Noah.Dreams
01-17-2008, 09:43 AM
The pig that roared.
On the message boards and sports talk radio, Hog fans have found their voice. Is anyone at UA really listening?
Arkansas Times Article Published 1/17/2008
Jan. 2, 2008 — the day after the Cotton Bowl. Somewhere, the Razorback football team is weeping into their jerseys and bemoaning the newly minted Curse of the Red Legs following a 38-7 drubbing by Missouri.
Even at that, the end should come as a relief. The Hogs have done fair to middlin' this season, ending up 8-5 and winning a berth — win or lose — in the best bowl game they've made it to in years.
Off the field, however, it has been A Season in Hell.
If you've read this far, you probably know some of the things I'm talking about: The e-mail napalm dropped on then-quarterback Mitch Mustain by Coach Houston Nutt's pal Teresa Prewett (and the ongoing lawsuit over the university's handling of the incident). The unhappy exit of both Mustain (to USC) and UA defensive coordinator Gus Malzahn (to Tulsa) — and the fan discord that festered in their wake. The like-clockwork stories of Razorback players getting arrested, on charges ranging from shoplifting to credit card fraud. Coach Houston Nutt's 1,000-plus text messages to That Other Woman. Repeated rumors that Nutt was history. Fans upset and motivated enough to pitch in and hire an honest-to-god airplane towing a “FIRE NUTT” banner over the stadium — an anonymous effort that Nutt eventually called “gutless.” All that, and the eventual firing/resignation/going-away-party for Nutt, who — much to the chagrin of the Nutt Busters — came in for a pillow soft landing, handed a $3.2 million severance package (paid for by the private but ticket-supported Razorback Foundation) before being scooped up by Ole Miss faster than you can say “Platinum Parachute.” Need I say more? Ears bleeding yet? I could go on if you'd like. No?
What connects all these sad tales — either by way of their sordid conception or the chatter that kept them alive long enough to germinate and spawn into real news — is that a very good argument can be made that they all came to us via what might best be called the fan-based media: blogs, message boards and sports talk radio. In the last five years, the boards and sports radio have grown faster than the Duggar Clan. Hogville.net, the biggest Razorback-themed message board on the Internet, boasts 28,000 active users. In December 2006, less than four years after it was founded, the site logged 12.6 million hits, with visits by over 100,000 distinct computers a month.
Though the message boards regularly feature fibbing, bull****ting and outright lies that would put a Smackover used car salesman to shame, they're also where nearly every major story in Razorback football last season broke — stories that quickly trickled down to sports radio and (as much as some old school reporters seem to hate it) television and print coverage. Newspapers, which devote the most dollars to reporting, often found themselves dead last, by 24 hours or more, in reporting major news developments.
As for whether those on The Hill at UA are really listening, coaches and administrators talk a good game about ignoring the growing din. That said, if there's one truism about public officials of any stripe — maybe going all the way back to the time when a few of them lost their heads after a certain “Let them eat cake” remark — it's that they tend to keep their ears to the ground when it comes to the grumbling of the peasant class.
Those who like the message boards and radio shows say they give the fans a harmless vent for their frustrations, or even go so far as to say they provide a service by policing the activities of UA athletics in a way the old media was too beholden to the program to do in the past. Critics (and there's pretty much a dark, crater-pocked no-mans-land between the lovers and the haters) call the boards overly negative, too concerned with the private lives of players and coaches, the refuge of bile-spewing loudmouths who hide behind the cloak of Internet anonymity.
There is one thing that unites both camps, however: the knowledge that, for good or ill, technology has managed to amplify what was once the pennywhistle voice of the fans into a foghorn — one that many on both sides suspect started the fatal vibrations that finally toppled Coach Houston Nutt.
Lanny Beavers is the founder and owner of the online message board hogville.net. Though he's a big supporter of the new fan-driven media, he knows better than most about the drawbacks of a technologically emboldened fan base. After Houston Nutt left Arkansas, Beavers received five death threats from irate fans that blamed the boards.
