ESPN and other media outlets love to report on inappropriate behavior when schools get busted by the NCAA or more commonly by a select group of journalists. How about when one of their own violates ethical standards (and possibly NCAA regulations) by trying to recruit a player, perhaps the top recruit in the country, to come to his alma mater?

Assuming that he cannot claim ignorance with his typo, it is pretty clear that Burr, a 1994 graduate of the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse, was trying to recruit Nerlens Noel to play at Syracuse. While it was probably a joke in light of his favorite team having their dreams of a NCAA title likely dashed by Fab Melo being declared ineligible, at the very least it could be interpreted as unethical leading many to call for ESPN to punish, or at least reprimand, Burr for his tweet. The question of how the NCAA will respond to this is a little less clear as it depends on Burr’s affiliation with the school. If the NCAA chooses to come down hard, it could punish the school for Burr’s action particularly if he is a booster or maintains any active affiliation with the school. As for ESPN, which already deals with plenty of criticism regarding its objectivity, this latest incident certainly will not help.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2012 at 2:38 pm by nvr1983 and is filed under media matters. Tagged: fab melo, Nerlens Noel, syracuse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.