There I said it.
I wrote a post along these lines a week ago and like many instances in the past I refrained from posting and even deleted it. Now, I officially have had enough. The egregious examples of Dinich’s tendency to completely disregard UNC at almost every turn are well documented if you read the ESPN ACC Blog. Dinich gave UNC’s win over Rutgers, which happened in front of a nationally televised audience less space than she gave Peter Lalich’s troubles with his probation officer at UVa. During the Virginia Tech game her coverage was slipshod and UNC’s win over Miami? Barely mentoned other than an admittance she was way wrong in prediction a 31-10 Miami win and some backhanded comments in her power rankings as she basically said Miami gave the game away, not UNC won it.
This week the trail of journalistic malpractice continued as Dinich was willing to give plenty of attention to everyone else, including her beloved Paul Johnson and Georgia Tech(her 3rd game in person this season in six weeks) but where UNC was concerned she passed the buck with this note Saturday night:
Just so you know I’m not ignoring the Tar Heels tonight, Big East blogger Brian Bennett is there covering the game. You can check out his updates here.
BAWHAHAHAHA!!! That is funny. What a complete joke, mainly because she almost never mentions UNC in-game other than last week to say she was right about Miami when the Heels were down 14-0. Meanwhile Dinich had little trouble talking about the BC-NCSU game or MD-UVa as the game was in progress but with UNC playing a ranked team at home and handing the Huskies their rear ends on a platter the only mention Dinich can manage is that the Big East Blog is covering it. Wow. I am willing to bet the Big East Blog had more praise for UNC for one game than Dinich has had all season. And when you think Dinich really could not do worse, not only does she offer little positive posts about UNC but Sunday night offers reasons why UNC should not be ranked in the Top 25.
North Carolina a top 25 team?
The Tar Heels beat Miami and Rutgers, teams with a combined 3-7 record. They lost to Virginia Tech. At home.
There is no question North Carolina deserves praise for its win over UConn — the defense played outstanding, and has made marked improvement as a group all season. They’re leading the league in interceptions. The Tar Heels are a good, well-coached football team that is getting better each week, but they’re not a top 25 team just yet.
No. 18-ranked Virginia Tech has been held to under 300 yards of total offense four times this season (they’re 108th in the nation), and apparently they’ve set the standard for the league with their 2-0 ACC record.
Fine. Georgia Tech is averaging 412 yards per game. They’re fifth in the nation in rushing offense. And everyone on Georgia Tech’s defensive line will play in the NFL.
Florida State leads the ACC in total offense, scoring offense, rushing defense, total defense, and net punting. Georgia Tech leads the ACC in rushing offense, pass defense, passing efficiency, pass defense efficiency and tackles for loss.
North Carolina? Well, they beat Rutgers, Miami and Connecticut, the latter being a formerly ranked team.
Frankly, the only ACC teams that deserved to be ranked today are Virginia Tech and Wake Forest because they are the only teams with unblemished conference records in an average league.
Odds are that will change in the second half of the season, and odds are North Carolina, Georgia Tech and Florida State will be among the teams that have something to do with it. It just hasn’t happened quite yet.
Un-freaking-believable. Let’s deconstruct this poppycock shall we?
First of all, trotting out a list of statistical categories teams lead in as some sort of tiebreaker is a joke. Especially when you are not adhering strictly to conference games. Why is this important? Because Florida State for example might be the leader in several offensive and defensive categories but FSU also has two games in which they ran up the score on I-AA Western Carolina and Chattanooga. In fact if you take only the I-A opponents you quickly discover a different story about the FSU offense and defense. Yes it is still good but not as spectacular as Dinich makes it sound. And who has FSU beaten? Two I-AA teams, Miami(while giving up more points than UNC did to the Hurricanes), Colorado who just got run by Texas this weekend and only had a win over inept West Virginia to show for themselves. Meanwhile Wake Forest walked into Tallahassee and beat FSU 12-3. Nice offensive explosion for a team so touted for their offense.
