Keep your eyes peeled this week. Graham might not have been totally wrong, just mostly
19 Likes
I’m ready:
7 Likes
I’ll happily recant my mockery and criticisms.
Big win for him tbh.
3 Likes
What did Graham say to begin with?
Just reports what he thinks without caring about making nice with UVA mucky mucks.
It’s a nice change of pace from Jeff White style stuff - which I also like.
2 Likes
That he was enrolling in summer classes
His stuff would be viewed as more fair criticism if 1) he didn’t report his opinions as fact 2) he was actually correct more often and 3) didn’t have such an obvious axe to grind tilt against UVA athletics.
His smartest guy in every room act wears pretty thin when his actual reporting work is lacking. You know why he relies on FOIA requests? Because he’s burned almost every personal relationship he has. I even think he’s at odds with Hootie at this point!
Edit: I should also say UVA should be more transparent in some areas. I hope with more solid footing regarding NIL and fundraising that they will be more open with fans and media alike.
14 Likes
Yeah this is what it is for me-- the opinion stuff doesn’t bother me even if I don’t think its in good faith (or well written) most of the time, and I say that as a Carla skeptic. Part of having a healthy college sports fandom is attracting a few cranks with platforms.
Where he drives me crazy is presenting his minimally educated guesswork and flimsy whispers as actual reporting. It’s actively misinformation a lot of time! The De Ridder stuff is a perfect example of that.
And hearing we’re scheduling something with Texas and not even thinking it could be part of the SEC-ACC challenge and offering that option in his piece just makes me think he’s kind of an idiot. It’s not like he has a space constraint on his basement blog.
7 Likes
To that last point, I think there is a lane within UVA’s sports coverage for someone to challenge our administration on certain things and not fall into the trap of being subordinates or constantly serving up softball questions. It’s fine to rock the boat a little bit, especially given how closed doors our operations can be at times. But like you alluded to, with Graham everything just comes across like it’s from a place of bitterness, and it’s hard to separate that from the opinions he presents in his articles.
6 Likes
Jeff is employed by UVa’s athletic department. Wouldn’t expect him to be anything less than Baghdad Bob.
2 Likes
This is a good sign!!
1 Like
lol Jerry “could there still be hope?!?”
4 Likes
My goodness. Guy is 10 steps behind these days. Been looking likely to imminent for weeks, and he leads the article with “Could there still be hope?”.
8 Likes
I wonder if Jerry or his source checked the NBA CBA and figured out that as a 22 year old international, de Ridder is automatically eligible for the NBA draft and there is no process to remove yourself from automatic eligibility besides no longer being an international (by enrolling in school and therefore changing your classification to domestic).
To be fair, this is kind of a weird situation where he’s autoeligible only until he gets NCAA eligibility. So it seems like there was actually some paperwork he filled out for the draft that he then withdrew. Nick Kalinowski had some tweets about it:
There’s no paperwork to declare for the draft for someone who’s autoeligible. I think he’s saying they prepared paperwork to withdraw from the draft, but I agree with the guy who responded that there is no paperwork to withdraw because it’s not permitted. There’s no process for it under the CBA.
But the NCAA came through in time to say he still had college eligibility, so he’s now a domestic with college eligibility remaining, so no longer autoentered into the draft.
I’m guessing he didn’t want to be autoincluded in the draft because it might affect his NCAA eligibility. If he was either drafted (unlikely) or undrafted and therefore a FA, he could sign with an NBA team at any time and I doubt the NCAA would want that.
Maybe the paperwork was some sort of letter saying the NCAA was going to grant him eligibility, so take me out of this draft. I doubt the NBA would go for that though. Bad precedent.
But I bet the next CBA addresses this particular situation in some way.
From what I get it’s just like Kalinowski said. They’ve known for at least a couple weeks that De Ridder would be eligible but I guess it’s not official until they do the full ruling and determine how many years of eligibility he’ll get.
He’s probably just kinda camping out with the trainer in Houston until they wave him in.
35 Likes
Transparent with who, about what? I would guess that those that stroke the really big checks are likely kept in the know.
1 Like
De Ridder is at UVA today, just visiting. Can’t enroll until his visa situation is worked out.
48 Likes