Von Pearson Update

I don't think anyone here knows, 500. If they do, they're certainly not talking (and probably for the best). All we ever had here was 3rd-hand info (we heard it from a frat member who heard it from the alleged victim). So nothing on this site is for sure. Nothing on many of these football blogs is for sure, either; it's quite possible the folks who wrote that article know little actual fact, and sloppily used the word "rape" without knowing. Bottom line: we don't know. Might never know.

As for why he's not taking summer classes in the first summer term, I guess he (1) didn't need to and (2) didn't want to. He is a senior...it's entirely possible the required workload for the fall term (the load he has to take in the fall to remain eligible for the team) is enough for him to graduate anyway ... so taking summer classes would serve little to no purpose. It's also quite possible he couldn't care less about a college diploma, and will only take the course load required to play. That's just supposition, of course.

Thank you kindly for the info!
 
At this point, I would say he has not been charged with a crime and is innocent until proven guilty, or at least charged with a crime. Let him play until he is charged.

CBJ did what was right, and suspended him to allow the process to work. Well, there has been ample time to investigate and decide to either charge or drop it. No need to punish him now if he may never be charged. This is unjust on the face of it. You have been accused. We haven't decided to charge you with anything, but somebody may have said something might have happened somewhere at sometime. You are now a pariah, go away.

Whatever happened to this country? What ever happened to the ideals it was founded on? Do we no longer care enough about justice, fairness, and the written law?

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today.

That went downhill quickly
 
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At this point, I would say he has not been charged with a crime and is innocent until proven guilty, or at least charged with a crime. Let him play until he is charged.

CBJ did what was right, and suspended him to allow the process to work. Well, there has been ample time to investigate and decide to either charge or drop it. No need to punish him now if he may never be charged. This is unjust on the face of it. You have been accused. We haven't decided to charge you with anything, but somebody may have said something might have happened somewhere at sometime. You are now a pariah, go away.

Whatever happened to this country? What ever happened to the ideals it was founded on? Do we no longer care enough about justice, fairness, and the written law?

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today.

Hehe, yeah, you started out pretty calm, balanced, and reasonable, then rapidly stirred yourself up into a pitchfork frenzy. It was impressive how quickly you self-escalated. :)
 
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As for why he's not taking summer classes in the first summer term, I guess he (1) didn't need to and (2) didn't want to. He is a senior...it's entirely possible the required workload for the fall term (the load he has to take in the fall to remain eligible for the team) is enough for him to graduate anyway ... so taking summer classes would serve little to no purpose. It's also quite possible he couldn't care less about a college diploma, and will only take the course load required to play. That's just supposition, of course.

Or, possibility (3) which is he was told not to enroll in classes and stay away until the situation is resolved.

To the person that posted that he was working out with the team, that may be, but he's not doing it on campus. He is not allowed to use the facilities during his suspension.

He is absolutely innocent until proven guilty, he hasn't even been charged. But under the law, that only protects you from being imprisoned during an investigation.

As Trayvon Paulk discovered last year when he hit his girlfriend in front of a dozen witnesses but was never charged, the standard for playing football at Tennessee is higher than the standard for facing legal action. You can debate all day about if that is fair, but that is the way our head coach has elected to run his football program and I defer to his judgment.
 
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I don't think anyone here knows, 500. If they do, they're certainly not talking (and probably for the best). All we ever had here was 3rd-hand info (we heard it from a frat member who heard it from the alleged victim). So nothing on this site is for sure. Nothing on many of these football blogs is for sure, either; it's quite possible the folks who wrote that article know little actual fact, and sloppily used the word "rape" without knowing. Bottom line: we don't know. Might never know.

Failing to differentiate between an "alleged rape" and indecent exposure or sexual assault would be extremely irresponsible journalism, so I assume that 247 used that phrase deliberately. Not good news IMO.
 
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Or, possibility (3) which is he was told not to enroll in classes....

Being suspended from the football team is quite different from being suspended or expelled from the university. DP, are you saying the latter is true? Would be the first time we'd heard that, I think.

In fact, think he just took final exams a few weeks ago. Ended up with a 3.0 on the semester, seems he tweeted out. So an academic suspension/expulsion would be a pretty recent development.
 
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Failing to differentiate between an "alleged rape" and indecent exposure or sexual assault would be extremely irresponsible journalism, so I assume that 247 used that phrase deliberately. Not good news IMO.

AboveAll, I agree it would be very irresponsible. Unlike you, I do not assume 247 used the term accurately. But there's no way for us to be sure until something breaks.

p.s. It's just my impression, but I think the standards of journalistic ethics and professionalism are much less rigorously enforced in online blogs and small-shop zines than they are at the more traditional and long-established news media. Particularly the extent of effort each puts into fact-checking. None of them are perfect, but it seems to me the online sources are far quicker to go to print without taking the time to be sure they've got every fact down. In fact, many online sites take pride in being the first to report, and openly admit their stories are 'more raw' (= more often partially or wholly wrong) than their more traditional competition.
 
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Being suspended from the football team is quite different from being suspended or expelled from the university. DP, are you saying the latter is true? Would be the first time we'd heard that, I think.

In fact, think he just took final exams a few weeks ago. Ended up with a 3.0 on the semester, seems he tweeted out. So an academic suspension/expulsion would be a pretty recent development.

I never said he was suspended from school. He is not. There is a big difference between being suspended by the University and being encouraged by the football program to take the summer session off while the investigation is ongoing.

The biggest reason players take summer classes is to participate in the off-season training program. You can't participate if you aren't enrolled.
 
At this point, I would say he has not been charged with a crime and is innocent until proven guilty, or at least charged with a crime. Let him play until he is charged.

