We are proud to welcome Will Garrett, Agency Sales Manager of Missouri Farm Bureau Insurance as our partner and sponsor. When you’re looking for in-depth analysis of everything happening at Mizzou, Monday Morning Thoughts is the place to go. When you’re looking for an in-depth review of your insurance policies, Will Garrett is who you need. Born and raised a Tiger fan, Will is proud of his hometown and takes pride in protecting his community, and the people in it. The time to prepare for tomorrow is today. Find Will in his office just south of Faurot Field! Click here to get in touch with Will and start the process.
1) I considered a couple of different directions to go this week with Ten Thoughts. For most of Sunday, I was simply going to post a bunch of links and bland information with absolutely no opinion. That was going to be my response to the blowback from the John Bol situation from Thursday to Sunday. I felt pretty good about it. It was going to be really boring, really safe and not worth reading. It was going to be my way of saying "This is what the board will be like if we're simply waiting for everything to happen before we share any information." I thought it would make me feel really good and like I had proven some big point.
Then I decided that was stupid.
I'm going to spend the first couple points explaining that thought process in the free portion of the thoughts (to include the people who like to come at me on Twitter but aren't ever going to actually pay for the site) and then we'll get into the rest.
First, the reason I didn't do it is because I was wrong (at least for Thursday) and when you're wrong, you should own it. In this business, yes, but also as a general rule. It's like I always told my kids when they were growing up. You're going to make mistakes. We all make them. If you just own up to it, we might be mad, but it won't last that long. We understand you're going to screw up sometimes. But if you follow up the mistake with lies or excuses, we're still going to know you screwed up and we're going to end up being angrier and the punishment's going to be a whole lot worse. So if I expected that out of a seven-year-old, I should probably expect it out of myself.
Bottom line, I ran with some information that turned out to be false. As much as you try to avoid it in this business, it happens. Hopefully it doesn't happen very often. But when it does, just own it. So I'm owning it. I was told on Thursday that Bol was committing to Missouri. I was not told probably or maybe. I was told he was coming. While I didn't go so far as to guarantee it, I certainly gave you all reason to believe it was going to happen. Because when I posted, I believed it was going to happen. As you know, it did not happen. By Friday morning, I suspected it wasn't going to happen. By Saturday morning, I knew it wasn't going to happen. So the initial information was wrong. I believed someone that gave me bad information. I'd really like to wrap this up by telling you it will never happen again, but it will probably happen again. Because...
2) Covering recruiting has never been more challenging. First of all, the kids don't talk to the media much at all anymore. They all have their own social media channels and they all want to make their announcements that way. There are graphics and videos for everything and that's how the kids communicate. In many ways, we are no longer covering the actual recruitments. We're covering the kids' social media accounts. We can hate it (and trust me, almost all of us do), but it's the way it is these days.
Throw in the current NIL landscape and how quickly things can change (this isn't saying Bol was going to go to Missouri and then switched because of a higher bid; I don't believe that to be the case here) and remember the fact that we're dealing with trying to predict what's going to happen with 16 and 17 year old kids who have agents and handlers and a million people in their ears and there's a lot of information out there, much of which is going to end up being inaccurate.
You can read that as an excuse if you want to, but it isn't meant to be. It's simply a fact. Our job is to parse through the information and to determine what's trustworthy and what isn't. That's the part I failed at last week.
3) The frustrating part from my point of view--and most of us in the media feel this way--is that predicting the future was never what the job was supposed to be. I know many people don't believe this, but the vast majority of people in this business want to be right 100% of the time. The term "clickbait" gets thrown around a lot, but most of us who do this aren't just trying to write or say things to drive traffic and spark debate. We'd actually much prefer to simply report things that are happening and be right about every single thing we report.
But the job has changed so much in the last five years. And ten. And twenty. The media landscape I grew up with, and the one I worked in for quite a few years, was one in which you reported what happened. Yes, you used unnamed sources sometimes and in covering recruiting, of course you're always going to be reporting on things as they unfold and those things are sometimes going to change. But none of us got into this because we can read minds and predict the future. We got into it to tell good stories of things that happened, not to try to guess what those stories are going to be before they happen.
