Dickert calls Corso to apologize.
- Thread starter roses04
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While I appreciate CJD's intentions, no one in the sports media who runs their mouth deserves an apology from anyone defending themselves or their team/ teammates. Not only that, but you can bet that Corso does ZERO research on any team week to week so he's talking out of his ass more than most.
This interview reeks of Chun telling CJD to not burn the bridges that may still be paying us in the near future, which sucks because F ESPN and Fox.
This interview reeks of Chun telling CJD to not burn the bridges that may still be paying us in the near future, which sucks because F ESPN and Fox.
Well said by Dickert. I didn’t read it as much of an apology but to clarify any misunderstanding. He stood by his comments- That it’s BS WSU is being put in some bucket of nobody is paying attention. Simply not true and the numbers vet that out. This was more about nothing personal with Corso, and that’s fair. He knows corso has a limited capacity and was trying to make a quip and it came out wrong. It sure looks like we are gonna need ESPN to sell our value to another conference, likely the Big12, so you cant go to war with them as that’s possibly in process…but…it’s fair to point it out when they F up. And they did on Saturday morning.
Misunderstanding or not, Dickert played this perfectly. The initial indignation and rising to the defense of the team was the right move to the team and to the fan base, and it got us a minute in front of the national media. Doubling down at this point gains nothing, and quickly starts to look like picking on an old man. Calling to clear the air doesn't remove the positive response to the initial episode, it gives us another second of exposure, and makes him the stand-up guy who reached out.
Perfect.
Although, I also like the Leach "sanctimonious troll" approach.
College Football TV Ratings
College football TV ratings for the 2023 regular season, bowls, College Football Playoff and National Championship.
www.sportsmediawatch.com
Last week’s ratings. Better than most Big 12 games. Better than UWvCal. Better than Utah v UCLA.
Agreed. Dickert couldn’t get away with the Leach approach either because there’s only one Mike Leach. Indeed he played it perfectly and comes off as the adult in the room. And ESPN will probably keep a lid on any crap like that going forward.
Damn - the more I hear from this guy the more I like him. WSU really hit the jackpot by getting and keeping him. What a class act and what a great representative of our Cougs,
I don't like the apology on principle. Dickert said nothing wrong. I do like that he clarified he meant no disrespect which keeps this story going for another round of clicks. Controversy brings visibility to the program.
He should probably challenge Corso to a cage match. That’s the next logical move.
Your response shows yet another reason why you would never cut it as a head coach in a higher level league.
ESPN has huge influence over what happens to teams like WSU. We can't afford to piss them off too much just to be spiteful.
Dickert did a good job of saying that he respects Corso but also reiterating his frustration with the situation and the negative impacts on WSU, Pullman and student athletes. He proved that he was the adult in the room.
Technically he didn't apologize soooo there's that?
True, he did say he called to clear things up, he never did say " I apologize"
Exactly this. Words and phrasing matter but people fail to understand what they mean because they’re lazy, ignorant, biased or dishonest. Or they flat out lie to change the narrative. Dickert never said he apologized to the old fart. Period. It’s no different than crap websites like Awful Announcing lying by claiming that Dickert misheard Corso to warp peoples perspective.
And it got us in the headlines again. Any publicity is good publicity is a little over stated but this definitely fits in the good publicity category. Hell, ESPN may end up doing a feature on the situation on game day.
Rinaldi left for FOX and Gene Wojciechowski was in the latest round of layoffs. There would be no one to tell the story.
And they wonder why no one is watching CGD anymore...they stuck everyone with Pat McAfee who will make $85 over 5 years there.
How anyone can take that clown (McAfee) seriously is a complete mystery to me. I don’t get the goofballs and nut jobs they roll out: Stephen A Smith? Skip Bayless( possibly the biggest joke ever)? What’s the appeal?
The McAfee, SAS, Bayless, Shannon Sharpe contingent has ruined sports TV and TV in general. The best thing that could happen is they go away, forever.
EDIT: a word
We live in a world now where emotional, non-sensical ranting is more valuable than thorough analysis and thought provoking discussions. Its all made for cring-worthy television and its gross.... To the point I feel the need to take a shower after 5 minutes of watching that garbage.
No.... Its being reported that way and maybe you can draw the same conclusion based on Dickert's characterization of their conversation but the words "I'm sorry for...." or "I apologize for...." were never uttered during his detailed description of his call to Corso.
Bragging about being a thin veiled baby. Not surprising. If I was wrong as much as you are I’d be ignoring everyone too.
Dickert absolutely played this right. Right to defend the Cougs. Right to patch things up with Corso and ESPN. I predict we go from punch line last weekend to Gameday darlings the next. Great job Coach!
None this will ruffle ESPN's feathers one bit. Dickert took a throw away, garbled joke out of Corso's mouth and made it a story. If anything, ESPN is probably happy about it.
WSU coach Jake Dickert didn't backtrack from his comments on ESPN. He didn't need to
Sept. 27, 2023 Updated Wed., Sept. 27, 2023 at 8:48 p.m.
