SoCalHoops College News

Weirdness Redux: Putting
An Oddity To Rest--(Oct. 18, 2000)

Last night we posted an article about a news report carried by The Sports Network, a syndicated wire service which is carried by a lot of large and small newspapers all over the country, and by many websites too (we've actually considered using their live "ticker" service on SoCalHoops. . . but we're going to re-think that after this one). 

The particular piece reported by TSN we wrote about was one which was posted and web-published on Friday, October 13, 2000 at 11:28:57 ET.  The TSN report stated that Louisville had "announced Monday"  that two players had been suspended for the 2000-01 season from the men's basketball team.  One of the two players named in the article was Caleb Gervin.

Now what we found weird, exceedingly weird,  about this report was that just about a week earlier, we had reported that Caleb Gervin had enrolled at Azusa Pacific University, and was going to be playing on the Cougars Men's Basketball team.  We knew that Caleb had attended Louisville last season.  We knew that he had been a Prop. 48 and as such had not played.  We also knew, at least as of Friday, October 13, 2000, that Caleb was no longer at Louisville, and was instead enrolled at Azusa Pacific here in Los Angeles.

Of course we found the TSN report odd.  We found it highly odd.   We said so, and we even tried to be somewhat lighthearted about it by joking that "Maybe someone should tell Bill Odell [the APU Head Coach] that his new recruit was suspended. . . . by a school at which he's no longer enrolled"   and then we added,  "Nah. . . why spoil the fun." A feeble attempt at wry humor, but an attempt nonetheless.

Well, it seems that some people just have no sense of humor, and we heard from plenty of those folks.  Some (including one guy on our SoCalHoops message forum) wrote to accuse us of writing the story in a "sloppy" fashion (actually he wrote: ". . . Your 'commentary" was sloppily written. It makes it sound like Uof L screwed up, not the Sports Network.").  This same fellow chided us by writing "A visit to U of L's sports site (www.uoflsports.fansonly.com--click on Men's Basketball and then News) could have confirmed that."    "That" being our sloppiness.  This message board poster then provided a link to the particular press release he referred to, archived at the University of Louisville's Men's Basketball site.

So we read the press release.  And sure enough, as we had suspected, the "news" was really old.  In fact the press release announcing the suspensions of Gervin and the other player had been first published on April 24, 2000. 

Ok, so we're not "neat."  We've even a little sloppy, we'll be the first to admit that we haven't cleaned out the closets or the rain gutters in more than a year. . .

But the fact is, we still don't know why   this "story" was reported by The Sports Network on October 13, 2000, more than 6 months after it happened.    We certainly don't (and didn't at any time)  assume that the University of Louisville had anything to do with the report (although for those of you out there who are conspiratorially-minded, we can dream something up).   And likewise, we know for certain that APU wasn't too happy about the story either.  (Not our story, but the fact that TSN screwed up). 

But in the interests of fairness, we thought we'd at least point out that our SoCalHoops message board poster was correct.  This is NOT "news."  It's old stuff, hardly worth repeating.  Gervin is alive and well and happily enrolled at Azusa Pacific where he will be an instant impact player.

But. . .  that still doesn't change the fact this story is still pretty weird. . . .

And what's even weirder is that the silly TSN "story" is still posted all over the internet (the link is to the OC Register, which subscribes to The Sports Network, offering it as a syndicated feature) as though it actually happened on Friday, Oct. 13 at 11:28:57 ET. . . but we now know better.

For what it's worth. . . .

 
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