MSU Probation, Part 1 of 4: Wardlaw and Stevens

Now we know the punishment for the wrongdoings of a rogue booster involving the recruitment of Will Redmond. It’s basically minimal other than Redmond losing a year of eligibility and 5 games in 2013.

Redmond will also have to pay back over $2,000 in impermissible benefits, which includes $2,000 for a “discount” on a car. I’ll get to that in another part of this series, but for now I will focus on how and why this was reported last August.

Without a doubt I questioned the validity of this story by Matthew Stevens. As it turns out the information was somewhat accurate. Although he clearly painted MSU in a bad light insinuating we bought him the car. Still, it should have never seen the light of day and I am calling for the MSU athletic department to black ball the Columbus Dispatch until Stevens is removed.

Stevens wrote the article and he also went on Paul Finebaum to discuss it. While no one else ever reported this, he stood by it. This brought undo attention to MSU. And once this information is leaked, other schools want blood. I don’t care if the info was accurate or not, we should not cater to BEAT reporters who write things against us. Do you think any other SEC school would put up with this? These reporters should be writing feature stories, presenting stats and doing interviews. We don’t need them reporting news against us.

Where did Stevens get his info? No one else had it. Was MSU betrayed by someone who they believed was one of their own?

I’ll throw these facts out there regarding BulldawgJunction founder Michael Wardlaw and Matt Stevens, you can see if there are any dots to be connected…

1. Bulldawg Junction was a struggling website. They offered “lifetime memberships” for relatively small fees. Wardlaw screwed a lot of people over prior to this story and many had abandoned his website.
2. In the 3 weeks prior to the announcement of a “recruiting irregularity” by MSU, Wardlaw tweeted 15 times about practically giving away “lifetime memberships” – from $60, down to $50, $30 and at times $25.
3. Wardlaw and Stevens were well acquainted – Stevens regularly appeared on a radio show with Stevens prior to this, and shortly after this story broke Wardlaw joined forces with Stevens on his Bulldog Sports Radio Show, Full Court Press, which was canceled soon after.
4. Bulldawg Junction is like GenesPage or Bulldawgs247 – it is run by MSU people. He was not a pure and objective beat reporter.
5. Wardlaw still created a storm by presenting somewhat factual information on HeadtoHead Radio.
6. Wardlaw continued to promote his “lifetime memberships” or “yearly memberships” for as low as $15. A MSU guy going on H2H to speak out about things that are that negative with regards to the program was certainly questionable to the fan base, but perhaps people would buy his memberships since he had the inside scoop.
7. Bulldawg Junction changes its name to The Dawg Walk in October. After the football season Wardlaw and his website have vanished.

Wardlaw is gone so I am not concerned with him. Stevens is still around and it’s time for the MSU athletic department to drop the banhammer on him. We don’t need outdated newspapers to get the word out anymore.

There is no way any other SEC school would put up with this BS. You may say reporters should be able to report. Yeah sure, and MSU doesn’t have to answer his questions or give him any type of info that would help him out. I don’t know anything about credentialing media, but I wouldn’t let him have it. Stevens needs to be gone. Done away with. Everyone already hates him.