Charlotte Observer Over A Week Behind with Information

Football Recruiting Media NCS Football44

The Charlotte Observer ran a feature article about college football prospect, Robert Quinn today. To the side of the conclusion of the article on page 3C the Observer listed their Top 50 recruits in North Carolina and South Carolina. Why would I be surprised that they listed RJ Mattes as uncommitted with seven potential schools when Mattes publicly committed to NC State eight days ago and has called every coach recruiting him and asked them to stop their recruitment?

Any time that we criticize the media we invariably receive a snide remark from someone who doesn’t understand our point and incorrectly assumes that we are accusing the media of a ‘conspiracy’ (despite the fact that we never mention the word ‘conspiracy’). You can click here for our most recent media-based discussions that is one of the five most popular stories on the blog this month.

Let me help those of you that don’t get it – outlets like the Charlotte Observer are not a part of some ‘conspiracy’ to get NC State. Outlets like the Charlotte Observer are just not very good at what they do. It is called incompetence, not a conspiracy. Add to that a blatant longstanding and uncontestable bias towards certain schools and you have a recipe for that incompetence to manifest itself more

Here is a great little example. Because the center of attention and perspective of the Charlotte Observer is the UNC-Chapel Hill Athletics Department, if RJ Mattes had committed to UNC more than a week ago do you really think that they would not have known about it and covered it? Of course someone in that department would have known about Mattes’ commitment.

But, since they don’t cover all schools equally, they don’t know the news of all schools equally.

Again, it is NOT a conspiracy. Just a simple place in the road where biased perspective intersects with incompetence.

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Football Recruiting Media NCS Football

44 Responses to Charlotte Observer Over A Week Behind with Information

  1. Mike 01/28/2008 at 9:49 AM #

    Agreed just poor journalism. One would think the high school reporter covering this would be hungry and eager to do a good job and hopefully move up with a promotion. Guess not.

    Also, I was wondering if we were going to lose Javi Lopez soon when pitchers and catchers report? He is starting to come on and would hate to lose another PG at ACC tourney time.

  2. packbackr04 01/28/2008 at 10:18 AM #

    Thanks for not providing the link, we dont want to give their site the hits

  3. tooyoungtoremember 01/28/2008 at 10:19 AM #

    “Outlets like the Charlotte Observer are just not very good at what they do. It is called incompetence, not a conspiracy. Add to that a blatant longstanding and uncontestable bias towards certain schools and you have a recipe for that incompetence to manifest itself more”

    Exactly. You have to be competent and actually know what you’re doing to conspire against someone or something. Bias, on the other hand, does not require competence or conscious thought whatsoever.

  4. primacyone 01/28/2008 at 10:26 AM #

    Then N&O also did a great job of covering UNC’s recruiting arse on Sunday with several articles related to why stars don’t matter in football, a mention of UNC’s lastest OL recruit from Wilmington and the the re-recruit of the top tier non-qualifier from Burlington without mentioning any of the bagage. But no where did they mention State in a positive light.

    http://www.newsobserver.com/826/story/905381.html

  5. choppack1 01/28/2008 at 10:31 AM #

    Well – we saw Rawlings comments last week – and now this. Several years ago, Mario committed to the Pack in his junior year very early. UNC got a committment a few months later. The Winston Salem Journal’s Bill Cole wrote that the Heels had the first known committment of the ACC.

    This is how bias works. Cole is a UNC guy/grad. He is predisposed to liking his Heels – it’s totally understandable. He follows their recruiting very closely. However, he crossed the line in his excitement. I called him on it, he apologized and sent a note in the paper the next day correcting it.

    We also saw the selective outrage by Dave Glenn when AJ Davis signed w/ NC State. Did he subject Butch Davis to the same thing when they got a key WR who switched his committment from Notre Dame to UNC? Was he as outraged when Curry signed w/ the Heels after committing to UVA?

  6. bradleyb123 01/28/2008 at 10:40 AM #

    Who says it isn’t a conspiracy?

    Every little thing they can do to hurt State recruiting can be considered helpful to Carolina recruiting. If they could get away with it, I’m sure they would not report at all on State recruiting. When other players see all these great players committing to State, it may make THEM want to commit, as well. Carolina journalism grads would surely cover up all they possibly could to do their small part to slow down State’s recruiting success.

  7. RedTerror29 01/28/2008 at 10:40 AM #

    I’m not too excited about the Char Ob’s opinion of the top 50 in NC either. They probably just took the Scout or Rivals rankings and moved a few guys around (and the local guys up) so it didn’t look like that copied them.

  8. old13 01/28/2008 at 10:42 AM #

    To find an actual “journalist” or “reporter” any more would be a truely rare thing! Are there any out there – or just opinion columnists writing under the guise of “reporter!”

  9. beowolf 01/28/2008 at 10:49 AM #

    Is it too late to make a bet with the Observer’s sports department on the outcome of the State/FSU game?

