So I've had to stay home from work for a couple of days. To fill in the time today I'm rewatching KU-Villanova. Got curious about the game so I look up the box score. The first available option was ESPN so I clicked. I see this headline and first four lines of the article:
"Villanova doomed by Kansas 3 pointers in Final Four loss". Strange way to write a headline unless you're strongly leaning to the Villanova side. No editors from the AP would notice that?
So then just on the main page, before I open the article I read this:
"Villanova needed Justin Moore on offense, to add another scoring threat and spread the floor against Kansas' swarming interior defense. The Wildcats could have used him on defense, rotate out on the Jayhawks shooters and help dig down into the...."
April 2, 2022, 11:02 pm- AP.
Then I clicked on the article and the first six paragraphs were Villanova centered before they start to credit our team. I mean people laugh (even some here) when I suggest there's an inherent east coast bias to the reporting of such events. There's not anything factually wrong with what they wrote, I often think about how that game might have been different had Moore not been injured, but to start a supposedly neutral article in that way just screams bias.
Maybe someone can explain it in a different way, but it just seems so obvious. Does the AP always write its stuff citing someone's injury in the opening paragraph of the game story? This was a game the Jayhawks led comfortably throughout.
The only time I can think an injury hurt our teams chances was when Jerrod Haase had the broken hand in 1997. That team was so loaded it was still an epic upset, but would it have been had Jerrod been healthy? I'm thinking they pull through if he was, but who really knows?
But what a great postseason 2022 was! I'm not letting this recently discovered slight bother me. I could tell you about the 2005 White Sox and the very real slights that team received, but I'll save it for another day.
