This Week in the Twitterverse
The Point. You Have Missed It.
If you haven’t seen the ESPN Outside the Lines report on Mike Rice, you should probably watch it. The Rutgers head basketball coach was caught on tape chucking basketballs at players, grabbing and shoving players, and calling players the words that would STILL get mother to wash your mouth out with soap, including (according to ESPN) “m-----f-----s,” “p-----s,” “sissy b-----s,” “c---s,” and “a------g------ks.” Disturbing stuff, indeed.*
Fortunately, Rice was fired for, quote, “duh.” But I think we can all agree that this is was just a disgusting, shameful display by the Rutgers players and their parents. Wait… wut?
Lord I wish I made this up. But nope. Real.
That, of course, is Chief HEY LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I’M BEING CONTRARIAN LOOK AT MEEEEE Correspondent Rob Parker, placing blame where it so obviously belongs: on the guys getting hit in the face with basketballs. Blaming the victim is a pretty common thing in our society, but it’s usually masked a little better than this. It’s supposed to be something oblique, like “you have to wonder if the victims tried to say something” or “it’s a shame these players suffered in silence for so long.”
So, curious about where this came from, I dug back through Rob Parker’s feed to see if he has a history of this sort of thing, and sure enough, it seems to be a pattern.
This didn’t actually happen
Obvious parody is obvious, yes?
Okay, this one is probably real
You may now go back to ignoring Rob Parker. He has been conveniently placed next to Skip Bayless for the optimal avoidance efficiency.
Elsewhere in the “when all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a market research question” category, we have Darren Rovell:
Rovell’s argument is that everything that has ever happened ever in the history of things the firing of Mike Rice is based solely and exclusively on money. To wit:
What put Rice on the chopping block is the fact that the tape went public. Nothing else. This was not a victory for human decency or for the players. This will simply be a victory for business.
The leap from the first sentence to the last is pretty impressive. Of COURSE Rice was fired because the tapes went public. And of course there were financial implications. But are we really supposed to believe that the primary reason they fired him was because of finances instead of “we need to do some serious CYA here.” Or maybe “OH MY GOD NO ONE COULD PUBLICLY DEFEND THIS JACKASS IN LIGHT OF THIS EVIDENCE?” Or because they are at a public institution and the state can bring down eighteen kinds of crap on you?
*Admit it: you spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out the last one.
[After the jump, Burke happens.]
That’ll Happen
Trey Burke stole a national monument and put a cow on a barn roof. But how big was The Shot exactly? Well, we were here…
And then this happened:
Oh, you've seen this? NO PROBLEM WATCH AGAIN.
And then everyone was all:
…and…
…and…
For a moment, Lil’ Wayne was more coherent than Ace. Powerful, that shot.
A Tragedy? HEY, LET’S CAPITALIZE
Kevin Ware broke his leg. You know this. I could include the Twitterverse’s reactions, but it would just be twenty or thirty million “Oh Sweet Mother of God”s and “AAAAAAHHHHHH”s. Fortunately, Ware took to Twitter to assure everyone that he was okay:
Thnx for the thoughts and prayers everybody. I’ll be fine. All I’m thinking about is the Cardinals getting the W!
— Kevin Ware (@KevinWare_5) March 31, 2013
Shock must be a hell of a thing, because Ware apparently created that account while his leg was making teammates vomit. And yet, whatever opportunistic dumbass created that account accumulated more than 18,000. Ware already had a Twitter account (@_billionairebev), but it was quiet. So Fake Ware it continued:
RT this for your chance to win tickets and airfare to the Final Four in Atlanta.
— Kevin Ware (@KevinWare_5) April 1, 2013
And continued, with each tweet garnering this guy more and more attention,
Almost at 10,000 followers. Then I will pick a lucky follower to come to the Final Four!
— Kevin Ware (@KevinWare_5) April 1, 2013
And HOW IS THIS STILL GOING?
Next 1,000 people to RT this and like my Facebook page facebook.com/IAmKevinWare will have a chance to win tickets to the Final Four.
— Kevin Ware (@KevinWare_5) April 1, 2013
Parody accounts can be fun. But at some point you have to have a soul, yes? LOL just kidding this is the internet. On the bright side, Ware’s real Twitter account now has over 140,000 followers (it only had a few thousand before his injury), and the fake account has been suspended and its creator has been arrested and charged with impersonating an athlete [I’m assuming. I don’t really know how Twitter works].
What is even more despicable is the attempt by Louisville and Adidas to reap a financial windfall from Ware’s agony. They are selling a “Rise to the Occasion” shirt similar to the one Michigan (among other teams) has been wearing, but in the following obviously Ware-related modification:
Fortunately, in the name of purity, not a dime of that $25 can go to Ware. And it does not appear that Louisville plans to send it to charity or to starving orphans or that damn Sarah McLachlan thing. Nope, Ware is going to get whatever assistance he was going to get, and Louisville and Adidas will get a nice shinbone-related bonus.
