Palm Beach, Tweets, Virginia Tech, Miami

For me, it's not even so much about the publishing of the information, which in this case did not revolve around anything as serious as a death. It's about the assumption of privacy.

If I found out my best friend let my girlfriend eavesdrop on our calls, I'd stop calling him. We only talk about pretty banal stuff, but it's the principle of it all.

In the case of Bliss and the assistant, he broke a rule to catch someone breaking a rule in a serious, egregious fashion. Two wrongs don't make a right, or whatever, but I think it's OK to burn a bridge built on trust when it comes to something like that. Listening in on a recruit calling a coach to tell him the bad news doesn't live up to that standard for me. There's a moral gray area and you just have to try and figure out where on that spectrum your case is.

 

I don't think legalities come into play here because we have no reason to think the reporter was taping during the call. But it's still unethical. Had the reporter identified himself or the player mentioned that a reporter was listening to the conversation, the coach likely would have changed his tone. And either way, it's kind of absurd that the reporter didn't know who was talking.

I also agree that there was no need to rush these quotes onto Twitter. He could have written a quick blog post and posted the link on Twitter, which would have theoretically given him time to ask the player, "Who was that on the phone?" And if he wrote the blog post properly, he would have been linked all over the place.

 

Definitely curious to know if the reporter recorded it. We might never know.

 

Taking it a step further, how is it any different than a source simply telling you what happened in any given meeting? Or what a coach said in the locker room during halftime? Many situations in which not all the parties privy to a conversation consent to disclosure of the discussion. And, if anything, a situation like this or the one you suggest allows for greater accuracy, because you eliminate the hearsay problems.

 

Don't know many reporters in this day and age who don't record everything. But you're right. We'll probably never know.

 

In that circumstance, though, you don't run quotes, you run generalities and "according to."

 

If you call someone who commits a commit, do you call someone who decommits* a decommit? As in "Virginia Tech decommit Bobby Wiretap said this reporter should get a good attorney."

*not encouraging the use of this phrase or "unfriend"

 

Don't make me unknow you.

 

If commit doesn't fit, you have to admit.

 

Just now, NBC announce Cris Collinsworth used contain as a noun, way before my over-under of late first quarter.

 

They lost contain?

 

Yes, as the announce said.