CBJ did what was right, and suspended him to allow the process to work. Well, there has been ample time to investigate and decide to either charge or drop it. No need to punish him now if he may never be charged. This is unjust on the face of it. You have been accused. We haven't decided to charge you with anything, but somebody may have said something might have happened somewhere at sometime. You are now a pariah, go away.

Whatever happened to this country? What ever happened to the ideals it was founded on? Do we no longer care enough about justice, fairness, and the written law?

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today.

Political environment.
 
I never said he was suspended from school. He is not. There is a big difference between being suspended by the University and being encouraged by the football program to take the summer session off while the investigation is ongoing.

The biggest reason players take summer classes is to participate in the off-season training program. You can't participate if you aren't enrolled.
Conversely, no real reason to take summer classes if you can't participate.
 
Yeah, I think you're right. They're the hometown team for this paper. Plus the density of Vandy-to-Vols fans is higher around Nashville than elsewhere in the state (the Tennessean wants to be THE state-wide newspaper, but recognizes that they're strongest in middle Tennessee). The Tennessean also caters to the business leaders of Nashville and middle Tennessee, for the advertising $$ ... a disproportionate share of whom are Vandy fans. So it's the $$ talking and the hometown angle --> pandering to the densest expected reader base. They're not dumb at the paper ... homers and some dirtbags, sure, but not dumb. Least, that's how it appears to an outsider. I certainly have no contacts on the editorial board of the rag.


Haha, yeah, I wish there were a way to force them all to recognize their inner orangeness! Might drive some of them insane, the sudden self-awareness. :)


I would add the following points to your synopsis:

(1) They have a relatively new sports editor, who is a transplant from, I believe, Arizona. He is very knowledgeable about baseball, indeed he is a voter on candidates for the MLB Hall of Fame. I don't believe that he realizes just how big Tennessee football is, even in a down cycle.

(2) He also doesn't realize just how fragmented the middle Tennessee alumni base is. Nashville remains the "Athens of the South" for a reason. Vanderbilt certainly is the most prestigious university in the mid state, but when you consider the presence of Lipscomb, Fisk, TSU, Trevecca, Belmont, plus MTSU, which has a much larger student body than Vandy, they are overestimating the pull of Vanderbilt athletics to residents of middle Tennessee.

(3) He has stupidly farmed out much of the coverage for UT athletics to KNS staffers. When the Tennessean does actually write content pertaining to our program, it is usually authored by David Climer, which is only a smidgen better than John Adams.

(4) Finally, they have made the equally stupid decision to incorporate commentary from USA Today columnists, who almost invariably are female writers whose contributions fall into the category of the "social context of sports," as opposed to anything that actually constitutes analysis or commentary pertaining to onfield competition.

In short, the content of their sports section is badly diluted in terms of what really matters to us, UT athletics, and they can get away with it because they haven't had a direct competitor since the demise of the Nashville Banner decades ago.
 
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Once again the moth to the candle event. I saw the VP thread was bumped and thought for the 87th time I would check VP's update. SURE THAT THIS TIME THERE WOULD BE NEWS ON VP! Nope, not here, not on the VP update page. Not going to find news about VP, no sirree not on the VP update page. One of these days there will actually be news about VP. Till then I will be like the moth drawn to the candle I guess.
 
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I would add the following points to your synopsis:

(1) They have a relatively new sports editor, who is a transplant from, I believe, Arizona. He is very knowledgeable about baseball, indeed he is a voter on candidates for the MLB Hall of Fame. I don't believe that he realizes just how big Tennessee football is, even in a down cycle.

(2) He also doesn't realize just how fragmented the middle Tennessee alumni base is. Nashville remains the "Athens of the South" for a reason. Vanderbilt certainly is the most prestigious university in the mid state, but when you consider the presence of Lipscomb, Fisk, TSU, Trevecca, Belmont, plus MTSU, which has a much larger student body than Vandy, they are overestimating the pull of Vanderbilt athletics to residents of middle Tennessee.

(3) He has stupidly farmed out much of the coverage for UT athletics to KNS staffers. When the Tennessean does actually write content pertaining to our program, it is usually authored by David Climer, which is only a smidgen better than John Adams.

(4) Finally, they have made the equally stupid decision to incorporate commentary from USA Today columnists, who almost invariably are female writers whose contributions fall into the category of the "social context of sports," as opposed to anything that actually constitutes analysis or commentary pertaining to onfield competition.

In short, the content of their sports section is badly diluted in terms of what really matters to us, UT athletics, and they can get away with it because they haven't had a direct competitor since the demise of the Nashville Banner decades ago.

A gentleman named Matt Slovin is the Tennessean's full-time UT Athletics beat reporter. I don't care for his reporting as much as others, but they do have one and he puts out a decent amount of content.
 
A gentleman named Matt Slovin is the Tennessean's full-time UT Athletics beat reporter. I don't care for his reporting as much as others, but they do have one and he puts out a decent amount of content.


I have noticed that, but is he not a relatively recent addition to their staff? If they insist on importing commentary on UT athletics from other sources, they would be far better served to try to secure the services of Patrick Brown of the Chattanooga Times-Free Press.
 
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Move to strike to rename this thread " Von Pearson Discussion with very few and far between updates that get lost in countless repetitive posts".
 
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I have noticed that, but is he not a relatively recent addition to their staff? If they insist on importing commentary on UT athletics from other sources, they would be far better served to try to secure the services of Patrick Brown of the Chattanooga Times-Free Press.

Not sure what you mean by imported here - Slovin is a full-time, in-house beat reporter. He and Patrick Brown do exactly the same thing, though Patrick is far better at it, in my opinion. That being said, I'm not sure the Tennessean could poach him even if they wanted to. There's been a good deal of turbulence in their newsroom lately, and the TFP is a quality paper.
 
Like this frequent complaining one? :)

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