NCAA Brand makes favorable comments

[ohiobuck94]

From Espin

Friday, January 14, 2005

Associated Press

CLEVELAND -- NCAA president Myles Brand said Friday that Ohio State took "strong and transparent measures" to deal with former Buckeyes running back Maurice Clarett, who claimed to have received improper benefits while playing for the school.

Brand made the remarks during a question and answer session after a speech before the City Club of Cleveland.

The NCAA started investigating Ohio State in November after Clarett told ESPN The Magazine that coach Jim Tressel, his staff and school boosters arranged for him to get passing grades, money for bogus summer jobs, thousands of dollars in cash and loaner cars.

Most of Clarett's allegations were covered as part of an earlier NCAA probe that found Clarett lied to investigators, leading to his suspension from the team in 2003. Clarett helped Ohio State win the national championship in 2002.

Brand said Friday that Clarett is a great athlete but may not have been prepared to go to college.

"I do think frankly that Ohio State took strong and transparent measures to deal with him," Brand said. "He was influenced by sports agents and attorneys. In that effort I think he was exposed to some issues that he might not otherwise have been exposed to."

Brand also announced Friday the creation of the association's Task Force on the Future of Intercollegiate Athletics. The appointed panel will study strategies to help athletic departments cope with costs if revenues do not continue to climb.

 

[BB73]

Two situations in one week where Myles Brand is saying positive things about tOSU. This is a good trend.

 

[jwinslow]

Wait did ESPiN realize this got published on their site or did a rogue journalist sneak it into the database?

 

[Steve19]

Don't get too excited, they can't afford to ignore the NCAA president.

ESPiN is about the SPiN. They will publish something like this and then ignore it and continue bashing straight ahead, repeating baseless accusations and slurring tOSU.

How many articles will we see in years ahead, by journalists who will know these lies only in the accusation and not in their conclusion? How much damage will it do when they refer to these things as if they actually occurred? How much damage has been done already?

Printing this does not make it all go away ESPiN.

 

[SanClementeBuck]

Steve19, you are so correct. A segment of PBS Newshour recently examined the myriad of problems in recent years brought about by journalists, newpapers and t.v. "actors" (read cbs/rather). Public polls rate media below 50% on truthfulness/accuracy. Those who view t.v. % is shrinking.

I believe all of these negative trends (nyt article on OSU, writer fired for lying and creating news where none existed, et al), lend themselves to epee'n making up stories where none exist. Their producers' aim is to create controversy over insinuations where no facts exist. Telling one half of the story is another method to mask the truth (see: fairenfart9?11, mclarett's allegations, quoting our castoffs side of story, not looking for or identifying mr.such&such)

The prime reason for half-truths and insinuations is very simple: build viewership (profit) through controversy. Poor ethics, but whoever said sports (read: entertainment), has ever been restrained by ethics? The sport media merely take advantage of their more or less monopoly to rake in the dough. And I haven't even mentioned the idiotic poker crap now in vogue on espee'n. Yikes. If butchering hogs would sell, espee'n would be first in line with a hatchet.

 

[Oh8ch]

Two comments.

1. Statements like this from Brand are huge. The NCAA will not make positive statements like this about OSU and then blindside them with sanctions. That would undermine their own credibility and you can be certain they would not make such statement to begin with if they thought anything ugly was going to come of this.

They have investigated and they are not saying they didn't find anything relative to the way OSU runs its program. On the contrary, they are saying they did find something and it was all good.

2. As regards the media in general my experience is that of news stories - both local and national - with which I have had personal knowledge of the facts the media has gotten it right about one third of the time. They have twisted the facts to make a more interseting story or cater to an agenda two thirds of the time.

The lesson I try to take from this is that the distortions apply not only to stories I don't want to believe but those that are consistent with my own agenda as well. (Frankly it tickles me to read posts proclaiming JTs innocence and Fullmer's guilt.)

So I will continue my lifelong search for an honest mechanic and a credible news source.

 

[stowfan]

Some more good news

The same AP story was posted on USA Today's web site about 3 hours later.
Also NB C's Cleveland news anchor Jim Donavan closed his Friday 6:00 PM
with a comment from Brand made to him after the luncheon. It was something to the effect, "The media was the big winner, OSU didn't win, and Clarret certainly didn't win anything".

 

[kippy1040]

I still feel that there is more that will be heard on this, mainly from espn. All of this centered from thier magazine dating back 2 years ago. I took a chance in subscribing to it 3 years ago and found the magazine very confusing to read. Nothing but stats and quips from players that were not very interesting at all. The article on "One & Done" was the one that made me stop subscribing to the magazine. I think the magazine is in trouble and losing interests. And i think that the SportingNews magazine is headed in the same direction. Espn will continually try to find something against tOSU and find stories that are untrue, just to get readers and listeners interested again. Good sport journalists are a thing of the past. News media people are nothing but hacks. Here today and gone tommorrow. A good example is the two newspaper people trying to make it big on espn's "PTI" they are a joke.