by Paul Jordan
seriously, people PAY for this?
Hello BBN. Meet Eric Crawford, one of the esteemed “sportswriters” for the Louisville Courier Journal. It’s Eric’s job to appeal to the Cardinal loving, flatbill cap wearing, line beard loving Louisville audience that purchase the swill he and his cronies are dealing. And earlier tonight, Eric won the big prize in the CJ newsroom and go to write the latest piece of garbage bashing Kentucky coach John Calipari.
It’s a task that the Courier Journal-ers attack with glee and zest, but unfortunately their writing is the same tired bit of recycled crap, it could have been written at any time, and any place. I am fairly certain that when Calipari was hired, the CJ’s assignment editor had each writer prepare about 4-5 pieces to be ready at any time. You never know when it’s time for a good Calipari bashing.
In his latest epic, “Kentucky basketball wanted the spotlight – and got it”, Crawford trots out the tired old themes and actually manages to write one of the worst Calipari hatchet jobs I have ever seen, filled with plenty of confusing statements that make you just say “Huh”?:
UK wanted to be back on the national radar in a big way. Mission accomplished. The national media now have radar lock on Lexington. And even when Calipari’s name is not mentioned, he is the subject, the center of events. All of the digging is under his shadow
Trying to wade through the disjointed thoughts gave me a migraine and that segment made absolutely no sense at all. Then it gets worse as Crawford seems to argue at himself as to whether he wants to try to be fair with Calipari or not and mangles the grammar books again:
While the media do have a responsibility not to jump to conclusions they can’t back up, this pursuit of Calipari’s trail is fair game. And it’s not just because he has had two Final Fours vacated. In the first the NCAA explicitly acknowledged that he had no involvement, in the second it accused him of no involvement.
My favorite part is when Crawford attacks the character of the Kentucky recruits just days after his beloved Cardinals had a player beat his girlfriend’s dad with a hairbrush. Are you kidding me?:
Closer to the reason is Calipari’s continual working of the margins. Blue-chip recruits don’t grow on trees, and quite often they don’t grow up in neatly manicured suburban cul de sacs. Some come with strings attached, some with considerable baggage
And to add the cherry topping to a perfect mess, Crawford throws in a healthy dollop of World Wide Wes for no apparent reason and when WWW has absolutely nothing to do with the Bledsoe situation:
If you’re going to benefit from a close association with William Wesley, whose profile is so guarded that not even his role or relationship to recruits is clear, then you pay a price.
In this case, that price is having to read poorly written, incoherent crap from someone that makes Dan Wolken look like Ernest freaking Hemingway. But wait, here’s the big finish. After all the buildup, you expected a knockout punch that would shake the BBN to their knees and put us in our place. Yea, we are not getting that here. Just more confusion.
It can’t be argued that bad press has hurt Calipari. You might even make a case that it has helped him. The top-ranked recruits just keep marching in, more quickly than anyone can vet them all. If he locks up one more top recruiting class I expect half the schools in the country to invite ESPN and The Times to investigate them .
In the end, the Cardinal fans should be upset that their local sportswriters don’t care enough to do an original story. This story has been done about a thousand times this year and if I paid for this crap, I would be plenty upset as well. The other reason to be upset is well, they are Card fans. It kind of goes with the territory these days.
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