Jeff Goodman Was Not So Good This Week
And Georgetown’s Ed Cooley got dragged into it too.
Have you guys followed the Jeff Goodman story?
If you haven’t, here are the basics.
Goodman, who has been a top basketball writer for a long time, has been working on the Field of 68 podcast and was summarily fired because of an interaction with a guy who made a documentary about Providence and Ed Cooley. Apparently it’s part of a series about the Big East schools.
Providence native Cooley left PC for Georgetown last year and there are some epic bad feelings back in his hometown.
In Divine Providence, one person compares Ed Cooley to Hitler. It’s disgusting obviously but that’s just an opinion and you know what people say about opinions.
But someone also accuses Cooley of extramarital affairs and if you can’t prove that, you’ve really set yourself up for trouble.
As we understand it, Cooley and Goodman are good friends and Goodman thought he was sticking up for Cooley.
But he appears to have gone too far and told the aspiring filmmaker that he would find him.
And that got him fired.
Goodman posted this video on X/Twitter. It doesn’t really clear things up very much. We don’t think Cooley has commented on this yet.
So to sum up: some rando made a “documentary” about Ed Cooley and Providence that he wasn’t willing to attach his name to, Goodman found out and tried, in a pretty stupid way, to stick up for his friend.
We can appreciate the desire to do that but there’s no way he’s going to keep his job after making what seemed like a threat.
And there’s also an ethical question.
It’s fine for Goodman to be friends with Cooley. Lots of coaches are friends with journalists. But even the appearance of a threat goes over the line. If he had said something like “I think you should consider taking it down. You are putting yourself in legal jeopardy with this film” it might have ended better.
But advocating - interfering - for a guy you ostensibly cover?
That makes it really difficult to find the line between professional responsibilities and friendship.
Goodman clearly put a priority on friendship and that’s fine. That’s his decision.
It just is going to cost him an awful lot in the end.