It was the feel-good story that made headlines around the world – even reaching Australian shores. Josh Shaw, one of the team captains on the 2014 USC Trojans football squad, was a hero.
Shaw sustained two high-ankle sprains that will certainly sideline him for a fair few weeks, but it was the way he’d taken those injuries – jumping off a balcony to save a seven-year-old cousin who, so the story went, was drowning at a family party.
Cue plenty of talk about what a good person Josh Shaw was.
The USC website was quick to jump on this story, and you can’t blame them – there’s nothing like painting one of your star players as a hero off the field as well as on, and the Trojan media camp quickly rolled out quotes from new head coach Steve Sarkisian and Shaw himself.
Overnight, media outlets were inundating Shaw for interviews. They apparently also wanted to speak to the cousin he’d saved.
Shaw didn’t speak at USC training, but Sarkisian did, and he made the startling admission that there’d been some calls coming through to USC that directly conflicted what Shaw had told his coaches, his teammates and the rest of the world.
Suddenly, USC was investigating the situation. Sarkisian used the word “vet” at least once, and promised that once the school had completed its investigation, they would let the rest of the world know.
Rumours on social media concerning Shaw suggested he was actually running from the Los Angeles Police Department following a domestic violence incident when he sustained his injury.
Running from the cops or saving a family member from drowning. Talk about complete role reversal.
Here’s the thing: why is the University just now getting around to vet the story? I mean, this is USC and for a long time, they’ve been the biggest thing come fall in Los Angeles, which happens to be one of the biggest media markets in the world. The PR folks on campus are a crack team, used to dealing with big-time prospects and scandals.
So why did the school’s official website go live with this heroic story of Shaw when they hadn’t confirmed anything he’d said.
I’m dumfounded by this. It’s much harder to spin a false story than it used to be, because there are so many more ways for things to be confirmed. Sure, you wait a day and you’re not getting an exclusive, but is rushing to press for an exclusive more important than getting the facts right?
Who’ll look like fools if the domestic violence rumour is confirmed? Well, certainly Shaw will (and that might be the least of his problems) but so will Steve Sarkisian, Athletic Director Pat Haden, the school’s president and whomever allowed the story to go out into cyberspace.
You can understand the rationale. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, some free press to highlight the nature of these kids, who happen to be good football players, too. But now we’re getting the first hints that Shaw is, far from being a hero, a guy at the complete opposite end of the scale.
USC is getting a lot of press out of this. The story is on the Sydney Morning Herald website again today, a publication who wouldn’t know Shaw if they ran over him on the streets of Sydney this afternoon.
An old saying that comes to mind: there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Actually, there is, and this is the worst sort.
The school, no stranger to football controversy, could not look any worse than they do. They’ve gone all-in for Shaw, believing his story – granted, there’s never been anything to make anyone not believe what the star cornerback said – and done so in the most flowery manner imaginable. The University of Southern California name and brand is going to be tied to this.
Unfairly tied? Yeah, I’d say so, but, sometimes, you make your bed and you have to lay in it. The Trojans hooked their wagon to Shaw before validating all of his claims, and now they have to batten down the hatches.
If nothing else, regardless of which way it swings, this incident makes a wonderful test case for other media groups in college and pro sports. In a day and age where events can be dissected in the most minute manner, make sure you have all your facts straight.
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