Fervent Brady Hoke Supporter, Jason Whitlock, is a Sociopath
http://deadspin.com/how-jason-whitlock-is-poisoning-espns-black-grantla…
I'm honestly suprised this hasn't been discussed as it's own topic on this board yet. I probably wouldn't bother mentioning the article above, but...
1) It's incredibly well written (and long)
2) It's pretty damning for the subject
3) The subject was one of the biggest proponents of Brady Hoke in the history of mankind and has been discussed at length before on this blog
What are your thoughts? Should ESPN go ahead and fire him now, and get someone in charge that actually knows how to manage people? Or do they scrap the site altogether?
April 28th, 2015 at 10:34 AM ^
I don't think anybody who actually reads Whitlock regularly has taken him seriously in a long, long time.
April 28th, 2015 at 10:37 AM ^
"Always remember to take me seriously and include me in your prayers before you go to bed. That means you've lived a full life."
- Jason Whitlock, page 44 of The Undefeated's Mission Statement / Manifesto
April 28th, 2015 at 12:20 PM ^
This piece has nothing to do with Hoke or with the University of Michigan. The Hoke reference is simply an excuse to pretend this isn't off-topic. Why on earth would you associate Hoke, who is off somewhere minding his own business, with Whitlock and the word "sociopath?"
The title should be changed to "OT: Jason Whitlock [insert blah blah blah]."
I guess I struggle to find out why this matters to so many people.
I see it a lot below, too. So I must be wrong. But we have SOOOO many people on here that care to have a very specific title about a very specific subject so that they don't specifically waste 10 seconds of their time clicking on something and it not being EXACTLY what they wanted it to be.
I suppose this is indicative of the society that we currently live in, or a society that we operate as Michigan fans. Either way, it would be nice if people weren't ALWAYS getting so wrapped around the axle on this.
The guy supported Brady Hoke until the death. Tweeted about it lots. Always claimed that we needed to have patience, that Brady Hoke was the guy. Turned out he was fucking wrong and that Hoke was incompetent. He was doing a bad job getting some of us to believe that we should hold out for hope. Because he clearly wasn't watching the tape, or the practices, or anything that Hoke was doing. He was just blindly pushing his agenda, like he does for all of his columns, like this story exposes.
Now, barring any "Hoke did have some good practices" jokes, I will step off my soap box. Thank you.
I don't think it has anything to do with whether it's on- or off-topic. It's not that the headline is misleading, it's that it's a contemptible attempt at a smear.
I think it has everything to do with if it's on-topic or off-topic. That was the point I was responding to, made by the user "Tater". Then I explained why I included it. It was not a smear at Hoke (contemptible? please, relax buddy). Rather, a descriptive way to introduce my subject matter (the article discussing Jason Whitlock).
to Whitlock.
He's the one you called a sociopath, based seemingly on an article written by Deadspin and his support for a very close college friend.
As far as "descriptive way to introduce..." descriptive can be objective.
It's not relative in any way to Michigan, so it probably should've been OT.
"Close personal friend of Rafi, John Q. Smith, is a secret, recently-arrested pedophile."
It's not a smear, it's just my descriptive way to introduce subject matter.
a link to the same article was posted yesterday under the mgo.licio.us header.
Rafi cound have identified Whitlock as a Brady Hoke supporter with a comment at that location.
Of course, if his aim was to troll the board, then he hit his target.
April 28th, 2015 at 10:38 AM ^
Being successful at your job usually leads to promotions that require a skillset of managment that usually completely different (especially for a writer) than what you have been doing. I give Bill Simmons a lot of credit for being able to manage over a dozen people successfully on his Grantland site with seemingly no experience. Clearly Whitlock is more concerned about his own image than developing content.
April 28th, 2015 at 11:11 AM ^
April 28th, 2015 at 11:32 AM ^
He was a hack writer when he was at the Ann Arbor News, so little has changed it sounds like, except maybe he has also turned into an even bigger egotistical jerk. His name and journalist shouldn't even be used in the same sentence unless there are some qualifiers like "shitty" 'or "terrible". I basically stopped reading his crap long ago because (among other issues) everything he wrote was racially-tinged even when race had nothing to do with what he was writing about. He always found a way to bring it (and himself of course) into whatever he was writing about.
April 28th, 2015 at 10:38 AM ^
April 28th, 2015 at 10:39 AM ^
Whitlock is an embarassment
April 28th, 2015 at 10:41 AM ^
...is "sociopath" really the right word? Is he unable to feel empathy for other people?
I don't ask this to generally defend Whitlock generally, FWIW. I don't know why anyone follows the Whitlocks, Baylesses, Cowherds, etc. of the world.
April 28th, 2015 at 10:46 AM ^
The more correct word would be egomaniac
April 28th, 2015 at 11:07 AM ^
You're right. I screwed this up. Should have used the term "psychopath" because it basically describes Whitlock perfectly:
1) Psychopath - a person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests itself as amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful relationships, extreme egocentricity, and failure to learn from experience.
No real long term friends in life, other than family members? Check
No long term love interest or ability to establish even a long term girlfriend? Check.
Extreme egocentricity? Check.
Failure to learn from Experience? Check.
April 28th, 2015 at 11:39 AM ^
apparently I'm married to Jason Whitlock. Never even knew I was gay.
April 28th, 2015 at 10:49 AM ^
It was Whitlock's birthday yesterday which makes this even funnier.
April 28th, 2015 at 10:53 AM ^
I read that last night; that is an excellent article about a subject I couldn't care less about (ESPN internal politics). Seriously, I would recommend that article to anybody who enjoys good long-form journalism.
