Kathryn had to work late the other night, so I decided to put a domain Gavin and I have had to work as a little experiment in news gathering. UCFinsider.com is a blog/news aggregator on our favorite college sports obsession.

The UCF/Orlando Sentinel sports staff stuff was (or is, depending on who you ask), for the most part, rather silly. It did get me thinking on a particular aspect of the giant media shift going on though, and that's how people gather and digest their news.

One of the lines that's been repeated by some fans and by a couple columnists at the paper is how badly UCF needs the Sentinel. If it's not for the Sentinel, "who else is going to cover you?". The amount of fans echoing the sentiment is rather slim, but it seems to be pretty popular amongst other newspaper columnists. The truth is probably in the middle, but thinking about how I gather my news on UCF, there is no one source that sticks out. The notion that if one paper decides not to cover a specific subject, it'll go unreported, seems incredibly out of date.

UCFinsider.com, for now, doesn't include the Sentinel. It's more of a test really and isn't anything more than that. I wanted to see if I could stay on top of the program thoroughly without feeling the need to visit OrlandoSentinel.com -- something I did quite a bit of last season. It'll still show up syndicated columns occasionally, but I'm cool with that. This is anything but scientific, and once my curiosity on the subject is satisfied, I'll likely add the Sentinel into the mix anyhow (The site is intended to be about all of UCF, not just sports).

So far? It's working really well. The site is probably listing about 20-25 UCF related links every day, none of them from the Sentinel. I'm finding the coverage from other mainstream newspapers to be very strong, well rounded and diverse. Both the Miami Herald and Florida Today have surprised me with great articles in the last couple of days. I want to leave the Sentinel out for at least the first game to see if there is decent enough coverage the next couple of days. It's against SC State, so if it works for that one, it'll undoubtedly work well for the rest.

The site automatically creates two posts per day -- one at 7am, and one at 4pm. It was tempting to make it ajaxy/real time, but this way it should fit into most folks work schedules a little less aggressively ;). It uses the same sources as Google News with the addition of UCFAthletics.com, Rival's free content, Scout's free content, UCFSports.com UCF Fan Forum ('hot' threads only), select UCF related blogs/fan sites, and select national level college football blogs. I plan on adding NCAAbbs.com's C-USA forum, YouTube, Social News conversations (if Digg's talking about technology created at UCF, I want to read it), and more blogs as I find them. I'll probably also start including information on UCF sports alumni -- Kevin Smith, Asante Samuel, Daunte Culpepper, Brandon Marshall, Mike Walker, Atari Bigby -- etc. I'll probably also try to make the design of the site suck less ;)

Any suggestions / comments? Let me know.

I've gotten enough questions about yesterdays post to warrant what will be a futile attempt at summarizing the drama between Coach O'leary and the Orlando Sentinel. My guess is that over the season this might become a national story (I don't think O'leary is close to backing down). I'll do my best but I'm sure I won't get it 100% (It would require me taking way to much time to write what will already be a longer than normal post). If anyone has any corrections or responses, which I'm sure someone will, comment below :)

Quick and dirty background

Basically, a UCF player died tragically during a team workout. The Sentinel, doing it's job as a media outlet, started looking into it. Keith Tribble, the AD, made some remarks downplaying the workout based on the information that he had. That information wasn't really accurate, and then the school had to back off of those statements. UCF made a mistake with this and admitted as much.

Sentinel starts writing articles saying that the player died from over intensive workouts (O'leary worked him to death, etc). Out of however many on the record depositions there were about the incident (I think I heard there are about 80), the Sentinel chose to use 4 anonymous sources that didn't match up with anything else. The comments didn't really match up to what else was known about the situation, but hey.. that's how anonymous comments work. They're either completely accurate, or you know, completely made up. You have to decide whether or not you trust the media. When it comes to the sentinel, lots of folks don't. I've been at enough events and then read about them in the paper to know that they like to completely fabricate things for fill sometimes. It's a dying business and they have papers to sell, I guess.

Anyhow, relatively soon after that the Sentinel writes an article interviewing UCF's old QB, who was a product of the Mike K era and never got along with O'leary. It's at this point most UCF fans feel the Sentinel turned sensationalist on the issue (keep in mind, a young man died. Not something to write sensational articles over). Basically, the tone of the article was that the old QB got yelled at a lot, proving that O'leary is a jerk (or, you know, a football coach, for anyone who's ever played a team sport), and that he is responsible for killing Ereck because of it. I think the line was something like "But Moffett has a life to continue living, Ereck Plancher doesn't." Something really offensive and over the line like that. For me, that's when my opinion turned against the Sentinel. If a football coach wasn't a hardass, he'd be an awful football coach. Trying to roll him under the bus in a sensationalist fluff piece, before the autopsy was even finished, crosses an ethical/moral line.

