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I loved this rant, although in this case I see it as a bit self-serving, as he is in the Louisville market. I wonder if he would have made the same comments if it was another "dissed" BE team or mid-major, like say, an NIU. Of course, NIU would have needed to win or at least lose a very close one. Their game WAS closer than many of the bowl mismatches involving such teams as Oklahoma, K-State, Notre Dame, etc.

Bob Valvano's awesome rant calls out ESPN Colleagues and Media at large

Quote:During the week, Valvano hosts a radio show on ESPN 680 in Louisville. After the Cardinals upset the Florida Gators in Louisville, Valvano unleashed on the lack of repsect given Louisville not before the game, but after the game, especially by his counterparts at ESPN.

Valvano was incensed with the way ESPN analysts and the media-at-large tried to make excuses for Florida, claiming they somehow weren't ready to play the game. Nobody could seemingly admit Louisville may have actually been better than Florida because it didn't fit the SEC-Big East narrative. Granted, Louisville is Valvano's home market, but never have I so totally agreed with a radio rant like this one. And honestly, calling it a rant is doing it a disservice. The clip is quite lengthy (40 minutes), but it's as well reasoned and articulated as an argument as you can give regarding the larger issues affecting the media and college football.

As for last night's "game" I happen to think that ND was 'not worthy' of being in the mythical National Championship game. They didn't belong.

Part of the rant is below. The very first sentence up until the first comma is where Bob and I part company. The rest I agree with.

Quote:"I have a lot of respect for Kirk Herbstreit, but over the last couple months the stuff that's coming out of his mouth is so preposterous, because he played and I didn't I guess he's got to have more credibility, just the most ridiculous things I've ever heard."

"The three hardest words for analysts to string together are 'I was wrong.'"

"What were they looking at to determine they weren't trying? The first play of the game they almost knocked Teddy across the Louisiana border? What are they talking about? Just because it serves your own theory… just have the guts to stand up there and say I was wrong."

"You must disparage the Big East at every opportunity, you must pray at the altar of the SEC, and I understand how good the SEC is, but you then must also look for opportunities to show your fair minded. Teddy Bridgewater is the passport to that right now. The media, the herd has decided we can talk about that."

"The system is already so convoluted to make sure that the teams with the money and the power protect their turf that even when fair and square one of them gets beat they can't accept it."

"If they don't want the bowl games the way they are, then they need to step back from the table. Because Bob, the reason there are 35 bowl games is because of ESPN."

As an NIU fan, I could not agree with him more. He has disrespected NIU and the MAC within the last month and I no longer like his analysis and seems like he is becoming just another Skip Bayless. Just to say crazy things so he can drum up trouble.

What you are witnessing is, how else can I describe it? The siege of Berlin by the Soviets in 1945. The penultimate battle in television advertising, a medium where the stakes are still incredibly huge while the medium itself is going through incredible sea change and in may ways crumbling before our very eyes: Only live sports events now are appointment television. Everything else is DVRed to be watched later while speeding through commercials, if people still subscribe to cable, which is witnessing plummeting subscription rates. And now that live sports are the only aspect of the traditional advertising model still succeeding (while the rest nosedives), broadcast networks, specifically ESPN, have doubled down, making sure to drill into viewers' heads that ESPN and only ESPN's content is worth sports fans attention. Everything else is second rate, not even worth your pity.

ESPN is paying record sums of money to carry SEC football, NFL football, NBA basketball, Lakers, Yankees, Tim Tebow, etc. You better god d4mn believe they are going to protect and influence perception of their brands.

Bob is pretty good, too. When I was at WMU and in my mid 20s, working nights, I'd catch Bob on the weekends. He does a great job.

This is where Bob sums it up:

"Are these guys perfect, is that what they think? It's offensive to me as a guy who does it and as a fan because that's the whole point of playing the damn game you ******* is to actually have the result of the game come out on the field and not in the debate room. It's infuriating and the part that bothers me the most is that college football perpetuates that culture more than any sport in the country."

