I'm no fan of ESPN, but come on, man. You can't tar the entire network and its tens of thousands of employees for what one Arkansas homer said.
For those who don't read the Baseball forum, and might not be aware of this incident:
- The day before yesterday Tennessee's starting catcher, Evan Russell, got a serious case of the nerves and had to sit out the first game of the NCAA baseball playoffs
- Because anxiety is not something a young man wants to be known for, his family, the coaches, and the team kept quiet about why he wasn't playing
- Into that information void stepped an Arkansas fan troll, who tweeted out a fiction that Evan tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, that he was disqualified for the rest of the playoffs, and that the entire Tennessee team would be tested the next day
- An ESPN game announcer, who not coincidentally is an Arkansas baseball alum, saw that tweet and reported its content as fact on national television during another playoffs game he was working
- As a result of this slander, the family decided to let everyone know the real reason; at the same time, the team announced Evan would be back in for last night's game against Campbell
- The ESPN announcer has since apologized, on air; though some think it sounded forced, Evan's father gracefully accepted the apology
- The Arkansas troll who started it all gave as his defense: I'm a troll, no one should take me seriously, shame on them if they do ... in other words, he's a child
So there's the context for this latest Dan White tweet. It was a good tweet. And, like Evan's father, takes the high road.
Lessons to be learned from the incident:
(1) Don't troll. What we say and do in social media (including VN.com)
can and sometimes
does affect the lads and lasses who play for us. Be civil at all times.
(2) Be aware you're in an on-line information bubble, and try to break out of it. Because Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and most other social media pay attention to what we watch and like, and feed more of the same kinds of content back to us, each of us tend only to hear opinions that agree with what we think. We lose exposure to other viewpoints, while ours is amplified and reverberated. This clearly happened to the Arkansas-alum ESPN announcer. He was following or was fed the Arkansas troll's tweet about Evan. And probably because he was thinking something along those lines in the back of his head anyway ("those Tennessee yokels are too good, they must be cheating somehow, wouldn't it be amazing if they were exposed for it..."), he believed the troll's tweet when he saw it. And repeated it on-air. Don't be that way. Realize the bubble you're in, and work to expose yourself to contrary viewpoints, for your own sanity and intelligence.
(3) At your best, take the high road. Evan and his family, in their Christian charity and good will, are an inspiration to all of us. We could learn from their example.
So no, this isn't all of ESPN. The announcer wasn't following a network agenda. He did it entirely on his own.
Go Vols!