You want my opinion? Send that $25 to Ed O’Bannon.
[UPDATE: Louisville has apparently announced that they will waive their share of the revenues from the sale of this shirt. Which, great, but now the money goes to Adidas and the NCAA. La-di-freeking-da.
Also, as Darren Rovell wisely points out (yep, you read that right), this is a little dicey for Louisville and the NCAA. Schools have tried to argue that numbers do not represent actual athletes (i.e. Michigan didn't sell a bazillion Denard jerseys, they sold a bazillion #16 jerseys while Denard happened to wear #16). This Ware thing is pretty much admitting that, yeah, #5 is actually Kevin Ware. I heard Pitino say as much on the radio this morning.]
[UPDATE THE SECOND: Now it appears that Adidas has announced it will donate a portion of every sale to Louisville's scholarship fund. So, Louisville waives a royalty, which Adidas donates to Louisville. Am I missing something? Money is fungible, yes? So isn't this just a fancy way of keeping the status quo? It'd be like me saying, "I love my job so much that I'll work this week for free," and my boss responding, "because of your selfless dedication, we will donate the equivalent of your weekly salary to the bank account of your choice."]
A Good Week for Guerilla Marketing
Some of you may remember my run-in with Jadeveon Clowney, Meijer, and a scary-ass dairy cooler. It appears that a number of major companies are getting wise to the ways of the interwebs, and are acting likewise:
I enjoy this.
Creepy Recruiting is Creepy
We all know this already. But there there is an entirely different level of creepy out there, and while I am hesitant to give them too much exposure, clearly the last thing these particular accounts are concerned with is over-exposure. Accounts like @RecruitingUT, and @ISUrecruiting exist to try to convince recruits to attend their respective schools, despite the fact that they are raging violations of NCAA recruiting rules. And the fact that receiving random tweets is probably below “proximity to a Kinkos” on recruit’s list of things to give a flaming crap about.
But if you want to take it to the, ahem, twin peaks of recruiting creepiness, we have The Ladies of BBN (@KentuckyHot), which operates under an even simpler premise: recruits will go the school that grants them the most convenient access to pictures of hot coeds. Logic, man. Logic.
MEMO TO ANYONE THINKING ABOUT DOING THIS FOR MICHIGAN: Please read this.
Not Twitter-Related But I Don’t Care
A tradition unlike any other: gettin’ blunted with Rastas (h/t Buzzfeed)
Weekly Canseco Update Letdown
I am so unsyatisfied.
Honestly Bob Costas made my day. I watched it three times over breakfast.
Thank god for Bob Costas
edit: anyone know how to strikethrough text?
Like this.
It only happens when I open the plain text editor and use the strikethrough tags thusly:
some stuff to be <del>striken stricken striked</del> have a line drawn through it.
The source of answer to all of my MGoProblems
<strike.> stuff to be striken </strike.>
Remove the periods and voila.
I still can't figure out the last one...
Can someone who knows it play hangman with me? Is there a "c"?
If they didn't want to get hit in the head with basketballs, they shouldn't have worn those tank tops.
'Cause this seems to have been SOP for Knight.
As far as I know the only time Knight ever touched a player was when he "bopped" that Texas Tech kid in the chin so that he would look at Knight. The kid, and the kid's parents were interviewed and thought it was all OK.
I never watched a Knight practice and I dont doubt that Knight strayed near and probably crossed the line, but this coach was so far passed it he couldn't see the line.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm3YFFjj5y8
He half-choked Neil Reed at IU too.
MSU has a similar recruiting Twitter handle. @MSUBoobs or something. Haha.
No, that's the one for their Alumni Association.
There is also a umichboobs website out there. People flashing with their mcards. 28000 undergrads can't all be classy.
The website: http://maizeandboobs.tumblr.com/
Just in case anyone uh....didn't believe you
There is also a umichboobs website out there. People flashing with their mcards. 28000 undergrads can't all be classy.
Great stuff. The Bob Costas bit was a very tasty icing on the cake.
This might be my favorite feature on the site. Great work!
After IU lost to Syracuse in the Sweet 16 all I seemed to hear from IU fans was "Fire Tom Crean" or "Yogi Ferrell needs to transfer". I couldn't help but think how ridiculously insane they were and that there is no way UM fans would react like that after a Sweet 16 loss (or even before the end of the game). Not so much I guess....sigh....
Is this your first experience with Michigan fans? It must be......
I love you.
You just don't know what you have until it's gone I guess.
He only got us to the Sweet 16? FIRE BEILEIN
I still really like this column, but why has this type of sentence construction become the status quo by the writers on this blog?
"Powerful, that shot."
Brian does it, Ace does it, and now so does BiSB. Is that supposed to be a thing now, to turn standard English sentences into something Yoda-like? I'm all for showing creativity in your own writing, but just because Brian started it doesn't mean it needs to infect everyone who posts here.
