NU fan’s bogus board entry stirs debate
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
It can get unruly out there among the Internet anonymous, where everyone is suddenly a few inches taller, a little bit more macho, a lot more willing to type something they would never say in face-to-face conversation.
In January 2005, the Journal Star published a story about Husker fans who frequent message boards — a habit that is well enough when practiced with tact.
One of the many fans interviewed was James Conradt, then living in Lincoln, now a 36-year-old working as a manger of the computing services department at the University of Texas in Austin.
“I think anonymity brings out the worst in people,” Conradt said then. “There are no consequences for saying what you say. I think that’s probably where the concept of flaming comes from. They probably didn’t have that in the old days around the coffee pot at work, the profanity-laced, ultra-negative outbursts.”
The words seemed ironic last week when Conradt, who goes to message boards under the tag Darth Husker, found trouble after posting a bogus story on a Husker message board about some Oklahoma quarterbacks being arrested on drug charges.
Using a template from the Web site of The Oklahoman, the newspaper in Oklahoma City, his faux story was soon winding through cyberspace and being reported by some radio stations that didn’t bother double-checking its validity.
Conradt has apologized, but it may not keep away legal action against him, and it’s provoked plenty of conversation this week about the problems Internet anonymity can bring.
“I have a hunch any after-effects will be short-term,” Oklahoma associate athletic director Kenny Mossman told The Tulsa World. “The anonymous nature of message boards has enabled people to assassinate the character of our athletes. This is probably the most obvious example of this, but there are hundreds of others where (athletes) are really taken apart by people who don’t have to list their names.”
There has always been criticism when it comes to college sports, but anonymity has emboldened some to launch the kind of tirades they probably wouldn’t in an everyday conversation.
Jack Stark, former psychologist for the Nebraska football team who now renders his services to NASCAR and other organizations, said the Internet has made the landscape much more different for athletes even since he left the NU program in February 2004.
“It’s changed a lot in just the last three or four years, and what makes it so different is that at least if you wrote in a letter to the editor, your name is attached,” Stark said. “Today it’s all coming from anonymous people who can say anything they want to say. It’s not a small matter anymore and it’s getting out of hand because people are reading and it and getting hurt by it.”
It can be especially damaging, Stark said, to new recruits who are just getting started in the program and want to read what people are thinking about them.
“Put yourself in the mind of a 17-, 18-, 19-year-old individual,” he said. “They’re on the Internet a lot. They go back and forth on Facebook and etcetera. This generation is very, very savvy. They are going on there, and that’s kind of a hobby of theirs to check out what’s being said about them.”
Even when young athletes do try to avoid Internet postings, Stark noted that often a player’s friends will tell him what they read: “Hey, you won’t believe what they’re saying about you.”
Some message boards and blogs do a better job than others about deleting posts that may prove questionable. The Journal Star has a blog that is regulated but also allows readers to post anonymously. Some posters, especially during the hoopla of last fall’s 5-7 season, had to be banned for material they posted.
“I don’t tell (players) to ignore it,” Bill Callahan said last year in the midst of all the criticism. “I don’t put any muzzle on our players. Players are human beings. Players read the papers. Good, bad or indifferent, you’re going to read it.”
Husker senior quarterback Beau Davis said he used to get on the Internet to see what people were saying early in his career, but no longer does.
“It can really hurt a kid’s self-confidence if he goes on there and he finds that these people are talking crap about me on the message board. It’s just the type of thing that an 18-year-old doesn’t need to hear,” Davis said.
“I think if people were in our shoes and actually reading message boards, they’d be like ‘Wow, this is totally wrong information.’ ”
Certainly there are those who do not go on fan sites just to stir the pot. There are plenty who post opinions in a respectable manner. And as one fan pointed out about message boards in the same story that featured Conradt three years ago: “What intrigued me was all the different walks of life there are in terms of Husker fans. It’s a place where Husker fans all over the country can be together.”
But it’s like everything: The negative actions of some seem to draw the most attention.
Stark’s message to athletes: Don’t read that stuff, the good or the bad.
“Because you can get a big head reading the good stuff about you, too.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.
Most Commented news