April 28th, 2015 at 10:56 AM ^
There's going to be people who think he should been given another year even with the on field results being bad. The same thing happened with RR. Bottom line is if you don't win you're not going to be the coach of Michigan for long.
April 28th, 2015 at 11:01 AM ^
People in Hoke's corner? Who?
April 28th, 2015 at 11:09 AM ^
April 28th, 2015 at 11:35 AM ^
April 28th, 2015 at 11:43 AM ^
April 28th, 2015 at 11:08 AM ^
April 28th, 2015 at 11:40 AM ^
A 3-9 season would like a word.
April 28th, 2015 at 12:10 PM ^
April 28th, 2015 at 12:34 PM ^
RR's offense was on an upward trajectory. Where is any evidence he would've turned that defense around? It got worse every year.
Both coaches failed.
April 28th, 2015 at 12:39 PM ^
It's easy to be on an upward trajectory when you start that low.
I hope Harbaugh doesn't read this blog, because he's probably smart enough to figure out that the best thing he could possibly do for his Michigan career is go 0-12 his first year and make sure the trajectory is forever on the up.
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Hoke deserved to be run out of town, RR did not. I genuninely hope RR succeeds at Arizona and I think he will do great at another program that doesn't spend 75% of their time stabbing each other in the back. Hoke on the other hand, doesn't deserve to ever coach again. His treatment of Morris and complete lack of competency lead me to wish for nothing but bad things for him
April 28th, 2015 at 11:52 AM ^
If not for Harbaugh maybe. I don't think anyone would say they would want Hoke back over Harbaugh.
There may be people who thought Hoke would eventually have righted the ship but I doubt anyone wants to go back and give it a try.
The same could be said of anyone when compared to Harbaugh.
April 28th, 2015 at 11:00 AM ^
I assume the Cliff notes version is that he's crazy with a big ego? If there is something about dead hookers in there, let me know and I'll read the rest of the article.
April 28th, 2015 at 11:38 AM ^
April 28th, 2015 at 11:01 AM ^
When he did, he was possibly an even bigger f***tard than Drew Sharp is.
I apologize for picking out two black writiers--their skin color is not why both of them are terrible sportswriters. That is completely coincidenal. They are just both cut from the same writing cloth--their entire sthitk is to sit around and take unlimited pot-shots at the hometown teams and get everyone all pissed off, thus creating all kinds of attention for themselves, because negative attention is WAY easier to generate than positive attention.
Positive attention is really hard to generate as a writer because it requires you to be really GOOD. All negative attention requires is for you to constantly bash on the home team, regardless of the circumstances. And that is all Whitlock ever did in the AA News.
Whitlock sucks. He's ALWAYS sucked. That he has been able to ride his pathetic style to any level of national success is a pretty stinging indictment of the industy. But then again, you're talking about an industry where douchebag Michael Rosenberg now regularly writes for SI so.........
April 28th, 2015 at 11:25 AM ^
As far as I'm concerned, identifying any business as "black" or "white" or "Latino" is counterprodictive. So if Whitlock's goal is to create a divide based on race, then he should be fired.
April 28th, 2015 at 11:32 AM ^
...and more about trying to capitalize on what he thinks is an untapped resource. Now if he was trying to put together a site that talked about urban (not black) sports history, that's different. Then again, I love to drive through rural areas on Thursday/Friday nights in the Fall for H.S. football coverage. I like sports stories about the people we don't hear about much. You know, real life Al Bundy.
April 28th, 2015 at 12:22 PM ^
but how do you create a website targting Black/ Latino sports readers? Why would content be any different than ESPN.com/ Grantland? I get that grantland is more investigative, has longer articles, does more indepth stuff and there is a need for that, but what's the purpose of this? Feature more black/ latino players? Why doesn't ESPN.com/ Grantland do this?
April 28th, 2015 at 12:47 PM ^
They should just integrate whatever stories Whitlock's micro-site was going to feature into Grantland. Get the same authors he hired and put it under Grantland. Seems like it would be a good fit.
But honestly, I don't want to read Jemelle Hill ever again. The fact that she turned down Whitlock is a good thing.
Wouldn't the same argument apply to ethnic and community newspapers? The reason Chicago has a Defender, a Polish Daily News, a Korean Times, is that there were stories of interest to the community that weren't being covered adequately by the big dailies or were being covered from an angle foreign to a particular readership.
I don't know if the situation in the national sports media is in any way comparable, but I don't think it's in Whitlock's power to create a divide where none exists in the first place. Either there's already a divide, or his project will fail. (It could, of course, fail on its own merits even if there's a perceived need.)
April 28th, 2015 at 12:21 PM ^
not the time, not the place
April 28th, 2015 at 12:28 PM ^
I don't see how it's not relevant. The piece is largely about the goal of The Undefeated, Jason Whitlock's role in it, etc. It's essentially THE topic at hand.
The goal of black-targeted media like this isn't to create a divide based on race, it's to give a platform for black sports journalists whose voices and perspectives wouldn't otherwise get heard. Of course, the problem with Whitlock, as its revealed in the piece, is he's not actually interested in that; he's only interested in advancing his own worldview and building a bigger brand for himself.
I disagree, but that's about all I'm going to say.
April 28th, 2015 at 11:05 AM ^
Why the hell does this have anything to do with Brady Hoke?
April 28th, 2015 at 11:10 AM ^
Whitlock gave a weird amount attention and support to Brady Hoke following his hire as well as throughout Hoke's tenure. It seemed unwarranted.
April 28th, 2015 at 11:28 AM ^
I just don't see how an article about how Whitlock is a crazy person and bad manager should be used to drag Hoke through the mud, which is how the topic title reads to me. Hoke: bad coach, good guy, doesn't deserve to get pulled down into Whitlock's shittiness.