Thoughts on Scout and Rivals...

The "facts" are that you can't believe any online viewer statistics for any Web site/network.

Rivals will show numbers that they're bigger than Scout. Scout will show numbers that they're bigger than Rivals.

When I worked at SportsLine, we used numbers that didn't jibe with ESPN's and vice versa.

They all use different metrics and twist them in their favor.

But back to the Rivals/Scout debate, it really depends on the market. At Florida State, the Rivals site is gargantuan and the Scout site is almost non-existent. At Miami, it's exactly the opposite.

There are good people at some sites and worthless people at others ... just like any industry.

 

9 out of 10 might be a little high. And for the record, how many newspaper people are "journalists." I know several reporters who work at papers from the very small to the very large that are blatent and unabashed homers and would rather cut off their left nut than right anything negative or dig up dirt.

Journalism as a whole has taken a nosedive over the last generation or so.

 

Can whoever started this thread please change it to "Thoughts on Scout"?

Dr. Scout abides.

 

Warchant is the biggest of all Rivals sites. In fact, Rivals paid the owner some $3 million to switch from Scout to Rivals. The people with Warchant are good folk. It would be pointless to have an FSU site for Scout. Conversely, it's pointless for Rivals to have a site that coveres UNC, which is one of the largest in the Scout network.

 

This sums up this entire thread. If people thought reporters were cockroaches before ...

I think it's a matter of being comfortable enough with ourselves to be OK with these guys being called journalists and realize that there's a major difference between a "journalist" and a "good journalist." Just because you work for an established print or online product (like ESPN, SportsLine, FOX) doesn't make you good and just because you work for one of these sites doesn't make you bad, though percentages skew accordingly in each sector.

 

And I remember when some sports sections were hiring professional wrestling columnists.

 

The NCAA is going to wake up to what? You can't make any meaningful distinction between Rivals/Scout guys and the local paper beat guy who's been writing fluff for years at the behest of the school. The Knoxville News Sentinel's web site is called GoVols.com for crying out loud. Singling out "web yahoos" for a crackdown involving the NCAA is using the same false logic as saying all people of Arabic descent are terrorists. You contention is niether mutually exclusive, nor mutually exhaustive.

 

Are you fucking kidding? $3 mill? Yowza!

 

Scout also has team sites for all major professional sports. Rivals does not.

With that being said, all people who cover strictly recruiting are goobers in my book.

 

I love the idea of these sites, but as has been mentioned, they usually try to stir up shit against a rival school and push recruits toward theirs. they also like to use way too many leading questions to make it sound good for their school, as has also been mentioned by many. the idea is nice, the execution is not.

 

If they were still doing this, circulation numbers would be going the other way (tapping finger on temple) </Bobby "The Brain" Heenan>