Joe Schad

There's probably something to that. With all of the college guys ESPN has it's amazing how few ever break news. Schad's all over the place.

 

I find it hard to believe that ESPN in all its vastness doesn't have someone who was more "inside" at Texas or in the Big 12 office than Schad. The WWL has spent a lot of time and money getting their college news websites and blogger pages going, and almost NEVER relies on those guys' reporting on anything bigger than day-to-day beat news (injuries, recruiting, etc).

Whenever something big like a coaching change or these current expansion talks breaks, they use the "star system" and send in one of their national guys. In this case, it seems they might have been better-served relying on someone who was actually on the ground in Austin on a regular basis ... ya know, someone like Chip Brown ...

And another thing ... the Big 12 office is in Dallas. Where was ESPNDallas.com in all this?

 

Wow. I was very surprised to see a thread about Joe Schad on here.

I used to sit next to Schad in the press box back when St. John's (N.Y.) had a football team. He covered the team for Newsday. I learned a lot from him when I was working at the student paper. He even taught me how to keep a running stat sheet for football.

Schad ruffled more than his fair share of feathers when he was at the St. John's student paper and Newsday. To put it simply, he was a prick, but a very good journalist. As far as I know, he's turned out to be the most accomplished journalist from the student paper. Jim Baumbach from Newsday as well.

I can't speak much to this current situation, but like some others have said here, he's had to do something right all these years to make it to the WWL. Yes, he's not good on camera, but has always wrote and reported well.

 

Well, initially they did. Mizzou. Initially. Chip Brown's very first scoop - the Pac-10 thing - was being thrown around on the web for several days beforehand. Brown did a nice job there and got enough of a confirmation. And...I'll stop there.

Schad was way late to the story because he was rooting around in the USC mess for a week and he was playing official catchup Monday, reporting what others already had Monday morning so ESPN didn't have to trot Brown back on TV. In other words, ESPN got burned doing what it often does.

 

Same place it always is.

Valley Ranch.

 

How many times do you think the general public says to itself, "gee, didn't ESPN report xxx yesterday, and now they're saying something else? What do I believe now?" I think most readers, even die hards, just follow whatever is reported and never question the integrity of the actual reports or people who write them.

Obviously that's not the case for people here who understand what it means to have some sort of integrity behind what they report.

 

Here's how it all went down from Chip Brown's perspective re: the Schad story and other aspects of his reporting. Some interesting stuff.

http://texas.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1094753

 

Glynnis MacNicol wants you to stop referring to things no one's ever heard of. </crossthread>

 

Pretty fascinating stuff there.

 

Thank you to those who realize Chip Brown was absolutely fed all of the Big 12 stuff and if anyone noticed the University of Texas never looked like the selfish, greedy bastards they are in any of Chip's reports. You have to give Chip credit for being out front but this was far from investigative reporting at its best. He was reporting stuff that only Dodds and Powers would know and maybe one or two more people so it would have been easy to shut if down if the two power guys wanted. Clearly they didn't.

As for Schad, some said earlier that he has broken more stories than any of his colleagues combined. Well yeah! This is his job responsibility. And it also doesn't hurt that the Network you work for is in bed with all of the schools so accessing numbers and people who will talk isn't nearly as challenging for Joe as it would be for most college writers. Think about it.

What made his whiff Monday even funnier is that ESPN obviously was part of the negotiations to keep the Big 12 going yet no one stepped in to save his ass. That was an inexcusable mistake and another reason not to totally trust ESPN and the news it delivers. They won't report stuff that isn't in their best interest. That's a fucking conflict. Not sure why newspapers and other Web sites haven't that facts to the streets and asked the reading public: Who are you going to trust, a network with a vested interest in the success or failure of sports teams or those of us who are objective outsiders? This story was a perfect example of how ESPN can not be trusted.

 

Maybe this is a scoop -- Schad's getting married Saturday.

 

Nah his Twitter feed broke that news last week. Keep up.