USC Sneaks In New Radio Hire

With University of South Carolina fans completely and totally consumed by the news that one of their star football players had been arrested, the school’s athletic department apparently decided that this would be the perfect time to reveal the Gamecocks’ new men’s basketball and baseball radio play-by-play announcer.

You know … when absolutely EVERYONE is 100% focused on something else.

Hmmmm …

Ordinarily, we’d say that the timing behind when a school names radio announcers for its No. 2 & 3 athletic programs isn’t that big a deal … but in this case, USC’s decision to announce the hiring of Andy Demetra as basketball and baseball play-by-play man late Monday afternoon wreaks of intentional attention avoidance.

It’s not that Demetra is or isn’t qualified for his new job – we’re sure he is. But the fact is the University doesn’t want to shed a lot of light (or any light, really) on this new hire considering the way the last radio announcer was forced out under questionable circumstances.

And trust us, when we say “questionable circumstances,” we mean a big steaming pile of B.S., one that was not-so-cleverly deposited by some of the most ethically-challenged individuals we’ve ever had the misfortune of covering.

For example, people like Gamecock Marketing czarina Liz McMillan, who said this afternoon that Demetra is the “consummate professional and is passionate about his broadcasts and about the Gamecocks.”

Unlike her, obviously.

Seriously, people, this is a woman who fired former USC announcer Mike Morgan (who is talented) because he allegedly wouldn’t participate in a little pyramid scam of hers … meanwhile, she secured the job of another announcer (who is not talented) after he did join her in the scam, which cost thousands of South Carolinians hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The resulting kerfuffle riled the Gamecock nation, but USC Athletics Director Eric Hyman authorized the totally unjustified move beforehand and swept it under the rug after the fact. He even looked the other way when it was revealed that McMillian was “passionate” about one of the announcers involved in the whole sordid affair.

Where was the mainstream media during all of this? In fairness, they wrote a story or two about it, but chose to dig no further because a “second string radio announcer” wasn’t worth alienating their powerful sources at the Athletic Department over.

Cost of doing business, we suppose.

Oh well, in some respects the MSM is right … it’s not that big of a deal. But if people are going to pull crap like this, we’re going to expose them. And if they’re going to pull additional crap to try and suppress bad ink, you can bet your bottom dollar that we’re going to dump our inkwells out on their heads.

So cheers, Eric Hyman … this inkwell’s for you.

You can go back to getting your football players out of jail now.

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