I respect both of their work. However, there are agendas being served today, and this Bama scandal is bringing it to light.
First. ESPN's top, and I mean TOP Football market, is Birmingham, AL. They have a game coming up this weekend that, if had it not been already taken by LSU vs. Bama Game One a few years ago, would have been their "Game of the Century (but really only for this year...eh hem...).
When the news of Auburn's Jovon Robinson's grade change hit the news, ESPN all but broke into regular programing, and flung the fifteen minute flashing BREAKING NEWS ticker out. In the end, it was revealed that not only had Auburn not done anything wrong, they were in FACT, the ones that brought the grade issue up to the High School that had submitted the changed grade. Jovon Robinson (even though it was never established he had anything to do with it), was shown the door.
Today? Nothing. A tweet. A blip on their app. ON ESPN? The CHANNEL? THE "WORLDWIDE LEADER IN SPORTS"???? Notta. Nothing (as of 9:06pm as I type this EST).
The excuse? There is none. However, one could ask, or come to realize they're in deep now with the SEC, have lost their journalistic cred and are hoping nobody notices? Plausible actually. As the hours pass?
Second. Amateur status and Wetzel's reasonable gripe with the NCAA. This was the PERFECT time to get people's attention on his agenda versus the NCAA. I get it. I even agree. HOWEVER, cheating is cheating. When a university's boosters, or others with the university's best interests at heart offer help, financial aid or other enticements to recruits, it's usually in an effort to maintain, or gain a productive and needed player. The player might have come from a rich family or the poorest of poor, and while he, or she, is still an amateur, it's still good ol' fashioned cheating. You can't do it.
Usually, as these cases evolve, more comes out. Others start talking and the validity of things either start to solidify, or crumble under the eventual circumstances.
Do I know for sure that Bama will LOSE a National Title? Heck no. Do I know that if they've been proven to have played an ineligible player during that time, they'd be forced to give it up? Yup.
There are going to be a LOT of eyeballs on this one. This is huge money. This is major marketing, public relations nightmare scenarios afoot.
Ask yourself though, now that these collective, seemingly innocuous things make the T-Town Menswear LESS likely? ...Or More? What about Hot Wheelz? Dee Liner's Tweets about the #StruggleOverWit?
Ask yourself also... Is business owners getting tickets for breaks on furniture for players an issue with amateurs? I don't think so either.
Let's see how it shakes out.
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