PULLMAN — Approximately zero people felt surprised to learn Jake Dickert called Lee Corso to set the record straight.
The same number probably felt surprised to hear that two days later, in his media availability, Dickert never said anything resembling an apology.
By now, we know the details: After Washington State took down Oregon State over the weekend, Dickert recalled that morning’s College Gameday, when the host Corso seemed to call the game between the final Pac-12 teams the “Nobody wants us bowl” — or did he say the “Nobody watches bowl?” Dickert heard the latter, which prompted him to unleash a postgame diatribe, criticizing ESPN — and Corso — for their role in dismantling the conference.
So even when Dickert shared the news of their Sunday phone call, relaying that he told Corso he “meant no disrespect” to him or the show, Dickert never said any of these words: Sorry, apologize, regret. On Saturday, he said “it’s well-documented what ESPN has done to try to get our league to where it’s at,” and on Tuesday, he did nothing to retract that statement — because he’s right about it.
In that way, very few expected Dickert to miss the mark on this one. That’s because he didn’t.
Let’s get one thing straight about Dickert’s comments, both the ones after the game and the ones during his availability on Tuesday: He was right, and he was right not to apologize. He stuck to his guns. He did not backtrack. Dickert made things right with Corso, because he understood the 88-year-old Corso’s scripted comments were not the disease but a symptom, then proceeded to redirect his frustration to those who deserve it most.
That, he made clear on Tuesday, includes a lot of people “mostly out of our control”: TV network executives and other college football brass who concluded the Cougars could not draw the eyeballs other schools can.
“The lack of clarity, based on the metrics and the real facts, is where my frustration really comes from,” Dickert said.
Well, let’s check out some of those metrics.
Most recently, here are the numbers from WSU’s win over Wisconsin back on Sept. 9: 2.28 million viewers with a 1.3 rating, the eighth-most-watched college football game of that weekend — stacking up well against games in similar time slots, like Texas vs. Alabama (No. 1), Texas A&M vs. Miami (No. 3) and Oregon vs. Texas Tech (No. 7).
On Saturday, when Washington State toppled Oregon State, 1.48 million tuned in, according to Sports Media Watch. That’s a lesser chunk, sure, but it topped games between the same teams who landed in other conferences: UCLA/Utah (1.32M) and Cal/Washington (1.16M).
Per a 2022 report from The Athletic, from 2015-2019 and 2021, national broadcasts televised 914 regular-season games that didn’t involve USC and UCLA (headed to the Big Ten), Oklahoma or Texas (headed to the SEC). Here’s the list of schools that eclipsed one million viewers, a number that TV networks value like gold:
1. Clemson (34 games)
2. Florida State (31 games)
3. Washington (28 games)
4. Oregon (26 games)
5. Miami (22 games)
6. Washington State (21 games)
For the icing on top, let’s throw in one more measure, average TV ratings for schools in the Pac-12 and Big 12 in the same time span:
1. Oregon (1.96 million)
2. Stanford (1.83 million)
3. Washington (1.73 million)
4. Washington State (1.59 million)
5. Colorado (1.49 million)
“The facts say people watch the Cougs,” Dickert said after Saturday’s game.
That they do. Dickert has been right in so many of these monologues. If there’s a better man to lead Washington State through this stage in school history, he must not live on Earth. He’s shown bravery in the face of danger, compassion for players when people in suits showed them nothing of the kind.
Here is about where others might chime in and wonder about Pullman and its remote location. It’s hard to get to, some say, which might explain why Wisconsin was only the second nonconference Power 5 foe to visit the Palouse in the last quarter century.
Know which place I’ve heard people sing the same tune about? Manhattan, Kansas, my hometown. Manhattan’s airport is steadily growing, but when most people fly in for Kansas State games, they fly in to Kansas City — a two-hour drive away. That’s even further than the 1 1/2 hours from Spokane to Pullman, and while K-State’s stadium seats some 17,000 more than Washington State’s, if the argument is about remote location, the Cougs are hardly alone in that department.
Plenty of college towns fit that bill. Starkville, Mississippi, home of Mississippi State, isn’t exactly near any major metros. Same goes for Iowa City, Iowa, home of the University of Iowa — a shade under two hours away from Des Moines. Heck, as an alum of the rival school, I’m not supposed to defend Kansas, but even Lawrence is a good 45-minute drive from Kansas City.
The dynamics of the sports at those schools aren’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison to WSU’s, but that’s all beside the point, which is this: Dickert is the man for this job, and as the face of a program that has gotten the rawest of deals, he has almost always chosen the right words.
He’s been a little cheesy at times, pie-in-the-sky at others, but for Dickert, it’s all out of sheer passion for WSU and the Pullman community. On Tuesday, he went on to talk about some of his players, from Cam Ward to Ron Stone Jr. to Brennan Jackson, and he mentioned that some day, he hopes to open his mailbox and see a Christmas card from them and their families.
Maybe lots of college football coaches around the country might say something similar about their players, but Dickert has done that while putting on a brave face for a school that desperately needs it. He hasn’t apologized yet. He doesn’t need to.