Now, Dinich may have a point where Georgia Tech is concerned and probably should be ranked along with UNC at worst. The Yellow Jackets are 4-1 with wins over Jacksonville St, BC, Mississippi State and Duke. Combined records of those schools? 12-8 overall. I-A only? 8-7. UNC has wins over McNeese St, Rutgers, Miami and UConn. Those teams are 11-9 overall, 8-8 among the I-A teams. Not much difference there except UNC is 2-0 on the road while Georgia Tech is 1-1. Add to this UNC also beat a 5-0 ranked team at home this past Saturday night. Georgia Tech’s big win? At Boston College? Shutting out Duke? Mississippi State is 1-4 so beating them 38-7 can hardly be considered noteworthy. However UNC beating Rutgers on the road 44-12, a 5-0 UConn team at home 38-14 and Miami, team that Dinich was very, very high on before last weekend on the road after being down 24-14 in the fourth quarter in my mind puts UNC slightly ahead of Georgia Tech and their 412 yards of total offense.
Going beyond that the greatest folly in Dinich’s stat loving analysis is she ignores that certain elements of UNC’s team such as the fact they are 3rd in turnover margin. Granted she mentions the interceptions lead but misses the point that the offense sees less time on the field because they are set up in great field position by the defense and special teams. UNC is 11th in time of possession but 2nd in scoring offense because they strike quick in some cases and in others geting the ball on a short field. The same is true because UNC is 2nd in kickoff and punt returns. On average UNC starts six yards better than GT off kickoffs and 14 yards better off punts. You can also factor in UNC blocking three punts against UConn and the fact Brandon Tate is so dangerous it entices opponents into shorter kicks or kicks out of bounds resulting in better field position.
And spare me this notion that Georgia Tech will have all of their defensive linemen in the NFL. While that ultimately may be true, there is no way Dinich can say that for sure and there is zero chance she has an ounce of credibility talking about Georgia Tech in this manner given she is so clearly in love with all things Paul Johnson carrying over a bias from her days with the Baltimore Sun where Navy was given the most favorable coverage the paper could possibly afford.
The bottom line is Dinich has completely abdicated any sense of fair journalism when it comes to UNC. The number of times she flatly ignores the Heels or offeres up backhanded compliments are too numerous to have me believe she simply is overwhelmed by the job. Heather Dinich is either too incompontent to do her job as the chief blogger of ACC football for ESPN or is so steeped in bias for a handful of schools at the expense of others the SIDs at Virginia Tech, Maryland, Virginia, FSU and Georgia Tech should perhaps consider sending her a kickback. The predilection towards certain teams and coaches that has carried over from her stint with the Baltimore Sun is evidenced almost daily. For whatever reason she is incapable giving other teams in the ACC as fair a shake as she does the ones that are within her scope of familiarity. In this respect I echo the thoughts of fellow Tar Heel blogger, AEM at The Fifth Corner, when he said in an email to me that ESPN ought to have at least two bloggers assigned for the ACC in an effort to provide more balanced coverage. Knowing the WWL, that ain’t going to happen.
As far as THF is concerned. I will from this point forward discontinue linking or referencing Heather Dinich and the ESPN ACC Blog. This is in line with the symbolic gestures I have made in the past to stop sending traffic via my blog to their which is as much a boycott as I can offer. In real terms I also see it like this. There is no information Dinich posts that I cannot garner from other sources whether it be the excellent ACC Now blog, 850 the Buzz, Inside Carolina or UNC itself. Given the suspicions I have about Dinich and biases she may be holding from her previous job, nothing she renders in the realm of opinion has any real credibility tied to it. In other words her factual coverage is in no way exclusive while her opinions are completely expendable.
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Maybe she applied to UNC and had to go to her safety net school?
Maybe a UNC student or alum dumped her?
She clearly seems to lack objectivity when it comes to the Southern Part of Heaven.
I figured you would be all over this.
I saw it last night and began to start taking the whole thing apart and then said forget it, she isn’t going to change. What she is doing is making ESPN look bad, because in a company that defines itself as the world leader in sport it hires people that only like to talk about certain teams and not others.
Have to say it would be great to see her as a SportsCenter anchor. Talking about her teams and the skimming over the rest. Would make it for a different type of show! (lol)
AEM
The best advice going forward is to ignore her. It is not like she is writing anything about UNC anyway and when she does, it is not earth shattering. I get to a point where I just refuse to waste the time to constantly deconstruct her garbage. My readers are better served if I spend time talking about UNC and not some hack journalist-turned-blogger who is incapable of covering every team fairly.
The sooner you start ignoring Heather Dinich, the better.
