ESPN needs a geography lesson, especially with its home state of Connecticut.
Deadspin.com showed the inaccuracies of a map of the new American Athletic Conference, which officially began on today. The league consists of the former Big East teams from which the seven Catholic schools seceded to form its own league for basketball purposes.
ESPN put up maps of both the new Big East (comprising the seven Catholic schools plus three newcomers) and The American, the condensed term for the new conference, to give college athletics fans an idea of the new leagues.
While the idea was good, the execution was terrible, as Deadspin.com reported.
The biggest gaffe in the map of The American placed the University of Connecticut in Massachusetts. What makes the error even goofier is the fact that ESPN's headquarters also are in Connecticut, which should've helped the graphic designer of the map locate the correct state.
The other glaring errors are the map's location of the University of Memphis in Memphis, Tenn., Memphis, which appears to border Kentucky, rather than Mississippi; and the University of Cincinnati, which is placed farther north in Ohio than the border of Kentucky to the south.
Deadspin.com reported that nine of the 10 schools in The American were misplaced, but the locations of the other schools on the map aren't as far off as the website makes them seem.
The other curious flaw is the fact ESPN's map of the Big East correctly placed Xavier in Cincinnati. In that map, the city is correctly placed on the Ohio-Kentucky border.
The map was taken down shortly after the report came out.
The Catholic schools kept the Big East name, while the remaining schools had to come up with a new name for their league.
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