Outside The Lines

[Deckhead 6]

Anyone able to pull up the article about crime and the football program at AU? The show featured Fla and Fla St but said u could pull up the other schools in the "investigation" online but I have not been able to pull it up. What's yalls summary?

[younggun 14]

The schools involved in their "investigation" were: Auburn, UF, FSU, Mich. St, OK St, ND, Missouri, Oregon St., A&M, and Wisconsin.

As far as the report goes, it was long, it was from ESPN and well, I didnt want to read it. there was a graph that showed 3 catagories: # of criminal incidents, # of criminal incidents involving athletes and # of athletes involved. Auburn finished with the 2nd lowest totals in all 3 catagories behind ND. There was, however, a footnote below the graph stating Auburns #'s may be off due to youthful offender status sealing the files(18-20yrs old still qualifies).

I guess the conspiracy theorist comes out when ESPN is involved and i guess with all the arrests Bama has had over the past year, why werent they involved in the "investigation"? Never mind...I already know the answer to that.

[Randman5000 4,233]

Link:

http://espn.go.com/blog/ncfnation/post/_/id/111507/auburn-records-make-athlete-crime-comparison-difficult

[Randman5000 4,233]

Definitely in the spin zone. Tried to say the numbers were not a true comparison.

Stories of Eric Smith and Ricky Parks profiled.

[JoeBags7277 734]

Hey look! ESPN is doing another hatchet job on Auburn! Everybody panic!

It's sad, at this point. They (or certain elements) have had it out for Auburn since the Cam saga ended not as salaciously as they'd hoped. With all the recent off field issues at Bama, one would think it would make for better tv if they'd been profiled.

[Randman5000 4,233]

Hey look! ESPN is doing another hatchet job on Auburn! Everybody panic!

It's sad, at this point. They (or certain elements) have had it out for Auburn since the Cam saga ended not as salaciously as they'd hoped. With all the recent off field issues at Bama, one would think it would make for better tv if they'd been profiled.

yes, but unfortunately we are perceived as a dirty program that is getting away with things. Too much bad press for our team since Cam. Our storied run, despite the coming up short, helped reverse some of that press .

[AU-24 3,108]

I simply can't believe the footnotes to AU's youthful defender status and the notes on: Eric Smith and Ricky Parks.

Could they possibly be anymore biased against Auburn? Plus, as has already been pointed out; why was UAT left out of the investigation?

[passthebiscuits 6,866]

Pitiful excuse for journalism. Otl and espn just love to bite the hands that feed them. As for how it affects auburn, it's never bad to be the next to best on every graph behind notre dame (whom espn is suing since they didn't release records.) why not UAT? Why not texas (but instead tex a and m)? Why not michigan (instead msu) where is Oklahoma and Oregon on the list instead of their less $$$ rivals? I think that shows the bias here.

[mcgufcm 4,107]

Whether they were biased in the selection or not, it's actually good journalism and good statistical analysis to point out distinctions in the data collection process. State law on sealing records can be very different state to state so I'm not surprised they had different records available. If I'm guessing, the Auburn number is skewed low by the City's non-disclosure of a suspects identity without a subsequent arrest (the PD all but admitted there were other football/basketball suspects without arrest, which is something this study was trying to quantify) and Alabama's strict sealing of youthful offender documents (for first offenders). The latter also definitely compromises OTL's ability to determine the number of repeat offenders (since the first offense is generally sealed for 18-20 year olds in Alabama). They have to point out those differences as a possible (even likely) explanation for Auburn being far lower than the other schools.

Also, the Ricky Parks story cuts in our favor. That was reported as evidence that Auburn PD is actually over-eager to arrest Auburn players (as opposed to protecting them as is alleged in Gainesville and Tallahassee).

[AUTUmike 79]

I guess they were trying to be kind of representative, but how you exclude Alabama, UGA, and Tennessee from this list, I don't know.

[1TexasTiger 55]

Because those schools have paying fan bases that by in large eclipses that of ours. Because journalism is a business and you get the fans from the big schools to click, open, buy, subscribe, etc by linking the name of the cross state rival.

[gAUlf 1]

What is humorous in the article is that they are trying to expose cover ups by the police in big time athletics. Yet they do us a favor in saying atheltes here feel they get targeted more by law enforcement.

The only thing they have to stand on (which isn't much) is the Eric Smith assault case. And from what I understand from first hand accounts is the "victim" got precisely what he needed.

Just another case of bspn claiming there is a problem without any proof or evidence.

[mcgufcm 4,107]

I'm confused. They did provide proof, in the form of statistics, to back up a hypothesis of bias in favor of athletes. Are we saying they lacked any foundation for the article simply because Auburn was selected, and ESPN noted collection issues on the Auburn data? Good grief people. You may not like ESPN, and I suppose we can speculate that they selected the teams they selected based on bias. Even then, you have to admit it's an interesting study, and you can't come up with any way to allege they were unfair to Auburn in the subsequent articles. They show us as easily the lowest of all schools in the study. They explain some of the data collection issues that could have an impact on the numbers. They provide both positive (Ricky Parks' claim that Auburn athletes are targeted) and negative (Eric Smith's assault accuser's claims) commentary from people with a perspective on Auburn PD's view of Auburn players. How is that biased? Or even damaging?

[passthebiscuits 6,866]

It's biased due to lack of transparency as to how the schools were picked in the first place. As mentioned earlier, why the smaller schools in the state and not Texas, Alabama, Michigan or Oregon? The point of the article is a hit piece against athletes being protected by their law enforcement. While auburn is the second lowest, we have a nice asterisk right next to us that lets them conjecture that we'd be just as bad if the hick state of Alabama would let them see the data. We still have 5% of our athletes charged with crime. That's not good. What's miami's number? Oh they're not included, why?

As a doctor the analogy id give is this:

Headline: People on aspirin were found to be 90% more likely to have a heart attack than people who didn't! Maybe you'd have some data and fancy charts to show it. Now maybe those that had a heart attack had risk factors that led to them being on aspirin. Maybe they smoked, maybe their cholesterol was awful...whatever. But that's not what the average reader will think. That's bad research and I'm sorry the espn piece is bad journalism IMO.

[mcgufcm 4,107]

But that's not analogous.

First, I'd point out that I admitted there could be bias in the initial selection, but that doesn't mean there is bias in the data collection or post-study reporting. To repeat, Auburn is cast in favorable light by the actual data. ESPN notes the data collection issues and provides alternative impressions of how APD and AUPD treat players. That's not bias.

Second, as for your analogy, the proper medical analogy would be selecting only people from a certain geographic region then ignoring the effects of aspirin on the non-selected group. The other factors portion of your analogy is basically what ESPN did by noting collection issues at places like Auburn and Notre Dame and by providing two post-study narratives (one: police and DAs let players off easier; two: police target athletes for lesser conduct).

The average reader will impute his own biases (like AUFamily readers do with any piece that ESPN writes, for example). So yeah, they'll see that Auburn was part of the selected group and infer that Auburn was doing something wrong. Now, that's not what the data shows or ESPN implies. They were simply selected for study. That's it. The actual results of the study show Auburn players are involved in fewer incidents and receive very similar treatment as other arrested college kids. That's what the data shows. ESPN correctly notes that APD's rule of not releasing suspect names without a subsequent arrest likely skews the data. They don't speculate that Auburn would have been as bad as UF or anything like that. They note the data collection issue and move on. I don't understand why that bothers people so much, but oh well.