"Storylines"---a bit of a rant

[longtimefan]

I've disliked pre-determined "storylines " for decades, at least all the way back to Howard Cosell's pontificating intros to Monday Night Football games and World Series games. Howard would spend the next three hours either crowing about his prescience, if the game turned out as he had predicted; or attempting, through convoluted reasoning, to shoe-horn what was actually taking place on the field into his pre-game narrative.

Anyway, to get to the point--yesterday's game in South Bend:

The announcers kept harping on the relative youth of Notre Dame, and Brey mentioned (whined?) post-game about his boys playing against men. Now, losing Pfluger surely hurt them, but Gibbs and Harvey are both experienced players, and Mooney is no spring chicken. Besides which, I didn't hear a lot of excuses for ND's younger opponents as Brey wheeled 22 year olds out there for the
past 8-10 years.

On to a bigger point--SU's historic unwillingness to play on the road (all of New York State now considered "home"):
Gminski again brought it up during the game, and the AP story noted that the Orange was "unfazed by playing just their second true road game of the season". Unnoted was the fact that the 3 remaining undefeated teams have each played 2 road games, as has media darling Kentucky. Top 5 Tenn. has played only 1. Oh, and the Duke Zions have played 0, as in Zero, true road games.

To me, this insistence on repeating "talking points" is just laziness on the part of the media.

 

[malpearl31]

You’re 100% right, the lack of ‘true road games’ storyline is so unbelievably stupid. Take Duke, for example. You know how many true, non-conference road games they play this year? Zero. In 2018 they played two. In 2017 and 2016, zero true, non-conference road games each season. In 2015 it was again two - but in 2014 and 2013 Duke again had zero each season. So that’s a total of 4 true, out-of-conference road games in the last 7 seasons... so what? Who cares?

(And for the record, Syracuse had 9 true road games over that same time period.)

 

[pfister1]

No true road games.....#Actual_Fake_News

 

[hoopsupstate]

Is SU really old? OB, Hughes, MD, Sidebe are sophomores. Carey and Buddy are freshmen. Battle is a Junior. We have two seniors in Howard and Chucku. That’s like rocking the cradle when compared to what ND usually puts out on the floor.

 

[JOC44]

On talking point #1, the Notre Dame announcers had it right when they interviewed Brey after the game. They basically said that ND’s program is predicated on being an older, experienced team, and this year they really aren’t. To me, that’s a fair point. But to just say they’re young, when we’re basically as young, is a lazy point. And Gminski is basically worthless in general.

 

[DNABB5]

Well duh it is really hard to schedule a "true road" game at this point as ESPN / CBS Sports already branded the "any game in the western hemisphere is a home game for Syracuse" narrative.

Seems obvious cause effect guys come on.

 

[Shooter]

Seth Davis said on CBS last night that coach K was a 'scheduling genius' for not playing any road games so far