I’ve decided to be bemused with the insane rumors from the weekend through today.
The funny thing to me is how this spread from some bad message board material and specious, unsourced internet writings. Kept getting picked up and enough people were hearing something to wonder if there was something to it.
Now it gets doused in a bath of logic and reason. Yet if you want to play the game, no one is actually on record of saying anything one way or another — which allows it to fester and keep going.
The biggest refutation on the Big 11 side came from the Chicago Tribune‘s Teddy Greenstein.
Bottom line, a source at the conference reiterated to the Tribune on Monday that the Big Ten will adhere to the timetable it laid out in December: a 12-to-18 month period of analysis. The league will then determine whether it wants to expand and, if so, how many schools it will invite to the party.
Unnamed source, but still no formal statement. But that refutation spread as truth (and for the record I believe it but not because of an unnamed source at the Big 11).
Another popular source was ZagsBlog actually getting a “Pitt spokesman” on the record — something local beat writers couldn’t do.
Internet reports that Pittsburgh is moving to the Big 10 from the Big East are “100 percent’ false, according to multiple sources within the Pittsburgh athletic department.
“There is no announcement to make because there is nothing happening,” said Pitt spokesman Mike Gladysz.
Well, that’s neat except that Mr. Gladysz is not an employee of Pitt’s athletic department. Oh, he works in the area. He is employed by ISP Sports Network as an editor of the Pitt monthly “Panther Eyes.” At least that is what his profile says.
Oh, and that KC Star blog post that wrote:
Speculation is heating up all over the Internet that Pitt has accepted an offer to join the Big Ten Conference.
Here is what popped up on Bleacherreport.com, normally a pretty reliable outlet, just a few hours ago…
[Emphasis added]
Well, that bit has been scrubbed and now he, uh, updated it to say he was just posting the speculation on the internet. Nothing else. No. Of course not.
And the fun keeps coming.
[UPDATE, 5:30: Adam Zagoria has changed his post to delete the attribution to Mr. Gladysz, without indicating he ever wrote it that way. Good to see that responsible journalism hard at work.
UPDATE, 2/2/10, 9:00 AM: Interesting. Now it is back. to the original way written.]
It’s about the money and only the money. Pitt will do whatever is best for its own financial self interests, it’s simply the world we live in today.
I guess they really don’t want Pitt in the Big Ten or something.
I’ve got a few friends on the Track and Field team; they’ve told me the meeting did occur but it was more of an athletes-only pep rally to congratulate the fall sports teams and drum up enthusiasm for the spring sports.
Message boards can be fun .. but aren’t you glad that we have here a forum here where we can express our opinions that are mostly supported by facts, and know that when someone bases something on knowing a friend of a friend, we do not go overboard with speculation.
I believe Chas deserves much credit for this in keeping things in proper perspective.
Unfortunately, a lot of the forums degenerate into nothing but ridicule and personal attacks. And yes, Chas has done a great job of steering this forum away from this.
Who’s to judge when opinions “are mostly supported by facts” and fit to post. If everybody confirmed their postings the message boards and forums would dry up and disappear. Everybody has the right to express themselves as long as they are not slandering someone.
Personally I like to know what the rumors are and who is saying what, as long as it involves Pitt.
If you don’t like what is being discussed you have the option of tuning out and tuning back in when the topics shift more to your liking.
Rumors are I have a firend who knows an insider who told him that this is going to happen. But it’s not only that, it’s all the people that seemingly bought into what was being said without any logic, such as:
1) why in the heck would they tell the athletes about this (especially) an entire week in advance?
2) why would the B10 pull the string so quickly after they publicly announced they would take 12-18 months to inverstigate?
3) why would anybody put so much belief into something when absolutely NO source from the administration or either conference would confirm?
4) why would the announcement come from Pitt and not from the B10?
Since the message boards are anonymous bloggers, just like here, for all we know, this could have evn been started by non-Pitt people. The ridicule is that so many Pitt people, and others, just seemed to totally buy into this.
Who knows, maybe I’m wrong … maybe there will be an announcement on Thursday …. but I’m certainly not going to believe in something that is 100% based on anonymous bloggers with absolutely no reliable, valid confirmation.
I’d much rather talk about Gibbs, Brown, and the others, especially since the WVU game has taken on even greater importance with the loss to USF. I’m far more concerned about tommorrow night than 1-3 years from now.
Hail to PITT!
Gibbs is in a slump is an undeniable fact but the conclusion that Brown should start is your opinion, and if someone disagrees with the conclusion doesn’t mean they’re ignoring the fact or clueless. It just means that they have a different idea as how to address that fact.
btw I agree Brown should start, but that is just our opinion not fact, and might attempt to justify it differently by pointing out a different fact, that Robinson has been ineffective lately, which again doesn’t mean I’m ignoring Gibbs slump or clueless.
Again, an example of the former is that since Gibbs is not shooting well, Brown shoud et more touches … and of course, we already have a prime example of the latter.
However, the fact of the matter is, if the athletic department told all of its athletes, there is a 0% chance this would not have already been leaked all over the internet. Thus, for the time being, I highly doubt there is any impending move.