No offense, but when she said y’all’s football atmosphere was the most intimidating because of the picturesque trees at Kenan, I wrote her off from that point.
Let it go, man…let it go.
They play so few games in college football that it is pretty hard to know how good any team is.
Is UNC more like the team that struggled in week one, and that was fortunate to beat Miami, or is it more like Wake Forest, a decent fringe top 25 team, that lost to Navy? The Big East is down this year, so maybe the Notre Dame game can tell us more. What is the use of sweating it now? If Carolina beats Notre Dame, they will be in the top twenty of both polls, I suspect, and headed to a decent bowl game. Because of the ludicrous rules of NCAA football, they never had any chance at a national title, even if they hadn’t blown the VPI game.
It is hard for me to take a sport seriously, unlike with UNC in baseball and basketball, where there is no aspirational goal of even finishing as national champ, but this is where the BCS has taken us.
Twenty something years ago, a crummy BYU team took the national title, quite undeservedly, but at least any team that went undefeated back then had an aspirational chance to win it all. I don’t think any team in the ACC would have this year, even if they went undefeated. Last year was a pathetic bookend to the BYU title, where LSU essentially did very little to merit their title.
College football needs real help. Many people distinguish sports from non-sports by whether the team or individual wins the competition on the field, not via judges.
Thus, baseball and basketball are sports, while ice skating and gymnastics may not be, since the outcome is highly subjective. Boxing would find itself in the same category, except for the fact that a boxer can knock the other guy out and take the decision out of the realm of the subjective. College football is skewing way too close to gymnastics right now and not close enough to real sports like the NFL.
Anyway, I am glad UNC is not terrible in football anymore, but I won’t join in worrying about what other people think about us because since we lack any chance of playing in the big game, what difference does it really make anyway? I do worry that if you guys keep talking football all the time, I won’t be able to come here as often to read about Roy, Tyler and the boys.
“I do worry that if you guys keep talking football all the time, I won’t be able to come here as often to read about Roy, Tyler and the boys.”
I know which side the bread is buttered on. All that means is I will be insanely busy trying to blog both at the same time starting later this month through the bowl game if we go to one.
JIWS got it right………..
The answer is simple ladies and gentleman: She’s still bitter at UNC for stealing Sean May away from Bloomington. Case closed.
But seriously, I think the main issue is her Big Ten allegiance. She has alluded a couple times to a general lack of respect for ACC football. And while I understand that the ACC is NOT the SEC, the fact is that the ACC has proved that it is NOT the doormat of the BCS conferences. Everyone is acknowledging that except for her. And I think that stems from the deep-rooted belief by all Big Ten fans that the ACC stinks and that will always be the way it is.
I do not think the Big Ten thing is so much the issue. She has zero problem giving great coverage to some schools and interestingly enough they are mainly schools that would have fallen within the scope of the Baltimore Sun. The love affair with Paul Johnson is embarrassing. She has attended three GT games this season out of the six she has gone to and it is clear based on the depth and frequency of articles covering those schools she is working with what she knows or has more connections to those schools she can use to get good interviews or quotes.
Maybe we could be the Kansas of this year: national champs in basketball and top ten in football?
“The answer is simple ladies and gentleman: She’s still bitter at UNC for stealing Sean May away from Bloomington. Case closed. ”
And see, we think she has an axe to grind against us State fans for stealing a win against IU in Bloomington when Philip Rivers beat Antwaan Randel-El in 2000.
Bottom line, she’s just an idiot. The bigger question has to be why or how she got the job in the first place.
I am not sure how good or bad the other conference blogs are so I cannot judge whether the craptastic nature of the ACC blog carries over into the other ones. I do know that Dinich looks very much like a journalist who happens to be a blogger instead of a blogger who happens to have media credentials and access. There is a difference.
Heck, maybe ESPN hates bloggers so much they put crappy bloggers on their own blogs to try and ruin the blogosphere and steal attention away from quality blogs.
“I do know that Dinich looks very much like a journalist who happens to be a blogger instead of a blogger who happens to have media credentials and access. There is a difference.”
Don’t you mean the other way around? She certainly doesn’t come across as a legitimate journalist. She barely qualifies as a blogger.
