Slow news day has media throwing mud at Arizona Basketball once again

Yahoo Sports’ Pat Forde, Pete Thamel, and Dan Wetzel published clickbait this morning once again dragging Arizona Basketball and one of their former players through the mud publicly.

Here we go again. This time it wasn’t ESPN, we’re sure Mark Schlabach is pounding his fist on the table and Dick Vitale is screaming at him for not being first to market with the regurgitation of “evidence”. Keep in mind, that the latest rumors involving Arizona Basketball are not worthy of prosecuting anyone, yet they feel worthy of writing and spreading all over social media once again.

For some reason, the Wildcats seems to be the main target by the media, each quoting Yahoo Sports in a similar post in what seems to be a slow news day. Kind of disappointing, considering this is coming the day after the basketball team took team pictures.

Arizona Wildcats

Ira Lee, after reactivating his account, Tweeted out recently that he took down his Twitter account because of all the negativity. Can’t say we blame him, but we are all happy he is spreading positivity through the internet.

Bottom line is, the FBI has already had information based on the former player, who we will not name out of respect, and the University of Arizona is already working with the NCAA and has been, along with everyone else accordingly on the matters. However, this is still old news, and therefore not verifiably true or new and noteworthy.

While former Adidas consultant Thomas Gassnola got off without jail time last week, according to ESPN, former Arizona Basketball assistant coach Book Richardson is serving time in jail. Gassnola was only sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to wire fraud and bribery.

Something is so wrong here… Kansas, Duke, Louisville, and others have been implicated by texts and voice recordings, but the media is fascinated or addicted to throwing Arizona Athletics under the bus, why?

It hurts every time we see this, and it continues to spread false information among the general public who seem to take it and run with it, throwing our team and coaches under the bus in the process.

We all wonder why the University says nothing, while Arizona Basketball fans do their best to balance the news reports. You can imagine all the comments and vitriol shot at the player(s) and the school after the “old” news “re-broke”. It’s horrific! Let the player(s) and the school be. It seems until something is done to bring down the program, they will continue with the vitriol.

One fan, Phil Buehler responded by Tweeting, “Old news. Wasn’t deemed credible by the FBI. But hey, you’re not interested in facts or truth, right? And you wonder why the judge squashed this to protect third parties. Shameful journalism.” Shameful is right.

Jason Scheer, who has resonated the same sentiments with our staff on the matter, helped bring the false reporting to light. He tweeted the following three tweets today in response;

"Just to clarify this early. This is from the same tapes the FBI already had. The FBI already investigated this and found it to not be credible, which is why there was no charge. This isn’t news to anybody, it was already evidence and already found not credible by FBI, NCAA, AZ.You know when the judge said he didn’t want to release things because people that were innocent couldn’t defend themselves from hearsay? Here’s your first example off a leak.As the Yahoo article states: “t’s unknown why the conversation was not used as evidence or played in court earlier this year.” Well no, it is known. It wasn’t used because it was deemed not credible."

Stop with the clickbait and old headlines please, media! This is where the players don’t have a large enough voice, true or not, it seems athletes are not treated as humans who are trying to make a career just like the journalists are.

We feel it’s time for the University to step in and protect the legacy of their players who gave it everything they had to represent the University and the program in a first class manner! Either way, Zona Zealots will carry the torch, and in the meantime, we need to all be responding to Pat Forde, Pete Thamel, and Dan Wetzel asking them to correct their post and give all the facts and information. Aren’t they supposed to be balanced in their reporting?