NOTE: I was going to link to this article, but can't find it on Google or orlandosentinel.com. The title was "Motivation different than Intimidation" and it was an interview with Steven Moffett written on April 12, 2008. The Sentinel, at the time, appeared to be deleting comments from the article. Now, the entire article is gone. Absolutely classless to launch an attack against UCF and remove any record of your own guilt. Most of the comments are still online here, read the reactions, (and sadly, ignore the childish trolls)

UPDATE TO NOTE: Danny pointed out that it hasn't been removed, it's been moved to the paid only archive which happens after 30 days. That's my bad. I had forgotten people were still trying to make money that way. ;) So much for capitalizing the long tail. 'Joey' posted a copy of the article below, if anyone from the Sentinel sees this as a copyright violation, let me know and I'll remove it.

Anyway, fast forward with more articles and opinions written that are anti-UCF on the subject (one saying UCF stiffed EP's family on the funeral bill, which isn't true). Basically their general sentiment was that UCF's silence on the matter means guilt (it doesn't, it means a legal team is telling you not to talk.).

Next thing you know the autopsy is released confirming sickle cell, which for the most part clears the school of liability, and makes the Sentinel look pretty stupid for jumping the gun.

Fast forward a little and there's a press conference with O'leary. A Sentinel reporter asks a relatively mundane question, O'leary tells them he's not going to answer any questions for the Sentinel until they clarify some errors that they made in previous articles on the subject. Sentinel has said in the past that they would if UCF/O'leary pointed out what those errors are. UCF/O'leary say that there was a 90 minute interview with the Sentinel already concerning these details and that it went unreported. My guess is that a legal team is telling UCF/O'leary not to offer up anything more. Again, that's not a sign of guilt, that's the sign of a good legal team.

The day after O'leary denied the Sentinel, something like 4 out of 5 articles on the front page of the sports section are anti-UCF. This is more coverage than the Sentinel has ever given their local 50,000 student university. The paper is attacking UCF for not informing Ereck's family of his sickle cell trait (which, under privacy laws, would have been illegal for them to do. Ereck was over 18.) The paper insists that it was controversial "matt drills" that killed Ereck (something the school denies were taking place when he collapsed), and the paper insists that O'leary is guilty of not taking proper precautions because of Ereck's 'condition'.

Now, maybe teams should take more precautions with players that have sickle cell trait. Anything to improve safety is okay by me (including getting rid of matt drills for that matter, just to be careful. My understanding is that the pros don't use them?). But not many (if any) teams do much more than whats already done, and that's probably relating to the fact that an estimated 7-10% of African Americans have sickle cell and a very small portion of them die in a workout from it (more people die from falling coconuts type of thing). These players are also informed of the trait via pre-screening and continue to play football at their own risk.

My Thoughts / Going forward

My hope is that UCF medical staff (and other universities) have learned where they can improve things to protect the lives of college players. I'd hope that the Sentinel can take an honest look at their coverage and realize that they should have waited for the autopsy to be finished before taking a position. Both parties have things to learn from this, but only UCF seems to be admitting it.

As far as Coach's stance on dealing with the paper, I think it's 100% within his right. The paper has, on multiple occasions now, suggested that he is responsible for killing one his players. Whatever happened was a tragic, unfortunate, somewhat freak occurrence that no one -- not the players, the coach, the families, the friends or even the fans -- should have to endure. "The Moffett article", as it's referred to amongst fans, proved to many of us the Sentinel's intent on sensationalizing a young man's death. They didn't lay on this criticism against FSU (Bobby Bowden *is* matt drills), UF or even USF -- all locally covered teams that have had similar occurrences. A freshman player died at UF from heat exhaustion -- something easily preventable -- back in 2001. I'm not even sure the Sentinel even mentioned it in between their "OMG UF is teh awesome!!1" articles. If they did, they certainly didn't mount a campaign against their coach.

So yeah. I gave a small amount more to the Golden Knight Club yesterday specifically in support of O'leary on this. It's not about the money, it's about the paper trail of support. At some point, O'leary is going to come under intense pressure to get this resolved. The Orlando Sentinel is the only game in town, and they're only laying off 20% at a time. They have at least a few more years left in them. When that pressure comes, it'll be nice for Keith Tribble and O'leary to point to letters, emails and donations all supporting the school on this. (and note: if UCF is found to have guilt in all this, I'll be the first in line to criticize their handling of it all.)

I also want to note that there are a lot more details to all this. Most of it can be read over in 'the dungeon', a $10 a month message board that's primarily composed of boosters and people associated with the UCF program. There's a strong sense of "what's said in the dungeon, stays in the dungeon" for obvious reasons. I've tried to keep some things vague out of respect to that, but hopefully this gives at least a little more background than what you'll read about in the Sentinel or listen to on Jim Philip's (who's uninformed opinions make for great radio but little else. Kind of like blog posts. I'm sure he'd tell you the same thing. ;).

Way to much for me to explain for this to make any sense to people outside the ucf circle, so I'll keep it brief.

If you're a UCF fan in complete awe of George O'leary's hardass stance against the Orlando Sentinel, call Kevin Miller with the Golden Knight Club and donate to show support. It doesn't need to be a lot, just a few bucks -- perhaps the money you're saving by cancelling your subscription to the Sentinel. ;)

Kevin Miller at 407-882-2871

Here's to hoping Florida Today hire's a ucf beat writer! ;)