I’m saying she behaves like a journalist would in writing for a print paper 1-2 articles per day on a beat for a limited number of subjects. Oh yeah, she sucks at that too. Aside from that one person cannot cover an entire conference alone on a blog that would garner the traffic an ESPN blog would. Well, maybe the right person could. Joe Ovies probably could but Dinich does not have what it takes. ACC Now does not even try one person doing it all. The N&O has someone covering every team and the posts trickle out to that blog with Giglio doing his own general pieces about hot issues as well as Tudor. ACC Now is probably just as comprehensive in covering all of the ACC as Dinich is and they are intentionally focused on local teams by default.
So what? Why does it matter if Dinich has a slight against UNC?
It is more of a principle thing for me. If you are the blogger for ESPN covering the ACC I would think you would do your best to cover all teams. My problem is Dinich will completely ignore UNC as she did this weekend. She had constant updates of MD-UVa but said if you wanted the UNC game go to the Big East blog. What the heck is that? And it is not just UNC, like I said she shafts a few schools but pays constant attention to others such as Georgia Tech.
In the end, it really does not matter and the ultimate point of the post was to wash my hands of her. However I feel a certain obligation to call out crappy coverage at the mainstream media level. I think blogs like mine serve the purpose of being the alternate voice in the room to announce the emperor indeed has no clothes on. I also am a little pissed that bloggers like her are afforded full media access and suck at blogging when blogs like mine and yours would be greatly enhanced by media access except we get nothing because we are part of the unwashed masses.
I don’t know if anyone else did, but I actually read some of the Big East blog. You were dead-on THF. It was filled with praise for UNC, much more so than the ACC blog. That said, I noticed it too seemed to focus on two to three teams and ignore the rest. I think that’s just the price that’s paid by only having one person cover 8-12 teams.
IC tells me that Heather went on the College Gameday radio show today and trashed both UNC and the ACC as a whole (and apparently said that Michigan State would beat UNC by two touchdowns…), so I think your sentiments about her are pretty much on, THF.
I remember last basketball season when I got so P*ssed about Tyler being disrespected, but I guess I took that more personally because he is an individual and I felt that he was being unfairly taken to task.
As I recall you were really pissed because the people doing the disrespecting were over at Basketball Prospectus and doing so under the guise that it was unbiased and based wholly on the stats. You were right however.
All right, we can all agree that Heather Dinich is a no-talent wench. But I do have a serious question:
Why are pundits like Dinich and J.P. Giglio continually holding the Va Tech loss against us? It’s not like we lost at home to Navy or something. Both HD and JPG cited the VT loss as a reason to question our top 25 credentials. Given the cirumstances of that game, does it at least not rate an asterisk?
FWIW, it’s not that I completely disagree. I actually agree with JPG that we are in the 25-28 range, especially given our QB situation. But I do not agree with his reasoning, A win over a 4-1 Notre Dame team, our 3rd straight over a team with a winning record (when we played them, anyway) and the general strength of our schedule would make us legit top 20.
In my opinion there is a “moving of the goal posts” with UNC. Every time UNC wins a big game which has happened in three of the past four weeks, people suddenly tell you the team UNC just beat is not as good as we thought they were OR that team simply did not play well OR that team gave the game away. In other words UNC’s wins are not products of talent, coaching or a great performance but rather because the other team fell flat. And if UNC beats ND, the reaction will remain the same.
That would be pretty cool to beat Notre Dame. It still, along with USC is about the biggest name in college football of all time. Carolina has had a few teams that only lost one or two games during a season, but we don’t have many wins over the big boys like USC, Oklahoma, Alabama or Notre Dame. One time we beat Miami–remember that music video from a few years back?
I made the mistake of listening to most of Bomani Jones’ show this morning on 620AM. His guest at 11am was HD. After reading all the comments above, I had to listen to her segment. At the end of the interview she listed her current top 5 in the ACC. UNC was #5 coming in behind both Techs, Wake and FSU. Wow.
Between listening to the two of them I probably lost 10 IQ points. You are right to stop reading/linking to what she posts on her blog.
THEIR D line will play in the NFL? We probably have, at minimum, 4 pro prospects on our D line depth chart, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they all make it. Blake is that good. Look what he did for UNC in last year’s draft. With one year of coaching.
She has a mad crush on the Jackets.
[...] what you’re thinking, how can Tar Heels fans complain about media bias, but she’s getting serious heat from the likes of TarHeelFanBlog. [Dinich] is either too incompontent to do her job as the chief blogger of ACC football for ESPN [...]