Beavers said that one of the biggest misconceptions about message boards like his — one held by both by lovers and haters — is that they are somehow a news source. Beavers has no such pretensions. With the content on his boards 100 percent reader submitted, Beavers freely admits that for every piece of good information on Hogville, there's a piece of information that might win you points in a creative writing class, but not in Journalism 101.
Beavers said that while there has always been a very vocal fan base in Arkansas, it took technology to finally bring them together. Twenty years ago, three fans might gather in a Stuttgart coffee shop to voice their displeasure about a loss. Today, the same conversation can be read online by 3,000. Even more important, Beavers said, is the way a story can evolve and grow on the message boards, with posters gleaning details from sources the traditional media could never have reached.
“What the Internet has done is put everyone together,” he said. “Now, a coach runs a player off, and boom, it pops up on the Internet. Then a relative of that player or a friend of that player posts on there, saying, ‘This is what the coach is doing.' You never really had that before. The mainstream media, they would have never run that story before because it would have been considered sour grapes. Before, you always got the coaches' side of the story.”
Beavers admits that during the last season, the Hogville faithful were mostly negative about Coach Nutt. Hogville, for instance, was where the idea for the anti-Nutt airplane banners was first hatched, and where many of the lingering scandals that haunted the program first broke. Nonetheless, Beavers doesn't buy the idea that the boards and the radio talk shows they fed into had any bearing on whether Nutt stayed or went, saying that Nutt's release was of his own making. According to Beavers, many of those who blame the boards for Nutt's departure are the same people who — just a few months back — were calling the online community a bunch of ineffective cranks.
“You can't have it both ways,” he said. “A lot of people don't want to acknowledge Hogville.net or any other website because it's not media — and we're not a news source. But if they don't want to acknowledge us having any information that's good, you can't turn around and say it's because of hogville.net that we don't have Coach Nutt anymore … If we weren't strong enough to voice opinion as news, we're not strong enough to run a coach off either.”
On the message boards and sports talk radio, Hog fans have found their voice. Is anyone at UA really listening?
Arkansas Times Article Published 1/17/2008
Jan. 2, 2008 — the day after the Cotton Bowl. Somewhere, the Razorback football team is weeping into their jerseys and bemoaning the newly minted Curse of the Red Legs following a 38-7 drubbing by Missouri.
Even at that, the end should come as a relief. The Hogs have done fair to middlin' this season, ending up 8-5 and winning a berth — win or lose — in the best bowl game they've made it to in years.
Off the field, however, it has been A Season in Hell.
If you've read this far, you probably know some of the things I'm talking about: The e-mail napalm dropped on then-quarterback Mitch Mustain by Coach Houston Nutt's pal Teresa Prewett (and the ongoing lawsuit over the university's handling of the incident). The unhappy exit of both Mustain (to USC) and UA defensive coordinator Gus Malzahn (to Tulsa) — and the fan discord that festered in their wake. The like-clockwork stories of Razorback players getting arrested, on charges ranging from shoplifting to credit card fraud. Coach Houston Nutt's 1,000-plus text messages to That Other Woman. Repeated rumors that Nutt was history. Fans upset and motivated enough to pitch in and hire an honest-to-god airplane towing a “FIRE NUTT” banner over the stadium — an anonymous effort that Nutt eventually called “gutless.” All that, and the eventual firing/resignation/going-away-party for Nutt, who — much to the chagrin of the Nutt Busters — came in for a pillow soft landing, handed a $3.2 million severance package (paid for by the private but ticket-supported Razorback Foundation) before being scooped up by Ole Miss faster than you can say “Platinum Parachute.” Need I say more? Ears bleeding yet? I could go on if you'd like. No?
