Miller Staying At Arizona And A Quick Rant On Journalism Ethics

Image from midwestsportsfans.com.

Add ESPN980 to your list of unreliable news sources. Via Arizona Athletic Director Greg Byrne, Sean Miller will stay out west, and will not become Maryland’s new basketball coach.

As someone who had Miller as his dream candidate from the get-go, I’m pretty upset. Not at Miller, mind you – the guy made the best decision for himself and his family. I’m upset at ESPN980 for irresponsible reporting.

It seems to me this is a similar situation to the football hiring process. It seemed certain that Maryland would hire Mike Leach, an exciting candidate with a great track record. Then, one news organization reports it’s a done deal and a lot of people run with it. It turns out the report was false, and people got excited over something that didn’t happen.

I may be unfairly singling out ESPN980 here, but here is what I honestly think could have happened in both cases – since the news seemed like it would definitely happen, they reported it early to get an advantage on their competitors. Unfortunately, today’s news environment values timeliness over accuracy, and that is especially true in the online media. I think these guys thought they could get ahead of their competition with news reported in advance, and just decided to run with it.

Obviously, I can’t prove any of that. Honestly, I may just be angry about how it all turned out and am simply taking it out on ESPN980. The fact remains only two things are possible – ESPN980 either had a really, really bad source or they ran with less-than-great information (if they had any at all) to try and get increased pageviews and get ahead of the story. If it’s the latter, and I really, really hope it isn’t, that’s unacceptable, unethical, and pathetic.

Either way, ESPN980 is not an organization you can trust with breaking news now. Sorry, guys, even if you thought this was real, you didn’t do the proper research to ensure that was the case.

Congratulations to Arizona on retaining a great coach, and we’ll see where Maryland goes from here. Earlier it was reported Jamie Dixon wasn’t a candidate, so that leaves Jay Wright, Mike Brey, and Shaka Smart (!) as guys that have been talked about.

Ultimately, I guess it’s just a lesson to me. Welcome to Twitter, Pete. Again.