Perception? Reality? Not sure, but I think I can take a hint when they can't get the quarterback's name right (see Tuesday, August 24) ESPN College Football Preview
these ppl have to know the QBs for 117 Division I-A schools...mainly just the top 50 though...plus the VTech QB's name is Bryan Randall.... however, that link has been there for well over a week...u'd think they would have fixed it by now
Yeah...they do have to know 117 QB's (and I know that Bryan Randall will get his shot now that Marcus Vick is gone)...but the story IS ABOUT THE QUARTERBACKS. They have a repository of staffers and researchers. They have an internet connection (probably several!). They have rosters. They're doing GameDay here. Bet they'll never tell you about USC QB Mike Leinart.
i could probably name the starting QB for the top 25 teams in the nation and thats without every D-1 school in America sending me a media guide. There is no excuse for that sort of mistake.
i'm not trying to defend ESPN...they suck...many LSU fans (including myself) are just too sensitive about the lack of respect subject
Depends on how you define "too sensitive." The "lack of respect" issue is all about perspective in the first place, right? I don't care that they messed up. I find the "lack of respect" largely laughable, because there is one truism year in and year out: the experts don't know crap. But it's absolutely true that they would NEVER list Oklahoma's QB as Jeremy White or Georgia's defensive end as Donnie Pollack. I don't see the need to get hypersensitive about it, and I don't mean to fuel that fire. But if it's MY JOB to cover college football, and I'm writing a story about competing quarterbacks, you bet your ass I'm going to get their names right. I think the fact that it's a story about LSU says a lot about how little attention they gave it.
well is Marcus Randall the Heisman Trophy winner? Is Marcus Randall one of the top 5 players at his position...no, and he's not even the top 5 in the SEC while it's really lame (with a lot of emphasis on LAME) to not know the QB for the defending national champions, it's not like MR is a player the gets a lot of hype as it is
See, now you ARE defending poor research and easily corrected mistakes. You said you're not excusing them, but your posts indicate otherwise. Don't set up a straw man - of course Randall is none of the things you mention. That's not the issue at all. LSU is a high-profile team now, and it's obvious that someone wasn't doing their job. It may or may not be a log for the "lack of respect" fire, but it is - undisputably, inexcusably - shoddy work. It obviously wasn't intentional, but the fact that it wasn't caught means that they weren't doing their job. And you can excuse it away by even saying that "there's a lot of stuff on the page, etc.", but how many errors - typographical or otherwise - do you see?
It was one darn typo, every media outlet has hundreds of them everyday. It has nothing to do with respect.
I wouldn't say that it has nothing to do with respect, because there's an obvious lack of respect (or bias against LSU, or whatever you want to call it) in the national sports media. That being said, I also think it's not fair to compare it to a Matt Lienhart or Jason White etc., etc. b/c as has been mentioned, Randall isn't a high profile player. It's not like Randall is on anyone's Heisman watch list. It still is inexcuseable, but not surprising. It's not as bad as the typo's I saw of Matt Mauck's name in the national media late last season (and I saw more than one). There was some article at the time, I think on ESPN, that referred to him several times as Mike Mauck. Oh well. Maybe by the end of this season they'll at least get the first name a little closer than Bryan. Mack maybe? Martie? Markie Mark?