Obvious Brain-speak is obvious.
I still really like this column, but why has this type of sentence construction become the status quo by the writers on this blog?
"Powerful, that shot."
I consider it conversational prose. (No, I'm not being sarcastic). In fact, I use it a lot when writing informal emails or messages at work. I would hardly say it is simply a "copy Brian" thing. I like that not everyone writes the repetitive, standard sports article. If you're not going to be especially masterful with your descriptive language, I'd rather have it wrote conversationally (word?). Certainly better than this random sentence I pulled from a random sports article:
More than 40,000 people will enter Coors Field for the Rockies' home opener Friday, and all of them will have as much experience managing a major-league game in Denver as Weiss does.
Conversationally, a valid word it be. Wrote is as well, but "written" be the one preferred by context.
-Yoda Trebek
But my standard shtick (seltzer bottles and floppy clown shoes) doesn't play well in writing, so this is all I've got.
I agree that everything we say is a knock-off from someone who previously wrote something, but it just seems like an obvious rip-off in this context. I'm not the world's greatest writer, and I have no real interest in coining a ton of terms and phrases (like Tacopants, for example). It just bugs me when people copy Brian rather than bringing their own style.
Don't get me wrong - I came here and stayed largely because I liked Brian's writing style. But as he has incorporated more people into writing for the blog, I just hope for a little more variation and originality from the other contributors.
Yeah, because even disregarding that small turn of phrase you pointed out, it's impossible to tell that BiSB wrote this instead of Brian. No variation or originality, really.
BiSB, you are awarded no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
"Yeah, because even disregarding that small turn of phrase you pointed out, it's impossible to tell that BiSB wrote this instead of Brian. No variation or originality, really."
I didn't say that, did I?
But while we're on the topic, that's a nice Billy Madison reference.
Don't get me wrong - I came here and stayed largely because I liked Brian's writing style. But as he has incorporated more people into writing for the blog, I just hope for a little more variation and originality from the other contributors.
C'mon, man.
So what you're saying is that "I'm hoping for more creativity and originality" is the same thing as saying "Brian and BiSB are indistinguishable from each other, and BiSB shows no creativity or originality"?
Sorry. You're wrong.
EDIT: This is a stupid thing to get in a protracted argument about, so I'm going to leave it at this. I'll let it suffice to say that you're greatly exaggerating to make your point.
Backtracking from a reckless, blanket statement and then ending the argument when it's convenient for you is, I'll admit, a pretty surefire way to win every argument you participate in. Congratulations.
I can take constructive criticism (that's why I have a cry room in my house), but I'm not sure how you can say this is a copycat of Brian's style if you yourself acknowledge it is at least 33 years old and came from the mind of George Lucas, et al.
I write many sentences. Some are proper, standard, boring English sentences. Some use lingustic devices and structures similar to those Brian uses. Some are completely my own. This piece was like 1400 words. Precisely three of them were of the form you mentioned.
Well then, there's your constructive criticism.
I like the column as a whole, and I read your column more than I read Seth's or Ace's posts (except the recruiting updates). And now you've read my critique. Take it or leave it.
But I write what the figurative voice in my head tells me to write, with an assist from the literal voices in my head. If if comes out sounding like Brian or Salman Rushdie or the Cookie Monster, it is what it is. I'm the sum of my influences. Nothing more, nothing less. I appreciate that you read my stuff, but if you do, be forewarned that some of it is gonna sound like Brian and Ace and Seth and Cookie Monster.
And Salman Rushdie.
You're certainly not wrong, the writing style of pretty much everyone on this blog tends toward Brian's to some degree. I just doubt that's a conscious choice on the part of the writers so much as it is being influenced by a respected source. They respect and enjoy Brian's writing (as do I), and they start to subtly emulate it in their own style.
I think Seth even talked about this in a Dear Diary a few weeks ago after there was a full board post accusing him of being a Brian-knock-off. When you find a style that moves you, your own style is going to be affected.
I don't think it's a conscious choice—in fact, I make a concerted effort to make sure I don't sound like a (dime-store) copy of Brian. In my case, however, I've been reading MGoBlog since I was in high school, and Brian's writing style has obviously been an influence. I don't think that's a bad thing.
Ace - You've been reading MGoBlog since you were in high school?! Please never say that again. It makes me feel very old.
Thanks.
Next step: ~Herm.
I love these posts, GREAT JOB!!!
Should ask those M "fans" if they still want Beilein fired. I hate people.
I'll be getting blunted with Luda
...an opportunity to blank out a bad word in the tweet in which you blanked out a bad word.
You have to wonder about people who decide it's a good idea to F Bomb the Twitterverse every time they hit send on a tweet.
But another voice of reason has emerged.
lol, what a douche. No surprise, tho. I wish somebody would throw basketballs at him during his ramblings. Wonder if that would alter his mind
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