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Clemson trustees all but said they're dumping the ACC. You don't say you're looking if you're not pretty sure you're gone because it destabilizes the conference. It would be like saying your bank is insolvent on national TV without withdrawing your money.
http://www.orangeandwhite.com/news/2012/may/24/clemson-committed-acc-wou...
You guys should do a piece on this.
perhaps Dinich is consulting for TechSideline then
I'm not a lawyer, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but it sure seems like this whole post-season mess is getting closer and closer to collusion. I don't think the NCAA has anti-trust exemptions like the NFL, so I don't know if the ACC, Big East, and the other little guys could make a case in court or not.
I read an article (on CBSsports I think) that said the ACC and BE could threaten to withhold votes or tie up the NCAA legislation that would allow for more than one post season game, but again, I don't know if they would have enough votes or if the Power 4 would simply break away from the NCAA. This whole thing is a mess though, and I never thought that the idea of a playoff would have a lot of fans wanting to keep the BCS the way it is now.
Havent read her in years, havent clicked on espn.com in years (except when you post stuff here joe lol) and ive found i get upset about the sports media much less often. Like it says above there are literally hundreds of places to get sports info these days. You have to watch the channels though, they have such a high percentage of games its unavoidable as a sports fan. But yeah you guys are right the analysis across the board has been going downhill for years, smacks of bias, and in many cases borders on obsession (Farve, Lebron, Tebow anyone?).
I think Mrs. BCH said it best last winter while we watched teary eyed Herbie trash our program and the fact that we got the Sugar Bowl selection just because of our fanbase while simultaneously pounding the drum that Michigan should get in because of their fanbase; "Fuck you Herbstreit!"
I bought Chris Colston's Hokie Football Annual and was enjoying reading it last night. One of his stories feature Frank Beamer and much to my surprise, portions of it mirrors what HD wrote in her blog. Check it out if you have a copy and see what you think: pages 17-18. Could HD be guilty of plagiarism?!?!
BTW, Chris's book is great!!
but she is nowhere near the worst that ESPN employs for their blog network. As a diehard Denver Broncos fan, I mistakenly ventured onto the AFC West blog. There, I found the worst sports writer in history, Bill Williamson. He makes HD look like Nobel Prize winner by comparison. I won't defend her, but just know that we could do worse.
Like I said I would still choose to go like any other VT fan pretty much. I'm just hoping that the transition isn't as bumpy as I think it could be if we do end up going.
A PSU friend of mine took me to the Nebraska game this year. Somehow in one of our conversations about the Hokies I mentioned HD. He went off about how she used to cover PSU and how terrible she was siding with the "Joe must go" crowd. This was of course before all the Uncle Jerry shiz went down. I think his point was she has no reporting skills and runs with a few minority viewpoints and tries to make it her own.
The only good addition to ESPN since Pardon the Interuption was the 30 for 30 series, and even those have duds (Raiders.) Since then, the quality of their coverage of college football, college basketball, and baseball has gone downhill. Their NFL coverage is overkill (mostly to justify the enormous number of analysts they have) and caters to the casual fan. Even the shows that used to be interesting (the Hoge/Jaws/Kolber film study) or could be interesting (Gruden QB film study) have become schtick. Bayless, Stephen A, Woody Paige. Brutal.
And, no hockey, and no fishing. Bastards.
"I'm glad I don't have to care about and cite some championship that was won by a coach I didn't know 20 years prior to being born."
Duke as a sleeper team predicted by Heather Dinich. In other news, Jerome Bettis is from Detroit, OJ did it, Kate Mara will not make out with me, and Sarah Jessica Parker uses a quarter horse named Milly as her stunt double.
ESPN has become the king of trolls, like a really big version of the lame weekend sports radio guy who brings up "the best player not in the hall of fame" discussion because he is desperate for callers. Very few are good analysts anymore.
My favorite color guy was, is, and will be Bill Curry. Great X's and O's, and the appropriate balance of gravitas and perspective. It is brutal to watch all the analysts trying to work their schtick so they can be the next star rather than actually analyze.
There's some sort of "coaches we love to hate" theme happening on the ESPN college football blogs.
I never said there was a bias against Tech, or Dinich hated Beamer.
Best I can tell, her point is "fans" (both ACC and Hokies) "hate" the notion that Frank Beamer hasn't won on the biggest stage—a national championship.
