Reporters ethics?

why certain violations are ok, but others are not?

Why was Jimmy V villified, while Roy Williams gets away with everything?

Former players playing games with recruits, practices during exam week, Coaches watching scrimmages during the summer are all ok as long as your Jersey’s are a nice little pastel, baby blue.

Let’s not play favorites NCAA. If you break a rule, you should get in trouble, right?

What he’s done is career suicide. No self-respecting coach, even if he hated Calipari, would talk to the Troll anymore. Not even to point him to the nearest lavatory. When the other coaches find out that HE called the NCAA about Memphis and the booster, their next logical thought should be, “Gee, what’s to stop him from going straight to the NCAA about my program.” I use that thought because of two reasons:

1. What if Calipari had no REAL CLUE that the CEO was contacting recruits on Memphis’s behalf? The same could be said for many other coaches who can’t control what individuals outside the program do. Along comes Goodman and says “Hey! Gillespie is letting the Lakers girls entice Kentucky recruits at the Camps, I’m gonna tell the NCAA!!! Instead of going to Gillespie and saying, “Dude, can I get some of that?” or “Don’t you think the NCAA would frown on that?”. Instead of going to Calipari or the Memphis AD and saying, ” Hey did you know that….?” he chose to go the the NCAA and his blogpost first.

2. I am sure that most coaches aren’t actively “cheating” to get/keep a quality program going. They may use loopholes to their advantage but I feel that’s more a result of a lack of communication and coopreration by the NCAA with it’s respecitive member institiutions. What if a coach finds out that one of their personnell or a booster is not playing by the rules? A “proper” coach would report the violation after telling the offending parties to cut the crap. Next, a “smart” coach would find a FRIENDLY REPORTER to put on the media spin that’s necessary early. Goodman is not going to be considered any coach’s FRIENDLY REPORTER after this.

What an ultramaroon! I’m sure he thought he was doing the “right thing” but in reality he should have contacted Memphis first. If he really has it in for Calipari he would have demanded an interview and watched in joy as Calipari squirmed under the heavy questioning, then gone to the NCAA. As it is, he’s burned his bridges and gotten no satisfaction.

This is kind of troubling to me. I mean, if my reporting turned up evidence that somebody was a murderer or had committed a violent felony, I might report it to the proper authorities. But for a sports journalist to report a potential violation to the NCAA - particularly when he or she is likely to report on it anyway - seems to be going after an institution that has not done anything unethical and putting yourself in too adversarial a role.

There are a lot of situations reporters run into that aren’t described in journalism class or in some secret manual. (We’re all liberals, after all; we can’t be that organized. ;)) But this seems to me to have crossed the line. Particularly if you’re known for feuding with the coach.

I’ve been thinking about the Goodman/Memphis situation since I read Tru’s post. Even though I have a healthy dislike for Goodman I’m not sure I would have done anything drastically different, except …

I would have called the Memphis AD, or Calipari, and informed them of the story I was writing, and asked for a statement. I would NOT have held the story, but I would have given them an opportunity to respond.

Goodman doesn’t seem too worried about his perception with other coaches because he writes about the situation in his column. But perhaps he should be.

By the way, I don’t believe FedEx’s Pres. even one little bit. He knew he wasn’t supposed to call Gaddy’s mother. He’s a major booster for that program, and those guys ( and gals ) have been informed about what is legal and what is not. He was probably asked by Calipari to make the call.

I expect the NCAA will not allow Gaddy to attend Memphis, which is fine with me. But, Brand should keep an eye on what’s going on down there. Does anyone really believe this is the first time that Calipari and Memphis ( or Memphis boosters ) have done something like this?

In regards to “has a reporter ever done anything like this before” question: The HL ran a series of stories back in the early ‘80’s about booster payoffs to UK basketball players. If memory serves, they had something like 26 players on record ( they didn’t use the players names in the story ). When the NCAA came to town to conduct their investigation no one would talk. That resulted in the NCAA issuing some type of “reprimand” to UK.

There were many, many people upset with the HL. They lost more than a few subscribers, but I always felt that if UK was doing something illegal ( they had to know about the payoffs ), I want to know about it, and I want it stopped. I really never had a problem with what the paper did.

Why is Rose’s mom working at all though?

he should be taking care of her at this point.

I can see that happening.