The simple truth is, that no longer works. If this site was simply stories about what kids said on the record about recruiting, nobody would subscribe. You can get that anywhere. (Which is why I ultimately decided against writing a boring, bland version of Ten Thoughts with nothing but verified information and empty quotes). And so a growing part of the job is speculation and conjecture. And inevitably, sometimes that's going to end up making you look stupid. Looking stupid sucks. I try to avoid it as much as possible. Sometimes, it still happens. It probably will again.
The reasons for the changes are multiple. Mostly, it's what consumers of media demand. I've never heard anybody actually admit to watching shows like First Take or Undisputed. But more people are watching them than just about any other show. If they weren't, those shows wouldn't be popping up all over the place and the hosts wouldn't be getting paid millions of dollars. Our customers don't want straight-laced reporting anymore. They want opinions and takes and predictions. Nobody reads the media anymore to find out what happened. They already know. They want to know what it means and what we think about it and who's to blame or credit for it happening. So that's what we all do. Some enjoy it more than others. Personally, I wish crystal balls and futurecasts and such didn't even exist. But they do. And they're a big part of what you guys pay for. So we can choose not to participate or we can take the blowback that comes with the risk of participating. If we choose not to participate, we're not going to have much business.
The second reason is the general lack of access to everything. Media has never been more removed from the people we cover. That's recruits, it's players, it's coaches, it's everything. Just like the recruits have their own lines of communication to the fans, so do the coaches and players and teams. And more and more, those people believe they don't need the media to get their version of a story out there. But we still have jobs to do as well so we fill the void of actual information with the other stuff.
The final reason, as it pertains to recruiting, is social media and the drama that comes with it. Like I said above, there's a graphic for everything. Kids are making commitment graphics and top 12 graphics and here are my 57 offers graphics and even decommitment graphics. Last night, there was a self-produced video of an official visit for one of Mizzou's targets. Everything is now a production. It's not about the information. It's about the story and the social media drama. The kids are often accused of being attention whores when they do this (and not wrongly accused a lot of the time) but the reason they do it is because it works. They get that attention. Because it works, they talk to us less and less. I haven't gone back and looked, but between the 40ish players who committed to Mizzou last year (either high school or transfer) in football and basketball, I'd be willing to bet we had quotes from no more than ten of them.
TL;DNR version: Because people actually involved in the process so rarely talk to anyone anymore, getting accurate information is harder than it's ever been. That's not an excuse for not having accurate information. That's still our goal 100% of the time. But it absolutely doesn't happen 100% of the time anymore. Anywhere.
Enough about that. I thought it was worth saying and I'll move on now.
1) I considered a couple of different directions to go this week with Ten Thoughts. For most of Sunday, I was simply going to post a bunch of links and bland information with absolutely no opinion. That was going to be my response to the blowback from the John Bol situation from Thursday to Sunday. I felt pretty good about it. It was going to be really boring, really safe and not worth reading. It was going to be my way of saying "This is what the board will be like if we're simply waiting for everything to happen before we share any information." I thought it would make me feel really good and like I had proven some big point.
Then I decided that was stupid.
I'm going to spend the first couple points explaining that thought process in the free portion of the thoughts (to include the people who like to come at me on Twitter but aren't ever going to actually pay for the site) and then we'll get into the rest.
First, the reason I didn't do it is because I was wrong (at least for Thursday) and when you're wrong, you should own it. In this business, yes, but also as a general rule. It's like I always told my kids when they were growing up. You're going to make mistakes. We all make them. If you just own up to it, we might be mad, but it won't last that long. We understand you're going to screw up sometimes. But if you follow up the mistake with lies or excuses, we're still going to know you screwed up and we're going to end up being angrier and the punishment's going to be a whole lot worse. So if I expected that out of a seven-year-old, I should probably expect it out of myself.
Bottom line, I ran with some information that turned out to be false. As much as you try to avoid it in this business, it happens. Hopefully it doesn't happen very often. But when it does, just own it. So I'm owning it. I was told on Thursday that Bol was committing to Missouri. I was not told probably or maybe. I was told he was coming. While I didn't go so far as to guarantee it, I certainly gave you all reason to believe it was going to happen. Because when I posted, I believed it was going to happen. As you know, it did not happen. By Friday morning, I suspected it wasn't going to happen. By Saturday morning, I knew it wasn't going to happen. So the initial information was wrong. I believed someone that gave me bad information. I'd really like to wrap this up by telling you it will never happen again, but it will probably happen again. Because...
