was just going to let this go, but then Dr. Saturday had to go and bring it up:
According to a very plausible though not at all confirmed first draft of Tommy Tuberville's exit from the Plains on Bleacher Report, Rane (rather than the much-loathed busybody Bobby Lowder, who notoriously orchestrated the JetGate scandal of 2003) is also the booster who set the dominoes in motion after the Iron Bowl.
I've seen this post pop up on a message board or two, but on the good Doctor's site? Say it ain't so.
First of all, that kooky conspiracy theory is obviously wrong to anyone who's read the contract. The key passage:
The night Alabama drilled Auburn 36-0, a prominent Auburn booster (not the usual bank-owning one but one who sells pressure-treated wood and wears a yellow hat) made a phone call. This may have been a $5.1 million phone call.
Since he knows most of the SEC coaches on a first-name basis and shoots ads with many of them, he has their personal private phone numbers. So he calls Houston Nutt over in Mississippi and asks what it might take to have Houston change his address again to Auburn.
Supposedly this triggers a "non-interference clause" in Tuberville's contract, puts Auburn on the hook for a lot of money, and precipitates the Jimmy Sexton-engineered firing/hiring double play. Except this theory relies on a rogue booster making an unauthorized phone call to Houston Nutt and the clause in Tuberville's contract reads like so:
Unless notice has been given by Coach to Auburn of his termination of this Agreement, neither the President nor the Athletic Director of Auburn or any person or entity acting at or under their express authority shall discuss or negotiate directly or indirectly Auburn's prospective employment of any other person as Head Football Coach of Auburn without notice to Coach.
IE: unless someone actually in the Auburn athletic department signed off on this call, this clause has not been violated. Rane is a trustee, but he is not the President, AD, or someone working at or under their authority, and certainly not their express authority. The theory is full of crap from the word go.
Which should be no surprise because it's post on the Bleacher Report, where absolutely anyone can post absolutely anything. This feels like a curmudgeonly complaint more suited to an elderly guy wearing a hat that says "press," I know, but I've seen this from time to time on message boards and other blogs: idiot writes something idiotic on the Bleacher Report, someone takes it more seriously than they should under the assumption that whoever posted it is some sort of professional or, you know, writer. (The mere fact that people can't immediately tell the difference between the dreck on the Bleacher Report and your average MSM columnist is perhaps the most damning criticism you can offer of MSM columnists.)
The Bleacher Report is an amorphous shifting population of people, all of whom seem incapable of dressing themselves. This differs from blogs, because Dr. Saturday is Dr. Saturday and EDSBS is EDSBS and MGoBlog is MGoBlog. Blogs build credibility over time. The Bleacher Report gets it from some nice software, I guess.
That doesn't mean anything on it is worth paying attention to. This hot rumor's source is this guy…
Larry lives with his wife, son and Pug [sic] (Baccardi [sic] the Wonder Dog)... [sic] He's a moderator at WWW.rollcrimsontide.com [sic] and a member of the rowdy bunch [sic] at www.crimsontidefans@googlegroups.com [sic], [sic](where the motto is "Wear [sic] a Cup [sic]"). He served several terms as a director in the Red Elephant Club and loves to meet with the Crimson Tide coaches and administrators. His Bama years were from 1976 to 1981 during the back to back National Championship [sic] years!
…who is not only a diehard Alabama fan but one who thinks www.crimsontidefans@googlegroups.com is, like, a coherent thing you can say. And has named his dog "Baccardi [sic] the Wonder Dog." And hasn't even read Tuberville's contract. And got this theory from emails and message boards. Under no circumstances should this man be taken seriously.
With the freedom that comes on a platform where anyone can post anything comes the chore of wading through the crap, of discerning good content from bad. Here's a primary heuristic: ignore the Bleacher Report.
beachbama-
your "lifelong friend in the Auburn administration" should have let you know the man's name is Jimmy RANE, not Raines.
dex-
I agree with your take on B/R.