The points I tried to make were: her post was stupid, she adds nothing of original substance to the coverage of the ACC and Virginia Tech, I will no longer read any of her work.
She's documented (complained about) how much she doesn't like covering a nationally relevant conference and it to me she was the "fans" in this piece and was lashing out.
Thank you. This is what I was saying above. They are doing a bit where they "hate on" different coaches. They are not singling out frank. Again, I am not a big fan of espn in general these days but people need to calm down here. Lol
It's not just that ESPN is doing a series on hating coaches, it's that they're going through every significant coach in the major conferences. HD's done a couple of stories on the topic already and while they're not that great, there's no bias against Tech or Beamer. Here's the article about Jimbo Fischer http://espn.go.com/blog/acc/post/_/id/39239/meet-the-accs-coaching-villain and here's one on past coaches http://espn.go.com/blog/acc/post/_/id/39290/leaving-in-a-lurch-acc
That's the problem with critiquing a story when you don't regularly read the source, you have no context. In fact in this particular article, she opens by saying there's no way to hate Beamer. I got the impression that she was fully aware that this was a reach and was writing it just to keep with the theme that her bosses gave her not to actually attack Beamer.
I don't love HD, but she keeps me on top of stories throughout the non-Virginia Tech portions of the ACC and I generally think her writing is unbiased and relatively complete, though obviously not without flaws.
just needs to show sports and nothing else. All their analysis and commentary is just crap. And Chris Berman is the absolute worst. Wouldn't mind if he got stuck in a well so we didn't have to hear all his stupid cliche nicknames for every single football player during the MNF halftime. Curtis "my favorite" Martin... Jake "daylight come and you gotta" Delhomme.... AJ "touchy" Feely... Sammy "say it ain't" Sosa... CC "splish splash, I was taking a" Sabathia...
Terrible.
is the single worst American Company that ever existed (ok maybe Phillip Morris was worse, but not by much). Don't get me wrong, I do eat and love some of their products (Easy Cheez, so delicious). But their whole existence is to take wholesome food and ruin it by adding preservatives and all sorts of other shit. And now, we will all get diabetes. God Bless America.
True story.
This has become ESPN's schtick in general, e.g. the douche that is Skip Bayless disagreeing with every point of any person that he is "debating" with that day. Any real story is broken by yahoo! or some other source and then repeated by ESPN. Growing up I loved nothing more than watching Sports Center and almost anything on ESPN, but now it just annoys me how much they just make stories up for attention. I support boycotting HD and ESPN as a whole.
I wouldn't eat it, but America is full of wonderous things that just don't exist anywhere else.
http://images.discountofficeitems.com/size/300/273/2db/b9bcea15ef7e3cfd8...
In America, anything is possible, even cheese and peanut butter. God Bless the Keebler Elves.
always.
IMO, the only reason she writes such crap is to run up her link count. The more folks clicks on the links to her 'stories,' the more she justifies keeping her job at ESPN. We all need to stop clicking on any links to anything she writes. That is all.
That is what I found to be so completely idiotic about the post. She talks about how much everyone hates that the Hokies keep winning and getting the shot at the big games but she completely glosses over the fact that every other ACC has essentially fallen flat on their face in big games also. She specifically pointed out VT's loss to Stanford in the 2011 Orange Bowl, score and all, but didn't both mentioning how Clemson did this past year.
Her only saving grace is that her opinions are so dumb and poorly supported that it drives site traffic through the flame wars and everyone posting about her lack of intelligence.

Well, in general we agree this is just a dumb article. The whole bit is stupid. ESPN can't have dead air, they've created their own enemy in that people want continuous content from them, even if the content is total crap.
As for the particular piece, I just don't care. They were supposed to come up with reasons why a coach would be hated so they did. A lot of what she said is true in terms of not winning big games, but to think that people "hate" Beamer for that is dumb. VT fans might be frustrated and other fans might talk crap, but I don't think they go so far as hating Beamer for that. Holier than thous at UVA and UNC might hate Beamer because he leads a school to victory over them and they can't fathom how a bunch of poor rednecks that are a lower class of people could have something better than they do. After all, daddy's money should be able to buy a better toy, right? So then Beamer must be dirty and a man of poor character and they use that logic to hate on him. But, in honesty, I actually kinda liked the article because at the beginning they noted how Beamer was a good guy who is hard to hate. Suck on that blue bloods.
But in general, the whole series is dumb and just a bunch of filler.