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Yesterday morning in his daily The Morning Line in which he continuously refers to himself as ‘TML’, Paul wrote a rare response to the probably hundreds of UC fans who voiced their anger at this piece of negativity. The tone of his rebuttal was not so rare. He honestly comes off as snarky and arrogant, looking down upon his readers from his ivory tower. Even moreso, Paul like so many Cincinnati Enquirier contributors, is flat out wrong. Here’s the segment in its entirety:
"AFTER I suggested in Sunday’s TM column that UC’s best football days could be behind it, I took a few broadsides from the lunatic fringe. They suggested I (1) Hate UC and (2) see (1).Ah, c’mon.Yes, it was hell lying on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale on New Year’s Day. I don’t know how I lived to tell about it. It was equally rough walking Bourbon Street on New Years Eve. (Actually, that was a little rough, but not until the next morning.)As always, I root for me. If me gets a paid working vacation to south Florida and New Orleans in successive years, that’s a very, very good thing. I want the Bearcats to win early and often.But I’m not a fan. Until UC starts paying me, I won’t be. And if there remains a BCS after the 2014 bowl season, there is no way UC is a player in a revamped Big Least. Two schools who have been mentioned as possible additions to what remains of the Least are ECU and Navy. ECU lost 56-3 Saturday, to Houston. Navy lost 63-35 at home to Southern Miss.Nice league.The point of the column was, UC is not in any kind of financial shape to chase the pipe dream of joining the Big 12. That assumes the Big 12 would have them. They’d have to pay at least $5 mil they don’t have to leave the BL. They’d have to play all their games at PBS, and show they could come close to filling it. They’d be competing against the likes of TX, Okla and Okla St. with a war chest a fraction of those schools. TCU never thought twice about paying the $5 mil to leave a league it never played a down in, and TCU is a poor relation to those schools.UC wants to stay in the BL because it can’t afford to move up and away and because it’s still a very good basketball league. But it’s hard to see the return to the brief Glory Years of Brian Kelly.Are we good now?"
Yea, what a jerk right? What’s worse is that he’s also narcissistically insisting that because UC’s finances don’t compare to Texas or Oklahoma that they shouldn’t be a candidate for Big 12 expansion. I don’t know how your brain works, Paul, but expansion is by no means driven by athletic budgets. Since he’s been living under the Enquirer-rock for most of his writing career, he fails to realize that things like media markets, research dollars, and academics make a good expansion candidate. These are all obvious to the rest of us but clearly goes right over his head. The University of Cincinnati is a top research school on the cusp of AAU admittance. In addition, they allow the Big 12 to enter not only the 33rd highest media market in the country (Cincinnati) but also Columbus and Cleveland.
Secondly, he’s dismissing ECU and Navy as Big East candidates simply because of their records this season. Doesn’t he understand that Navy is a national brand and would broadcast Big East games worldwide thus warranting a higher Big East media deal? Doesn’t he get it that East Carolina is in the heart of ACC country, boasts a 58k+ stadium, has a rabid fanbase that packs it regardless of the opponent, and competes for C-USA titles on an almost annual basis? No, he doesn’t. If the PAC-12 was worried so much about wins and losses they wouldn’t have gone after Colorado, which provided the conference with a new media market in which to garner their $3 billion TV deal. Paul misses this fact.
Finally, I’m okay with Paul not being UC fan. As a paid ‘columnist’, he should be objective in his writing. But the problem is that he can’t see the forest for the trees. He focuses on specific negatives about Cincinnati, which are minimal, in this conference realignment environment without looking at the obvious positives that aren’t being overlooked by more ‘in touch’ writers. You’d think that living within the city of Cincinnati he would talk about both aspects that the university brings to the table instead of just the ones working against them. But I guess that’s too much to ask.
Don’t worry, Bearcats fans. Cincinnati is a strong candidate for a Big 12 invite for the reasons I listed above. But if UC remains in the Big East, additions of ECU, Navy, Houston, UCF, etc. would definitely bolster Big East football in spite of the conference’s leadership to keep it down. But don’t tell that to Paul, who might throw spears at you from on top of his high horse.