Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Morning Six Pack: January 22, 2013

What goes better with breakfast than these six cool, clear and crisp college football stories from around the country?

Clemson-Georgia shift not likely

The USA Today reported Monday that Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney believes the 2013 season opener with Georgia could be moved to Labor Day night.

No luck for Lutz: Auburn tight end Lutzenkirchen unable to play Saturday

He hasn't played football in more than three months, and this weekend's Senior Bowl will be no different, but Philip Lutzenkirchen is not bitter.

Recruit calls false Irish visit 'misunderstanding'

Georgia running back recruit Stanley Williams (Monroe, Ga./Georgia Walton Academy) said a recent report in which he said he had visited Notre Dame last weekend was "a big misunderstanding" and that he did not visit the South Bend, Ind., campus.

Butch Jones, Vols defensive staff visit Vonn Bell

Knowing there is a lot of ground to make up in a short amount of time, new University of Tennessee football coach Butch Jones found an unusual way to make a big impression on Ridgeland High School’s All-America safety Vonn Bell.

Alabama coach Nick Saban says Chip Kelly will 'do just fine' in NFL

The two coaches talked for a while on the sidelines at Senior Bowl practice Monday.

Quotable:

So where do we go from here?  So many supporters seem to be throwing up their hands, as if such situations are inevitable.  "What are we supposed to do?" they ask. "Demand to see the body?"

No, but neither are we supposed to give up and accept that factual errors are inevitable. David Griner, writing for the Poynter Institute, uses the response from "This American Life" and Ira Glass, when a story about injuries and abuse at an Apple factory in China turned out to be false.

What we have seen instead falls far short, and we need to strive to be better than that.  Journalists are supposed to skeptical, not cynical.  We are supposed to have our B.S. meter fully engaged, regardless of the source.

And that is one factor here: The desire of all involved to believe the best about Te'o. That was one of the most scathing indictments of Thamel, by Josh Levin of Slate. Many more in the media are guilty of wanting to believe the best about Te'o, so that they unfairly dial down their B.S. meter.  The word for that is "bias."  Would they have been so trusting toward an SEC football player?

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