The Cincinnati Bearcats dropped a tough one Sunday afternoon to the East Carolina Pirates who are now 2-6 in the AAC. Most of us went off the rails after UC lost to a team that ranked 254th in RPI coming into the game, making ECU the second worst opponent the Bearcats have faced this year. So fans were rightfully upset to watch their favorite team come up empty handed.
But no reaction was more asinine than from the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Kimball Perry.
On the surface it appears like one of your typical snarky responses to a UC loss. I know I sure had plenty of them following the Bearcats losing to a team they should have beaten by double-digits. You might even call Perry’s response “funny”. But this guy actually believes in his heart of hearts that Cincinnati is now eternally screwed when it comes to leaving the AAC for greener pastures because they lost a basketball game by four points.
Maybe Santa Ono taking pictures with Big 12 school presidents won’t sway them to invite Cincinnati to the conference. But him brushing shoulders with them will have a bigger influence on conference realignment than the negative effects of losing to East Carolina. Not only does basketball never drive the expansion bus, if we’ve learned anything over the last few years, here are the following factors actually do:
- Television market size
- Upgraded facilities
- Fiscally balanced athletic department
- History of athletic success across several programs
- Academics
- University endowment size
- Student population
Is losing a single basketball game to a conference opponent in February on that list? Nope.
You’d think someone who proclaims himself an “investigative reporter” would know any of that. I mean, all he has to do is step out of his house and put his ear to the wind to learn that information.
At the end of the day, Kimball Perry is just another in the long of line of Kimball Perry’s in the Cincinnati media who are still living in the 1980’s. They view UC as a second or even third rate institution and never worthy of greatness, no matter the success that’s been staring them squarely in the face for the last decade. Perry, like Paul Daugherty and Bill Koch, are so dead set in their ways that they can’t see the truth.
It’s sad, really. So if you’d like inform Kimball Perry or his bosses of his troll job, his contact info is below:
And just for kicks, here’s the kind of responses that might be awaiting you if you call him out on his bullcrap.
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