  10. Dr. BadgerPack 01/28/2008 at 10:56 AM #

    RedTerror– To be fair, the Observer did admit to such:

    “The Observer’s Top 50 was based on recruiting analyst’s opinions: Miller Safrit with Scout.com and Allen Wallace with Super Prep Magazine and recruiting lists from rivals.com, espn.com and national recruiting analyst Tom Lemming from cstv.com.”

  11. highonlowe 01/28/2008 at 10:58 AM #

    The only thing the Observer’s sports desk did right was Panthers coverage, but now that Yaz is gone (jumped the sinking McClatchy ship to ESPN.com), I fully expect that beat to regress as well.

  12. choppack1 01/28/2008 at 11:11 AM #

    Oh, forgot to mention that “Amato hates NC high school football players” myth that was propulgated by the NC media.

    You’d always see, “See have criticized Amato for not recruiting the state of North Carolina enough.” Wonder who that some was???

  13. Rick 01/28/2008 at 11:16 AM #

    The incompetence of the media is why you see this site and others like it flourish. We used to have to sit back and read it because they were the only game in town.

    They have begun their slow slide into complete irrelevance.

  14. primacyone 01/28/2008 at 11:28 AM #

    Rick
    Jan 28th, 2008 at 11:16 am
    The incompetence of the media is why you see this site and others like it flourish. We used to have to sit back and read it because they were the only game in town.

    I litteraly do not believe a single thing I read in teh N&O anymore. I don’t do it intentially, it’s just my natural reaction. There is not a single thing in that paper that I will believe without checking the facts somewhere else first.

  15. highstick 01/28/2008 at 11:30 AM #

    McGlathey=Monopoly=Incompetence

    McGlatchey+Carolina Journalism Grad=Biased and Incompetent

    Charlotte Observer, N&O, The State=Bottom of the Bird Cage

    You don’t want to use it as toilet paper cause the newsprint will come off on your rear end!

  16. RAWFS 01/28/2008 at 11:39 AM #

    Then N&O also did a great job of covering UNC’s recruiting arse on Sunday with several articles related to why stars don’t matter in football

    Sort of like an article I put up on Wednesday 1/23 entitled “Recruiting Rankings and On-Field Success which was a follow-up to another article called “The Cult of the Recruiting Gurus where I quoted Jamie Newburg as saying “recruiting rankings don’t mean crap.”

    If this had happened once I wouldn’t think twice about it, but on more than a handful of occasions, I have seen SFN or RAWFS feature (non-news) posts end up in the local media soon afterwards. I’m no professional reporter, and do not have the time, Lexis, AP feeds and the like to draw upon, much less any cache’ with our dear friend Annabelle. But somehow the guys here and I have come up with some story ideas that other “professionals” run with.

    Interesting, to say the least.

  17. doug74 01/28/2008 at 12:06 PM #

    Ken Tysiac of the CharObs is an example of hostility and not just bias. To be sure that I spelled his name right I went down their Sports Headlines until I came to a slam against State. He would honestly deny it if asked, I don’t think he is even aware of it. Usually a day or two after he gets in several digs the same day an older staffer like Ron Green, Jr or David Scott will do kind of a make up article. Those guys have a better sense of history. KT was esp indignant when Coach Sendek left. After Lowe was announced He asked in print, “Is this what you wanted State fans?” I can say yes Ken, this is exactly what I wanted.

    SFN: This comment should be bronzed and saved forever. Doug could not be more dead on.

    I moved back to Charlotte in September of 2005 and was really surprised and perplexed by the slant created in the OBVIOUS conclusions and presumptions of this guy (Tysiac’s) writings. There was no doubt that he loved Herb and thought State fans were crazy. There is no way that he can deny this slant when random people move from not living here for a decade and see it so clearly that they can’t help but come to the conclusion.

    When I saw my first picture of the guy and realized how young he was it was less of a surprise since it was obvious that he didn’t have the historical knowledge or understanding to really frame any of his conclusions. You can tell that the concept of NC State’s program over a 45 year period of Case-Maravich-Sloan-Valvano simply does not resonate with him. I would love to know his background as the odds are high that if he isn’t a home-grown Tarheel then he is from somewhere outside of the region and hasn’t seen a tenth of the ACC Basketball that most of the readers of SFN have seened.

    You could say “Sail with the Pilot” to Ken Tysiacs and he would start looking around for John Travolta.

    Tysiacs is so eager to get in some “I told you so’s” that all common sense in analysis is going to go out of the window with him. You can rest assured that Coach Lowe’s worst years will be constantly compared with Coach Sendek’s best years and won’t he have been so right!?! In fact, I have actually saved some of his/CHLT OBS articles from the last month weeks because the tone of the articles were so obvious that I wanted to write blog entries about them. Unfortunately I haven’t had time. For others – like doug74 – to see the exact same things as me and my friends is fascinating. But, of course, we’re all crazy and just make this stuff up.

