Hoop Scoop

Trying to win the race to be first made the nice guy finish last when the 24-hour news cycle reared its ugly head.

Matt Painter heading to Mizzou was the soup du jour for sports pundits, especially those in West Lafayette, Indiana, and Columbia, Missouri, was all over the airwaves and Twitter feeds, with leads from covert sources and counter updates from both sides of the fence flying.

At about 11 AM Bernie Miklasz, one of the better reporters in the country and a guy that has repeatedly kept St. Louisans in the know about all things sports for decades, reported an unofficial official report that Painter was coming. It's now 5:30...and he's not coming.

Now, nobody knows whether Bernie's source inside the Mizzou athletic department was correct in saying that Painter had accepted the Mizzou job. Maybe Bernie got some bad information. Or maybe Painter was ready to come to Columbia, and then changed his mind. Maybe he never cast his lot with Mizzou and was always going to stay in West Lafayette. Only a few people will know for sure, and I'm going to go ahead and assume none of those few are reading this blog.

What we do know is that because of the Internet, specifically Twitter and messages boards on sites like stltoday.com, this whole mess became, well, a mess. Bernie and the rest of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch led everybody to believe that this was a slam dunk. Instead, for some people, this turned into a sloppy turnover. A guy that has years of credibility has now mislead a fanbase (one that, like most others, can become very rabid) and given away all those points he'd built up.

The Post-Dispatch even published a story called "Mizzou didn't steal Painter, it attracted him". The link now leads to this story. The story led off with a line about how people will look back at how Mizzou was able to get Painter to sign, as if it was already done. That is irresponsible.

To be fair, Bernie work today came with the caveat that nothing was official. But that's not enough. The Internet has made it so there is less accountability among journalists. Think about how this would have played out before the Internet. This morning we would have woken up and read a story about how Painter and Mizzou AD Mike Alden were to meet in Florida. Then, tomorrow we would have woken up to news that Painter was staying in Purdue. That's it and that's all. Simple and easy, nobody's reporting getting questioned, no fanbases taken for a roller coaster ride of emotions.

Now, I'm not saying Bernie necessarily did anything wrong, especially with taking into account the aforementioned points about us laypeople not really knowing went on behind closed doors. Perhaps the only concrete thing to come out of today's media maelstrom is that always being able to devour up to the minute sports media isn't always a great idea.

Tiger Tracks

There are Tigers everywhere.

There's been no zoo outbreak. Detroit's baseball team is not on a mid-season barnstorming tour of the East, and the most famous golfer on the planet hasn't been cloned and scattered around China. But still, I've seen my fair share of Tigers here in Beijing.

It turns out the representation of the University of Missouri extends much further than the 60 or so volunteers that arrived on July 2nd. I have stumbled across a number of people with connections to Mizzou, and I'm sure I haven't even scratched the surface.

Last week I was walking around the Olympic Green with some of my co-workers when we ran into a guy in a white floswimming.org shirt wielding a video camera. He asked us where we were from, we told him Mizzou, and he surprised us by telling us he was an '07 grad. It turns out it was Garrett McCaffrey, a former swimming teammate of two of our own volunteers, Allison Bennett and Kayla Bowcutt.

When me and some other students briefly met Cullen Jones (The Regroup, August 12) at NBC's Today Show, he asked us where we were from. After learning we were from Mizzou, he immediately asked if we knew Bennett Clark, another former Mizzou swimmer. It turns out Jones and Clark trained together over the past year.

There are several athletes competing this year that spent at least a couple years at Mizzou. Linas Kleiza hit a game-winning three in the waning moments of Lithuania's win over Argentina; Christian Cantwell won a silver medal in the shot put; Ben Askren will open up his Olympic campaign in the wrestling freestyle 74-kg qualifications on Wednesday.

But the connections reach out past the athletes themselves. I met Mizzou grad Dan Pierce, now a director of communications for Anheuser Busch, at a Club Bud opening ceremonies party last week. And let's not forget the no-doubt dozens of alumni journalists here covering the Games, including ESPN's Pat Forde, who is anchoring the Worldwide Leader's coverage of Michael Phelps. (Note to self: would tying an anchor, from a boat or the set of the Today Show, actually make a difference in any of Phelps' races?)

And let's not forget about the close-to 9,000 University of Missouri School of Journalism anniversary pins slowly permeating a venue, subway car or security line near you. I'm more surprised to find somebody without one of the pins than I am to see them hanging off ID lanyards. While Michael Phelps may break records and be known as the greatest Olympian ever, it's clear the University of Missouri is the most dominant force at the Olympics.