The Finger Wag – Athletes using Twitter and Social Media to their Disadvantage

Remember TGIF on Friday nights in the early 1990’s? I loved TGIF it was like crack for me, the only thing better was the next night and SNICK. They are two of the main reasons I suffered from childhood obesity. Apparently Chad Ocho Cino shares a love of mine…

My favorite part of this might be learning that Mark Curry, Mr. Cooper himself, has a twitter account. He uses it to challenge Rev Run with words of wisdom like this one:

Or not…

Here’s what we do at The Finger Wag…  We make fun of athletes.  They usual don’t deserve it.  Though sometimes they do.

We certainly add no value to the world.  We just leach of their fame and try to get a few page views with a snarky comment.

Then we get fodder like this…

That’s Wagging Gold!!

Or so I thought.  Within a few minutes I thought to myself, “Why do we actually hate Jose Canseco?”

It’s true.  He performed what was truly a valuable service. Everything he said ended up being true.  It basically beat Bud Selig into cleaning up the game.

And truth be told, he’s probably going to keep a few kids of steroids.  And that’s a good thing.

So I decided to highlight Jose’s tweet as true.   And ask the question to you, why do we hate him?

But I didn’t get further than the background on his Twitter page until I realized exactly why people hate him.

Here’s the background…

Then it all came flooding back to me…

The celebrity boxing.

This unfortunate scene from the Surreal Life.
Baseball promos like this (though it probably wasn’t totally his fault.  Managers and PR people can get celebrities to do the strangest things).

His odd fashion sense.

And finally his circus-MMA fight against novelty fighter Choi Hong-man.

I think he was on the Celebrity Apprentice too, but no one watches that anymore.

So I’m not trying to pile on Jose here.  Because here is the important thing…

He actually did, in his own way, a helluva lot of good for baseball and sports.  People like to think that cleaning up steroids in the game is one of those things “that would have happened eventually.”

I disagree.  You needed a whistleblower.  And you needed one with some credibility.

It’s true.  Jose probably did it to sell some books.  That motive is as clear as his finest sheer movie-premiere attire.

But sportswriters could scream until they were blue in the face.  Until a player, in those clubhouses–who was there while players used steriods– came forward, nothing was going to change.

So I, for one, thank Jose for his bravery and capitalism.

Now we just need a test for HGH and a colorful NFL character to clean up that sport.  My pick: Steelers kicker Jeff Reed.

If you were around over the weekend you may have seen my post on Darryl Talley and his love for NCIS. If you did see it, you were not the only one. Darryl himself came across the post and gave it a retweet, very kind of him.

Awesome, I love it when athletes read our site. Hell I love it when anyone reads our site.

Darryl’s friend Thurman Thomas also saw our post (most likely with the one right below it about his lack of understanding on Follow Friday). Here is when it gets interesting:

What?

We aren’t the only ones confused:

So it’s obvious to me that after years of pondering Thurman Thomas thinks he has finally figured it all out.

The Finger Wag = God

I am sorry Thurman, you are wrong. The Finger Wag is not God. You are close however.

Loyal fans of The Finger Wag, I present to you the secret behind our little website:

This is a good time to bring it up., if you like anything entertainment check out Today Is Rex Manning Day. Their first post was on Lost yesterday and I will be putting my thoughts their tomorrow or the day after.

The most interesting part of this to me is, Darren Sharper had off-season knee surgery himself. It seems both him and Farve have some targets for the opposing players.

I have a feeling the real reason he watches the show does not have to do with “listening” to Hannah Storm…

Yeah, it’s the legs. Don’t worry Sean, same here my man.