  18. SuperStuff 01/28/2008 at 12:14 PM #

    It’s called spin. Everytime Bunting had to let a kid go because he got busted by the police. He was held up for his shining example of tough disciplinarian. I could understand that if it was a few kids, but it was a boatload of football players over the years. Bunting should have been run out of town for bringing in all those questionable kids and not clamping down on them before they committed all those crimes.

  19. Clarksa 01/28/2008 at 12:16 PM #

    They can use the NC State internet community to write stories about how bad we are as fans, but they can’t take the time to check facts on recruting or current basketball player names?

  20. beowolf 01/28/2008 at 12:55 PM #

    Clarksa, do you mean there’s an NC State internet community outside of The Wolf Web? But there you can look hard enough to find an example of whatever smear you’d like to make against NC State!

  21. PackerInRussia 01/28/2008 at 12:56 PM #

    “One would think the high school reporter covering this would be hungry and eager to do a good job and hopefully move up with a promotion. Guess not”

    That assumes that you have to do a good job to get a promotion, when obviously that is not the case.

  22. StateFans 01/28/2008 at 12:58 PM #

    The comments and the examples shared in this discussion are absolutely fantastic. This is EXACTLY what makes some of these random entries into classics that you keep for a long time.

  23. RAWFS 01/28/2008 at 1:08 PM #

    SFN or Doug74: Tysiac replaced Doyel, when Doyel moved to Cincinnati, right?

  24. StateFans 01/28/2008 at 1:23 PM #

    ^ RAWFS, unless someone else bridged the timeline then that would make sense.

  25. gcpack 01/28/2008 at 1:31 PM #

    The thing that surprises me is that this bias has existed for many, many years and those of us on the State side have complained enough but nothing ever changes. Isn’t it logical that these newspapers would see that their incompetence, i.e. the Lenox Rawlings piece, hurts their professionalism more than satisfying the UNC crowd helps them?

    Here’s another example of omission such as the Charlotte Observer did in recruiting rather than comission as in the Rawlings piece.

    This past Sunday morning I woke up in Chapel Hill. (I was laying under the old well with 12 empty quart bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon, my farmer’s overalls were down around my ankles, there was a moaning ram laying beside me. I know, I know what you must be thinking but, hey, I was in Chapel Hill so no one walking by thought it was unusual. The pedestrians walking by probably figured, “Oh, he had a mild night.”)

    I joke of course(I don’t drink PBRs), but I did get my free coffee and the Sunday morning paper which was the Durham Herald Sun. Now in the past, with writers such as Al Featherston and Barry Jacobs, I always felt like State got a fair shake with the Durham paper. Since they covered Duke I assumed they didn’t feel they had to cater to the baby blue crowd.

    So UNC(thanks to John Swofford) had another 8 day rest break in their schedule and Duke wasn’t to play until Sunday night. So there were no men’s UNC/Duke basketball games to cover for the Sunday edition of the Durham paper. (The fact that UNC didn’t have a game meant there weren’t that many fans in Chapel Hill and probably why the ram was available).

    The big game was the UNC women’s double OT win over Maryland and it didn’t surprise me that the Herald Sun headline in the Sunday sports covered that game. But I was sure there would be front page coverage with an ample story about State’s win at FSU. You know, we are one of the big three in the triangle and all that stuff.

    Guess what? No front page story re: State v. FSU. There was a story on the front page covering the women’s Australian tennis open.

    I open the sports section to pg. 4. The top of the page says proudly, “OUR GAME”, then the statement, “The College Basketball Report”. So the Herald Sun proclaims that college basketball is our region’s game. So let’s see what the headlines are.

    First there is a moderately big headline “TIGERS’ STREAK CONTINUES” covering “our” local school, The University of Memphis on page 4. This headline sits atop 5 columns. Also pg.4 has a smaller headline “Salter’s best lifts Wofford”.

    On pg. 5 there is a medium sized headline sitting atop 4 columns, “FRESHMAN HEROICS”. Hhhmmm, let’s see, “FRESHMAN”, oh yeah, a college game, there are freshman at every college, right? Someone correct if I am wrong on that assumption.

    Well folks thats what we got in the Durham Herald Sun when Duke and UNC didn’t play. A newspaper that claims that college basketball is “OUR GAME” and one of the schools in the area with two national championships isn’t even on the front page in deference to womens’ tennis in Australia.
    In addition the school’s name isn’t identified in the headline either. This game finished about 3:40 PM on Saturday, leaving plenty of time to set the sports section.

    To add insult to injury the ACC standings are at the top of pg. 4 (Right beside the “OUR GAME” proclamation).
    After State’s win at FSU State is in a 4 way tie for fifth place in the ACC standings. This is before Sunday’s games.
    But the Herald Sun doesn’t bother to update the standings in “OUR GAME” and still lists State as 1-3 next to last just above UVa.
    State, actually 2-3 at this point, is even listed behind Miami which at the time had a 1-3 record

    So it appears that even the papers such as the Herald Sun that used to be friendly have succumbed to this “we aren’t interested in anything State” despite their position that college basketball is “OUR GAME”.

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