I don't have much to say about the post in question as I'm not super knowledge-able about SEC football, but as one of the guys who started Bleacher Report and longtime reader and admirer of sports blogs, I feel I have something to add about your take on B/R.
Whenever I hear a blogger deride B/R because 'anyone can post anything so it lacks all credibility', it's as if I'm hearing an echo of a mainstream journalist (ie, Bissinger on Costas) deriding blogs because 'anyone can start a blog so they lack all credibility'.
It's the same argument, and it's a b.s. argument in both cases. There are Bleacher Report writers who are uninteresting, bad writers, and lack any credibility. There are also hordes and hordes of bloggers who are uninteresting, bad writers, and lack any credibility.
On the other hand, just as there are great bloggers/blogs like the ones you have mentioned who have demonstrated a record of great writing and high credibility, there are plenty of Bleacher Report writers with the same qualities.
The "chore of wading through the crap" on Bleacher Report, as you put it, is no different from the chore of wading through the far more infinite crap on the Internet as a whole until discovering great blogs like MGoBlog, EDSBS, Dr. Saturday, etc.
Fortunately, at least on Bleacher Report it's all at one place and our "nice software" serves to help filter all the content on Bleacher Report and surface the best and most interesting posts and writers to the top.
So if you think of Bleacher Report as a microcosm of the blogosphere, except it's all in one place, it's all about sports, and it has it's own filtering mechanisms to surface good stuff, then is the problem really that it's a bad platform that lacks on credibility, or is it just that you haven't spent enough time on the site to get to know it and it's standout contributors as well as you know the blogosphere?
Curious to hear your answer, and I hope it's not a variation on broad and misguided proclamation that journalists have been making about blogs and their lack of credibility for years.
Incidentally, Bissinger will probably be posting something Bleacher Report early next year.
There are tons of shit blogs. Tons. More than you can count. But because a blog is a continuous record of the people writing it, it's easy to look through a few posts and determine if it's trustworthy or not, if so inclined. As Brian says, the EDSBS and Dr. Saturday and MGoBlog's of the world build up credibility through their posting and time.
The Bleacher Report probably does have some good posters. But the fact is, anyone can post there. This doesn't mean we shouldn't read it. It means you have to take everything written there with a grain of salt - is it anymore trustworthy than using Wikipedia as a legitimate source?
The problem is the Bleacher Report has very few standout contributors. Overall, it's a mountain of suck with people like Lisa Horne and the guy we're talking about here.
I could go post an article on my blog that says Lloyd Carr was the Machiavellian mastermind behind the Rodriguez hire, but that he only wanted it to happen because he knew would fail, and that would allow Debord to get the job in three years. I could accuse him of tampering with the Michigan program behind the scenes and deliberately undermining it. It would be completely made up and full of libel. Since my blog is an established non-source of news, in that we have never ever ever reported news or scoops, nobody would take it seriously.
I could post the same thing on the Bleacher Report, write a fake bio claiming I enjoy meeting with various Michigan coaches and administrators, and people might buy it because it looks like I'm a columnist on a reputable site because of the fancy software.
That's my problem with it. That and the teeming masses of absolutely abysmal writers that populate the site.
great and omniscient Grand Poobah of the WLA
I was the author of this story. I heard the rumors and then called an Auburn employee inside the administration who I have been lifelong friends with. He confirmed that Tubbs was to be fired and that the phone call from Raines got him favorable terms and he said in his opinion the rest of the story may be true as well.
Since you don't know me, my contacts or anything, you're blasting of me at B/R is exactly what you accused me of. I guess in your world a fan of one school can't write about another without it being unfair.
This was a great story. That it was written by a bama fan is not the point. I have had DOZENS of Auburn fans write me to thank me for exposing it and two that said they checked for themselves and apparently it was all too true.
So before YOU cast stones, you should have all YOUR facts in order...
Surely Everybody Cheats. SImply amazing howmuch cheating goes on down here.
Maize & Blue...nothing better!