More on NCAA scholarship penalties against WCU
The Citizen-Times didn’t pick up on the story until some days after the penalty was announced, and when the paper finally got around to it, its coverage was a little shaky context-wise, reading far along as though the penalties were for classroom performance. The university responded that the football APR score, which is lowered when players leave the program after recording substandard grades — or leave early at all — was an anomaly caused by new coach Wagner’s house-cleaning.
This seems plausible.
Of course it would’ve seemed more reasonable if the university had stepped to the podium and addressed the issue forthwith. Instead, WCU maintained one of its patented bad news full-silences, apparently hoping the penalty would pass without media notice. In so doing it hurt itself in two ways: it implied that the university doesn’t prioritize the education of Catamount athletes or take the NCAA’s efforts seriously, and it let the Asheville Citizen-Times frame the argument against WCU and level a harmful broadside — an elementary PR mistake.
Tags: apr performance, Asheville Citizen Times, catamount, keith jarrett, Western Carolina University
Related posts:
