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The folks that aren't aware of Alabama's problems over the past few years haven't been paying attention. I'm not looking this stuff up, but recalling all of these incidents from memory.
The coach about 4 or 5 years ago (Mike DuBose, I believe) was involved in an affair with his secretary. They also had an NCAA investigation for recruiting issues. Those things combined with a poor record led to him getting dumped.
The Albert Means recruiting scandal was a big story. There were numerous articles on many national college football websites for over a year about that. Fulmer was accused of turning them in. This was after Tennessee had been investigated for academic fraud (papers written by tutors, etc.) but the NCAA didn't find anything to nail Tennessee on that. Alabama folks accused Fulmer of making a deal with the NCAA to get a clean slate if he helped them nail Bama. The NCAA obviously denied that such a deal existed. There were lawsuits filed by folks in both Alabama and Tennessee. Fat Phil skipped media day last August in order to avoid a subpoena.
Mike Price was hired to replace DuBose. If you don't remember stories about the strip club and 2 strippers with him in the hotel (Stripper - "Roll Tide"; Price - "It's rollin' baby!") it's not because of lack of coverage. That was a big topic for ESPN and there were full stories in Sports Illustrated.
While Donny may deserve some red chiclets on occasion, I think his posts on this thread have been accurate. Alabama was hit hard in the media for 3 different things. It was a bigger story in the South, naturally, but there was national coverage for all of them.
I think part of the perception is because fans concentrate on items related to their own team. And obviously ESPN also seems to have an inexplicable desire to repeatedly drag tOSU through the mud.
But we're not alone. The Colorado sex/recruiting story lasted for months last year. The ESPN coverage of the Colorado situation was comparable to their sensationalized coverage of the whole Clarett saga. The President of the University, Betsy Hoffman, was interviewed on the Today Show. Barnett was suspended for 3 months and then reinstated. Their worthless AD (Dick Tharp) quietly resigned a few weeks ago.
The media loved both the Mike Price situation at Alabama; and the Katie Hnida, Lisa Simpson (yes, actual name) and 5 others accusing football players of rape, combined with the strippers-for-recruits investigation at Colorado for an obvious reason: those stories all involved sex. Notre Dame was even dragged through the mud a few years ago when an overzealous female booster was screwing football players (As an Irish fan, perhaps her name was Susan O'Z, but I'm just guessing there).
But ESPN's continual bashing of tOSU doesn't make sense, since there isn't any sexual element to any of the football related stories.
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