BHB: Puts the Media in a Dark Room and Locks the Door

By now we all know about the Texas Tech situation with Mike Leach putting one of his players in an electrical closet and shed on two different occasions. Now, it's time to put the main stream media in there with him.

Do you ever wonder why the newspaper business in losing millions of dollars a day? Nobody wants to read yesterday's news. We live in a world of "right now" and the Internet feeds that need.

So to get people interested, publications like the Free Press and others have to have an opinion or try to break a story. The Free Press did that with "Practice Gate" and I guess we will see in a couple of weeks if they were right or it was just bad reporting on a story that wasn't researched properly.

I personally have a problem with reporters trying to create news instead of reporting it, but that is a subject for another day.

I have two traditional media types I would like to put in the dark shed today. Kirk Herbstreit from ESPN and Drew Sharp from the Free Press.

Kirk on ESPN did a typical winners and losers, National Signing Day report on Sportscenter last night. First off, Kirk is a college football color man not a recruiting expert, so he really isn't qualified to have an opinion on recruiting.

Who's his top 10 in 2010 would have been a better question. His winners were the regular Florida, USC, FSU, and so on. His loser was surprisingly: Michigan. He thought Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez's class would be better in his third year.

Really? I usually think Kirk is a fair guy and doesn't let his OSU "homerness" shine through. Yesterday he did.

Let's look at the facts:

• Michigan took 11 players from his home state of Ohio
• Michigan won a big recruiting battle on NSD with Demar Dorsey a five-star safety
• Michigan class is rated #19 on ESPN rankings (it's now up to #14)
• Michigan also signed the top QB in the country when he enrolled (he has dropped a few spots since then)
• No other Big Ten team made any noise on signing day. In fact, Ohio State lost out on three major prospects in the last week and probably lost out on their top five or six prospects in the entire class.

So Herbie, you get a least three hours in the shed. I will also need your cell phone. On a positive note, you can burn the shed down when your done and write it off on your taxes.

The second person to enter the electrical closet is Drew Sharp. Raise your hand if you thought Drew Sharp was going to write an article on Demar Dorsey today? I assume everyone of you has their hands up. That's like predicting today is going to be a cold day in Ann Arbor.

Again, let's go to the facts:

• Demar was found not guilty for his past charge and another charge was dropped. Innocent until proven guilty right?
• Demar is a five-star safety that pretty much everyone wanted. USC, Florida, FSU, Tennessee, and so on. If this was a bad kid, those coaches would have backed off as well.
• Coach Rod said at his press conference that they do research on each kid and get feedback from everyone.
• He is related to Denard Robinson, a current Wolverine.

Drew's point was, why risk it? My point is, Demar not being guilty of anything (expect being a great athlete) doesn't deserve the right to go to Michigan? There is a risk with any kid, they could turn out to be Jake Long or make bad choices and lose out on a great education. The reward that he turns out to be a great player and an even better person is worth the risk in my book.

Drew, I assign you to a job in a dying industry. Good luck with that.

BTW: The Freep is going to continue to lose readership from the Michigan faithful if this continues. We have had more than enough.