All too often local experts on an issue get a chance to talk to a wider audience and while they think they're sharing insights they're really just sharing the obvious -- because their proximity to the situation makes them no more insightful than others thousands of miles away from the situation.
One recent example came Tuesday during "College Football Live" on ESPN.
As part of a fairly complete segment regarding pending NCAA sanctions for USC, the weakest part was a brief interview by phone with a reporter from KSPN-AM (710), the ESPN Radio affiliate in Los Angeles. When asked about the situation, he noted the passion of USC fans and that nowhere else in the country can you find customized, garnet-and-gold painted vans and that 100,000 fans will still show up at the L.A. Coliseum no matter what happens in regard to a NCAA ruling.
The comments were silly on several levels.
First, it indicated that the passion of USC fans was unrivaled -- and that's not the case. It's a fact that those types of fans (with their custom-painted vehicles and so much more) exist around every major college football program. Sure, the vehicles certainly are not be garnet and gold in Blacksburg, Happy Valley, Tuscaloosa or any number of other towns, but they do exist. By indicating USC was different or special, it only showed the local expert was parochial at best and uninformed at worst.
Also, the comments also ignored history -- because USC has not always been a program that attracted throngs on gameday. While it's unlikely any NCAA sanctions will damage the USC program (because more reliable experts on the same ESPN show said they expected relatively light penalties), fans in Los Angeles have shown that they will not blindly turn out for a team. Whether because of the impact of an NCAA ruling or the offseason coaching change, should USC struggle in the coming years it's really not out of the realm of possibility that attendance could suffer if the team struggles on the field.
To ignore that possibility makes the reporter sound like a homer at best and uninformed at worst.