Jay Bilas Is Lazy

Every week, ESPN basketball analyst Jay Bilas releases the "Bilas Index," his ranking of the top 68 teams in college roundball. He provides a short blurb with each team to justify their place in the index, for example:

52. Northern Iowa Panthers

The Panthers have dropped a couple but are still good. The Valley could take it out of them, though.

The Bilas Index resides behind ESPN's Insider paywall, which means to read it you need to pony up $6.95 a month to the Worldwide Leader. This implies it's of a better quality of writing than you'd get for free at the gratis ESPN.com.

You would, of course, be wrong.

Check out what Bilas said about the Ohio Bobcats in the most recent Bilas Index:

66. Ohio Bobcats

The Bobcats keep winning, although the wins are not in the Sagarin top 100. Best wins are Marshall and Northern Iowa.

Now let's see what he said about them last week:

66. Ohio Bobcats

The Bobcats keep winning, although the wins are not in the Sagarin top 100. Best wins are Marshall and Northern Iowa.

That sounds familiar. What was Jay Bilas's opinion of Ohio two weeks ago?

59. Ohio Bobcats

The Bobcats keep winning, although the wins are not in the Sagarin top 100. The best wins are vs. Marshall and Northern Iowa.

So two weeks ago, Jay Bilas dropped Ohio seven spots in his rankings without justifying it beyond copying and pasting the same thing he'd written the week before, and one imagines Ohio isn't the only team he's plagiarizing himself to cover.

Sure, many of us have borrowed our own content to finish a piece—but I did that in college, something for which I was paying. ESPN, meanwhile, touts Bilas's analysis as being worth the $6.95/month, when in reality you're paying for him to hit Ctrl-C (does Bilas strike you as the Apple type? Me neither).