NCAA/ESPN Rant

Okay, I'm pissed off, racing deadlines at work, but the new Tim Floyd at USC allegations just sent me over the edge. Please excuse the poorly worded post with no citations.
This crap is out-of-control. ESPN's college football coverage makes Fox News look fair and balanced. Granted, I'm a fan of one of the school on ESPN's "slam list", so I'm not exactly impartial myself. The NCAA isn't much better.

ESPN:
The University of Florida having 23 players arrested during Urban Meyer's tenure there - not even mentioned on ESPN's website.

Penn State's leading tackler last season arrested for battery - not even reported.

FSU fourth string receiver Cameron Wade, who has caught three passes his entire career, misses a court appearance while seen in the library studying - FRONT PAGE of ESPN. A fourth-string wide receiver on the thirtieth-best team in the nation misses a court appearance and it makes the front page of ESPN.com?


Tim Tebow - one of the most exciting players in a while, great kid, etc. Yes, ESPN slobs his knob, but the guy deserves it. Charitable, intelligent, hell of a football player. However, you know that the instant he screws up (which being a male in his early twenties he is bound to do), ESPN will bombard us with crap about how his good-guy image is a big fraud, etc. etc. etc. So predictable

NCAA:
USC pays players, has Reggie Bush driving around brand new cars, his parents flying to every home game - no suspension and an investigation that's lasted for five years. Tim Floyd pulls all kinds of crap to get OJ Mayo to USC to play for one year. There have been documentaries made about the corruption, for fuck's sake. How much more evidence do you need?

FSU turns themselves in for some football players cheating on an on-line test. NCAA admits/acknowledges no one in FSU's athletic department or administration knew about the cheating, still takes away scholarships and vacates wins.
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In the world of college football, an 890 is unfortunately pretty high.

Are you fucking kidding me? A wide receiver for the thirtieth best team in college football who caught three passes and missed a court appearance is bigger news than a coach paying a player (later NBA co-rookie of the year) at the highest profile school in the country?

Do you know how retarded that sounds?

I mean, the Tim Floyd thing is not even on ESPN's front page.

Figured I'd put my weekly FSU rant here to avoid cluttering up the College Football thread.

Great feature on Outside the Lines last night about FSU. They used hard hitting investigative techniques (no doubt learned from the NCAA investigators working on USC right now) to learn some amazing things:

1. Football players have lower SAT scores than the regular students, at last at FSU, I'm sure this is not the case anywhere else or they would've said so, right?. I was AMAZED and appalled at my university.

2. An academic advisor who was fired for helping kids cheat has something bad to say about FSU.

3. A former player also had something bad to say about FSU. He was the nation's top-rated high school wide receiver and hometown hero but kicked off the team for being a thief and a jackass. ESPN referred to this player as a "starter", in spite of the fact that he never started and finished the one season he did play with a whopping six catches.

I used to think my friends were engaged in typical homerism when they whined about ESPN always bashing FSU. But after this incident, the ridiculous Bowden coverage, and the others in this thread, I'm a believer. I honestly have no idea why ESPN focuses so much on FSU and does it so negatively. We haven't been good in years and it can't be great for ratings outside the state of Florida.