Former Sports Illustrated writer
John Walters took to Twitter on Sunday night to weigh in on the investigative series on Oklahoma State. Here are his tweets, separated by 140 characters.
"I'm finally getting around to devouring SI's 5-part Okla St. series and, as someone who covered CFB for nearly 2 decades, I'll say this...
... the worst crime of the series thus far? It's boring. So far it's a bunch of guys we've never heard of sharing he said/she said stuff...
...and even then, professors names are not noted. I don't doubt that a lot of this happened...as it happens at a number of FBS programs...
but I also don't doubt that the infusion of T. Boone Pickens' $$$ had a lot to do w/Oki eSt's improvement. SI could've done same story on...
Oregon, but then y would u wanna p--- off a major advertiser like Nike? U wouldn't. I'll keep reading, but thus far this is crap journalism
The premise of the SI series10 was, purportedly, How did a school like Oklahoma State get so good so fast? And then SI spends 10,000 words..
...NOT answering the question. OSU improved b/c of $500 handshakes and no-show classes where u get a B when u deserve an F? Then how come...
the 2 to 3 dozen other schools (at least) who do that didn't improve like that? And might I infer that this is how Stanford improved so...
quickly since its crap years 2006-07? The cause-effect reasoning here is childish. The anecdotal evidence has no basis on why OSU got...
better. Did they find a guy who said, "While I was being recruited I was told I'd be getting paid based on my play?" I don't think so. So..
...how did those $500 handshakes have any effect on how OSU recruited, b/c recruiting and coaching is how a program improves.
You know what would have been a far more interesting read, make the same exact point, and have taken less time for SI to do? Show up in...
Tuscaloosa in July (all the Tide players r there) and just do a photo gallery of the starters and the cars they drive. Then start....
...asking questions. Instead, SI did a very broad story on 1 program, with characters most of us have never heard of, and in most cases...
could not produce indisputable proof of the claims. I believe the ppl, for the most part, but that's hardly the point. This kind of...
...stuff goes on at many big programs. Find me a real smoking gun. Tell a tighter story. And if u r going to do this all on OSU, SHOW ME...
how what went on here translated into wins on the field. Because you haven't, SI. You haven't.
As stated before, I know many of the ppl behind and in front of the scenes at SI (one or 2 of them may still even like me). This was an...
...epic fail considering the resources devoted and what was produced."
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