So, the other day, I was sitting in my 5th period American Government class. I had already gotten all of my work done, so I decided to pursue a little side project of mine – studying conference realignment.
Realignment, of course, is quite the complex topic, in fact, it’s so complex that we had to write an article recapping all of it for those who don’t obsessively read college football gossip at every waking moment. Emphasis on gossip.
I was specifically trying to find info on an alleged leak on the Mountain West website, as highlighted in a tweet from RedditCFB. This tweet showed Idaho in the football standings. Of course, the prospect excited me, so I was exceedingly likely to jump the gun on whatever I could scrounge up. And that is exactly what I did.
You see, apparently, whenever an out-of-conference team plays an MWC team, a placeholder page is generated on the conference’s website. And on Friday, Google just so happened to index the placeholder for Idaho. Unaware of this fact, I thought the page was proof that Idaho was joining, so I began work on an article posthaste. As “research,” I punched in the names of other schools in place of Idaho, trying to see if there was something bigger.
I found pages for a lot of Big Sky schools, around 12, according to my notes. That got me excited. I thought I had found the big scoop. “This is gonna be my big break,” I thought, as I published the article I wrote on these findings.
Oh, how wrong I was.
I posted the article to Reddit, trying to bring HBS more exposure, and tell everyone about this big story that was apparently right under our noses. That’s when I discovered that I was wrong.
Commenters would immediately begin panning my ill-informed writings, sending me links to Iowa, Michigan, and Texas, but the one that stuck out most was the one I saw on the actual article:
While the text of their comment was quite abrasive, this reader makes a good point, especially in that last sentence. “Make journalistic integrity great again.” Of course, that is why I’m writing this article. To fulfill my journalistic duty by admitting how stupid I am. While it is slightly outlandish to say that I was ignorant by not searching for Iowa, I still could have done a bit more research instead of sprinting to the presses, and for that, I am sorry. In the future, I will make sure that I do thorough and detailed research before publishing.
Therefore, on behalf of HBS, I would like to issue a retraction. There is nothing definitively pointing to the Mountain West targeting FCS schools, and our article was incorrect. We apologize for this fault, and will be updating the article to reflect our newly established views. Thank you for your forgiveness; we will ensure that future articles do not make this mistake.
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