2) Covering recruiting has never been more challenging. First of all, the kids don't talk to the media much at all anymore. They all have their own social media channels and they all want to make their announcements that way. There are graphics and videos for everything and that's how the kids communicate. In many ways, we are no longer covering the actual recruitments. We're covering the kids' social media accounts. We can hate it (and trust me, almost all of us do), but it's the way it is these days.
Throw in the current NIL landscape and how quickly things can change (this isn't saying Bol was going to go to Missouri and then switched because of a higher bid; I don't believe that to be the case here) and remember the fact that we're dealing with trying to predict what's going to happen with 16 and 17 year old kids who have agents and handlers and a million people in their ears and there's a lot of information out there, much of which is going to end up being inaccurate.
You can read that as an excuse if you want to, but it isn't meant to be. It's simply a fact. Our job is to parse through the information and to determine what's trustworthy and what isn't. That's the part I failed at last week.
3) The frustrating part from my point of view--and most of us in the media feel this way--is that predicting the future was never what the job was supposed to be. I know many people don't believe this, but the vast majority of people in this business want to be right 100% of the time. The term "clickbait" gets thrown around a lot, but most of us who do this aren't just trying to write or say things to drive traffic and spark debate. We'd actually much prefer to simply report things that are happening and be right about every single thing we report.
But the job has changed so much in the last five years. And ten. And twenty. The media landscape I grew up with, and the one I worked in for quite a few years, was one in which you reported what happened. Yes, you used unnamed sources sometimes and in covering recruiting, of course you're always going to be reporting on things as they unfold and those things are sometimes going to change. But none of us got into this because we can read minds and predict the future. We got into it to tell good stories of things that happened, not to try to guess what those stories are going to be before they happen.
The simple truth is, that no longer works. If this site was simply stories about what kids said on the record about recruiting, nobody would subscribe. You can get that anywhere. (Which is why I ultimately decided against writing a boring, bland version of Ten Thoughts with nothing but verified information and empty quotes). And so a growing part of the job is speculation and conjecture. And inevitably, sometimes that's going to end up making you look stupid. Looking stupid sucks. I try to avoid it as much as possible. Sometimes, it still happens. It probably will again.
The reasons for the changes are multiple. Mostly, it's what consumers of media demand. I've never heard anybody actually admit to watching shows like First Take or Undisputed. But more people are watching them than just about any other show. If they weren't, those shows wouldn't be popping up all over the place and the hosts wouldn't be getting paid millions of dollars. Our customers don't want straight-laced reporting anymore. They want opinions and takes and predictions. Nobody reads the media anymore to find out what happened. They already know. They want to know what it means and what we think about it and who's to blame or credit for it happening. So that's what we all do. Some enjoy it more than others. Personally, I wish crystal balls and futurecasts and such didn't even exist. But they do. And they're a big part of what you guys pay for. So we can choose not to participate or we can take the blowback that comes with the risk of participating. If we choose not to participate, we're not going to have much business.
The second reason is the general lack of access to everything. Media has never been more removed from the people we cover. That's recruits, it's players, it's coaches, it's everything. Just like the recruits have their own lines of communication to the fans, so do the coaches and players and teams. And more and more, those people believe they don't need the media to get their version of a story out there. But we still have jobs to do as well so we fill the void of actual information with the other stuff.
The final reason, as it pertains to recruiting, is social media and the drama that comes with it. Like I said above, there's a graphic for everything. Kids are making commitment graphics and top 12 graphics and here are my 57 offers graphics and even decommitment graphics. Last night, there was a self-produced video of an official visit for one of Mizzou's targets. Everything is now a production. It's not about the information. It's about the story and the social media drama. The kids are often accused of being attention whores when they do this (and not wrongly accused a lot of the time) but the reason they do it is because it works. They get that attention. Because it works, they talk to us less and less. I haven't gone back and looked, but between the 40ish players who committed to Mizzou last year (either high school or transfer) in football and basketball, I'd be willing to bet we had quotes from no more than ten of them.
TL;DNR version: Because people actually involved in the process so rarely talk to anyone anymore, getting accurate information is harder than it's ever been. That's not an excuse for not having accurate information. That's still our goal 100% of the time. But it absolutely doesn't happen 100% of the time anymore. Anywhere.
Enough about that. I thought it was worth saying and I'll move on now.