#EMBRACEDEBATE, AHOLES.

Quote:Early view: There was the ESPN inflation of Tim Tebow, and now there appears to be a rather gross overestimation by sport's propaganda arm of ND's Manti Te'o. Alabama's Chance Warmack bulldozed, graded, and paved Te'o over. Eddie Lacy and T.J. Yeldon, who will both finish with over 100 yards, ran wild. Behind that line, so would Cagney and Lacey. Te'o had the ghastly kind of big-stage performance Rutgers' Phil Sellers had in the 1976 Final Four. Google it

http://www.cleveland.com/livingston/inde..._loss.html

Wait he played for the Pistons....and sucked.

Charm, great quotes, didn't mean to change the subject. Just nailed it and what's sad is most wont get it at all.

(01-09-2013 12:20 AM)DesertBronco Wrote:  Charm, great quotes, didn't mean to change the subject. Just nailed it and what's sad is most wont get it at all.

That's because most sports fans, or more accurately, most college football fans are big school elitists, so they think Bobby V's rant doesn't apply to them.

One of the advantages of being a fan of a mid-major team, or a perennial underdog (Go Hawks!) is that we not only understand ... we AGREE!

(01-09-2013 05:25 PM)Whinny1 Wrote:  One of the advantages of being a fan of a mid-major team, or a perennial underdog (Go Hawks!) is that we not only understand ... we AGREE!

Schools like Iowa, Northwestern, Purdue, IU, Illinois, Minn., Vanderbilt, Old Miss, Colorado, Wash St., Cal, Rutgers, Pitt, Wake, Kansas, Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, NC, Maryland, Georgia Tech, and others will come to regret conference restructuring. They'll rarely if ever win their conference, and even they'll take on the label of "small school" at some point.

The BCS and ESPN will eventually work out for about 25 teams. It will have destroyed everything that was good about college football.

(01-09-2013 09:49 PM)Chipdip Wrote:  

(01-09-2013 05:25 PM)Whinny1 Wrote:  One of the advantages of being a fan of a mid-major team, or a perennial underdog (Go Hawks!) is that we not only understand ... we AGREE!

Schools like Iowa, Northwestern, Purdue, IU, Illinois, Minn., Vanderbilt, Old Miss, Colorado, Wash St., Cal, Rutgers, Pitt, Wake, Kansas, Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, NC, Maryland, Georgia Tech, and others will come to regret conference restructuring. They'll rarely if ever win their conference, and even they'll take on the label of "small school" at some point.

The BCS and ESPN will eventually work out for about 25 teams. It will have destroyed everything that was good about college football.

:iagree:

D@mn! You came to stay tonight!

Well put, CD.

Yeah, this is scary.

So what do you think happens to those second-tier schools you just listed? Do they stick around and be the beaten b1tches of the "Big 25" for the money or do the prideful schools actually roll the dice and try to form new leagues? Remember cable TV will probably be not the norm for viewing content anymore, this might be 20-30 years down the line. Maybe its just all internet, all the time.

Or what if those second-tier schools vote to have scholarships reduced? I have to imagine that's one of the only ways they will be able to truly level the playing field.

Oh, they'll all stay for the $$. Hell, any team in America would join the BIG just for the BTN revenue alone. The revenue from the BTN is more than our entire athletic budget.

If WMU were invited to join the BIG, knowing full well that they'd always be at or near the cellar, they'd join in a heartbeat. We get 50,000 seats at $45 a ticket, sellouts for MSU, OSU, and UM, along with BTN money and bowl revenue shared money.

Nope, they'll all stay and be OSU, UM, Wisc. PSU, and maybe MSU's bit$hes. No president can walk away from that money. As for the alums of those schools, I think they'll grow tired of it all, watch a lot of the games on TV, and those weekly sellouts will start to dwindle.

TV ratings will tank.