UA Coaching Search: Nobody Knows Anything...

...Except Jeff Long and a few other elites in the higher ranks at the U of A. Everybody that thinks they have a scoop or have talked to a guy that talked to a guy that was in the McDonald's line behind Tommy Tuberville is WRONG! Truth is nobody knows a thing and generally speaking, these things never are accurately reported until the day before or day that they happen. Check through the recent history of major hirings, the story was broke correctly the day before or the day it happened. No press conference yesterday or today means no news. Everybody stand down.
Nobody wants to jump the gun but that appears to be what has happened. I know people that hunt, and they don't cancel hunting trips for any reason except an extreme emergency. Tuberville isn't coming out of that duck blind anytime soon and when he does, odds are he's going back to Auburn to coach the tigers. I'm not reporting one way or the other, I'm just gonna watch everyone jump out in front of this story too far, then come back with egg on their face when something else happens.
I will say this though, when you have multiple sources that are confirming the same information, as a reporter you have no choice but to run with it. Even if they are all giving you the wrong information, if you get those confirmations its usually a good sign that its true. I don't know any sources or anybody connected to Tommy Tuberville, Jeff Long, or Chancellor White. So I don't know where this onslaught of mis-information came from but I know that it must have been pretty reliable to those that disseminated it because they reported on it.
This thing is starting to get to me and in the end whats it all for? So you can put a promo up that says "we were the first to break this story." Fact is, nobody really cares who says it first or loudest. Viewers, listeners and readers don't care who says it first, all they want is the facts. When we start putting the pressure to be first over getting the story right, we fail ourselves, we fail our organization that we work for and, most importantly, we fail the public. First job here is to inform the public as to what's going on...I don't see why there is such a clamoring to be first just for a silly promo. When the guy is coming, we'll know who it is soon enough. Then we'll have plenty of time to talk about him, his staff and everything else. After all, the 2008 football season is still some 8 months away.
Nobody remembers who was first to report the major events in Arkansas. I have lived in this state my entire life, and I can't tell you who was first to report on the crash of American flight 1408 during that thunderstorm in Little Rock. I can't tell you who was first to report that Bill Clinton would be running for President of the United States. Nor can I tell you who first reported back in 1997 that Houston Nutt would be the head football coach at Arkansas. Nobody remembers who said it first because its not important. Being right, in my view, should always be paramount to being first. Problem is, everybody feels pressure to get it first to "crush the competition" in electronic media. And thats not just TV, I'm talking web, radio and even print to a certain extent but it is getting harder and harder to get a scoop for newspapers given the immediate impact that electronic media can have.
Here's what I would like to see happen. It won't go down this way, but this is how I'd like it to be: Lets all just hang out and wait this thing out, then when Arkansas gets a coach, we can start up the discussion. Until then, unless you know something (and none of you do) keep it quiet.