What connects all these sad tales — either by way of their sordid conception or the chatter that kept them alive long enough to germinate and spawn into real news — is that a very good argument can be made that they all came to us via what might best be called the fan-based media: blogs, message boards and sports talk radio. In the last five years, the boards and sports radio have grown faster than the Duggar Clan. Hogville.net, the biggest Razorback-themed message board on the Internet, boasts 28,000 active users. In December 2006, less than four years after it was founded, the site logged 12.6 million hits, with visits by over 100,000 distinct computers a month.
Though the message boards regularly feature fibbing, bull****ting and outright lies that would put a Smackover used car salesman to shame, they're also where nearly every major story in Razorback football last season broke — stories that quickly trickled down to sports radio and (as much as some old school reporters seem to hate it) television and print coverage. Newspapers, which devote the most dollars to reporting, often found themselves dead last, by 24 hours or more, in reporting major news developments.
As for whether those on The Hill at UA are really listening, coaches and administrators talk a good game about ignoring the growing din. That said, if there's one truism about public officials of any stripe — maybe going all the way back to the time when a few of them lost their heads after a certain “Let them eat cake” remark — it's that they tend to keep their ears to the ground when it comes to the grumbling of the peasant class.
Those who like the message boards and radio shows say they give the fans a harmless vent for their frustrations, or even go so far as to say they provide a service by policing the activities of UA athletics in a way the old media was too beholden to the program to do in the past. Critics (and there's pretty much a dark, crater-pocked no-mans-land between the lovers and the haters) call the boards overly negative, too concerned with the private lives of players and coaches, the refuge of bile-spewing loudmouths who hide behind the cloak of Internet anonymity.
There is one thing that unites both camps, however: the knowledge that, for good or ill, technology has managed to amplify what was once the pennywhistle voice of the fans into a foghorn — one that many on both sides suspect started the fatal vibrations that finally toppled Coach Houston Nutt.
Lanny Beavers is the founder and owner of the online message board hogville.net. Though he's a big supporter of the new fan-driven media, he knows better than most about the drawbacks of a technologically emboldened fan base. After Houston Nutt left Arkansas, Beavers received five death threats from irate fans that blamed the boards.
Beavers said that one of the biggest misconceptions about message boards like his — one held by both by lovers and haters — is that they are somehow a news source. Beavers has no such pretensions. With the content on his boards 100 percent reader submitted, Beavers freely admits that for every piece of good information on Hogville, there's a piece of information that might win you points in a creative writing class, but not in Journalism 101.
Beavers said that while there has always been a very vocal fan base in Arkansas, it took technology to finally bring them together. Twenty years ago, three fans might gather in a Stuttgart coffee shop to voice their displeasure about a loss. Today, the same conversation can be read online by 3,000. Even more important, Beavers said, is the way a story can evolve and grow on the message boards, with posters gleaning details from sources the traditional media could never have reached.
“What the Internet has done is put everyone together,” he said. “Now, a coach runs a player off, and boom, it pops up on the Internet. Then a relative of that player or a friend of that player posts on there, saying, ‘This is what the coach is doing.' You never really had that before. The mainstream media, they would have never run that story before because it would have been considered sour grapes. Before, you always got the coaches' side of the story.”
Beavers admits that during the last season, the Hogville faithful were mostly negative about Coach Nutt. Hogville, for instance, was where the idea for the anti-Nutt airplane banners was first hatched, and where many of the lingering scandals that haunted the program first broke. Nonetheless, Beavers doesn't buy the idea that the boards and the radio talk shows they fed into had any bearing on whether Nutt stayed or went, saying that Nutt's release was of his own making. According to Beavers, many of those who blame the boards for Nutt's departure are the same people who — just a few months back — were calling the online community a bunch of ineffective cranks.
“You can't have it both ways,” he said. “A lot of people don't want to acknowledge Hogville.net or any other website because it's not media — and we're not a news source. But if they don't want to acknowledge us having any information that's good, you can't turn around and say it's because of hogville.net that we don't have Coach Nutt anymore … If we weren't strong enough to voice opinion as news, we're not strong enough to run a coach off either.”