Auburn's Tainted Title

Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas, Oregon, USC, Washington, Miami, anywhere else Dennis Erickson has coached ... nowhere outside the SEC? Really?

I know a guy who played at Stanford in the early '90s in Bill Walsh's second go-round. He swears Scott Frost got a car.

 

Fixed.

Any school that consistently competes - esp. ones (non-destination schools) like Boise State, WVU - cheat to remain competitive. To believe otherwise is willful ignorance.

 

Lowder's already been "taken down." His bank (Colonial) was shut down by the feds and sold off to BB&T a few years ago, and he's no longer a member of the Auburn Board of Trustees.

 

An interesting idea from Clay Travis:

http://outkickthecoverage.com/lets-give-2010-auburn-full-immunity.php

 

I look for Mississippi to get hammered should they have unprecedented success from this uncanny for Mississippi standards recruiting season the Rebs just had.

 

So because it's going on everywhere, a reporter shouldn't write about it if he or she gets the goods on someone?
And sorry for busting you on the "nobody cares" thing. It's a pet peeve of mine. I've had sports editors shoot stuff down for years by saying, "nobody cares." I was covering a BCS team once who was going to a minor bowl. The team had lost a few at the end and was having to settle for a December bowl game. Fans weren't buying too many tickets. Didn't make the trip because, as the editor said, "Nobody cares." Well, the game had 50,000 attendence (20,000 less that capacity) and had a 1.5 rating (which means about a million viewers, right?)
So a lot of people did care. Just not my editor.

 

Missed that. Well, good. He was eight kinds of crooked.

 

One more problem with stories like these, one that is not the reporter's fault whatsover. The incredibly short time frame of college sports means that by the time the story is nailed down, you're already writing about history. Many of the protagonists have moved on and are making news in other parts of sports -- to wit, the pros. It's what makes the NCAA kind of irrelevant, too. Does it think it's going to deter breaking its rules ( I don't regard people get paid to play sports as cheating in any way) by punishing other people at USC for what Reggie Bush did and Pete Carroll either facilitated or turned a blind eye to? Any potential rule breaker smarter than a fence post will look at Bush and Carroll making millions in the NFL and draw his own conclusions.

 

I am very skeptical on the facts of this story. It screams to me that Selena Roberts wrote a controversial piece to draw attention to a website she founded, yet nobody had heard of until today.

 

Dre Kirkpatrick, who I suppose has no reason to lie, says Auburn didn't spend any $500 on him:

https://twitter.com/schadjoe/status/319858322327093249

 

She's also one of the best journalists working. It's also not like this story came out of nowhere.

 

The problem with the story is that the "facts" are (presumably) that a player said there was cheating going on.

I don't know if I've worked at a paper that would have run the thing without corroborating proof other than the quotes.