Driving in to work this morning, I was flipping around between the various local sports call in shows. On WNSR, Greg Pogue and David Coleman fielded a call from a UT fan who felt the Nashville media gave Mario Moore a "free pass" when it came to not revealing the details of why he took a leave of absense from the team during basketball season. Moore has since come out and stated why he was put took time off and why he was suspended to start the season.
The caller kept going on at some length about how if it were a UT player, the full details would be all over the media and there would be many salivating over every sordid detail.
Pogue correctly pointed out about privacy laws and how it affected the entire Moore situation. And that had Moore not sought to defend himself by sitting down with various journalists in town and telling us his side of the story, we'd never have known what happened.
As I listened, I will admit the caller was not going to be convinced that there wasn't some kind of Vandy bias in the local media. I've noticed it a bit in the whole way that some media outlets that seem to act as if Vandy's doo-doo don't stink, but I honestly wonder how much of that is the little brother mentality that Vanderbilt seems to suffer from.
That said, I can see how the caller might feel as if Moore and Vandy got a free pass. (Not from Pogue and WNSR, per se.) During the height of the story's being part of the sports consiousness in Nashville, there was a certain other competiting morning show host that basically came out and stated he knew what Moore was suspended but it was too personal and we fans didn't need to know. I think that attitude of--well, I know but I'm not going to tell you, might have been what riled up this particular fan.
And I can see how you can follow the train of thought and figure that Vanderbilt is getting a free pass from the local media.
Honestly, I don't think they did get a free pass. But in the day and age of sports talk radio when we, as sports fans, think we know it all and can armchair quarterback every sporting event to death on the airwaves 24/7, I can see how we might start to feel as if we're entitled to know it all.
posted by Michael Hickerson at 3/31/2006 12:15:00 PM |
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