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

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…

JoseCanseco

(Jose Canseco)

Why do you guys hate me so much cause I told the truth and fixed the game and probably saved someone life like your kids or brother or frien On 4:25 PM May 26th 2010 from TweetCaster

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.

ESPN held their “upfront” thismorning, according to wikipedia:

In the North American television industry, an upfront is a meeting hosted at the start of important advertising sales periods by television network executives, attended by the press and major advertisers. It is so named because of its main purpose, to allow marketers to buy commercial airtime “up front”, or several months before the television season begins.

Why does any of this matter to us? ESPN is prepared to overtake the internet. Done are the days where they just want to ruin 4 channels on TV and a host of websites with different local “flavors”. No today marked a huge announcement. ESPN plans to help bring Facebook down in flames. You may have heard of Facebook, it’s a social networking tool that used to be just for college kids. Now it has expanded to include anyone who has ever touched a computer. Facebook has recently decided
that privacy is useless in this new world so now everyone who knows you now knows you listen to Collective Soul on Pandora.

Why am I so critical of Facebook? I can’t stand half of my news feed. It is filled with too much crap. I do not care about your mafia and I really hate seeing what kind of pig you are raising on your farm.

ESPN is about to make my Facebook experience even more annoying, we are talking ESPN2 First Take level of annoyance. ESPN will be partnering with Playdom to create a Facebook game based off Farmville. It will actually be called ESPNUVille. Let that soak in a bit.

I personally can’t wait to see Facebook friends bitching that their
UVille isn’t producing enough Sasha Vujacics…

Upfronts: ESPN Gets Into the Game

DickieV

(Dick Vitale)

just thinking out loud-Who would u want to be your pg Rondo (Celtics) ex Kentucky star or #1 NBA choice John Wall? On 3:12 AM May 10th 2010 from mobile web

Now I respect Dickie V and what he has done for college hoops. I also respect that is basically an ambassador for the game and tries to promote it whenever he can. That being said, this is just silly.

Dickie was on Mike and Mike saying John Wall, in his opinion, has what it takes to be an all time great point guard in the NBA.

Let’s review a list of all-time great point guards, picked by ESPN:

Magic Johnson
Oscar Robertson
Isaiah Thomas
John Stockton
Bob Cousy
Walt Frazier
Jason Kidd
Tiny Archibald
Steve Nash
Gary Payton

Now, that’s some good players there. Here is the question though how many championships between those guys?

17

17 World Titles between the best 10 point guards of all time. The
average is less than two per. Now let’s take out the number one best of the current three-point era of the NBA and the number one best of the non-three point era – Magic and Bob Cousy.

6

Now we are down to six titles between 8 of the very best 10 guys to
ever play the position in the history of the game.

My point here is, the difference between Jason Kidd and BJ Armstrong is that BJ Armstrong is an NBA Champion while Jason Kidd is not. It’s not that BJ Armstrong is any better than Kidd, in fact he much worse, the fact of the matter is that point guards don’t make a tremendous difference on your ability to win a championship. Playoffs? Sure, they can get a team there. The issue at point here is the all important ring and unless a guy is going to be Magic Johnson you shouldn’t risk your franchise in order to get or keep them. In fact, I would argue paying a max contract for a point guard does nothing more than hurt your team in having money to get a second tier guy to work with them.

All this being said, you have a proven point guard at a relatively low price for the next few years thanks to the extension. You should never, under any circumstances trade him for an unproven (at the NBA level) talent, unless you know 100% this guy is the next Magic Johnson. On that note, even Magic Johnson couldn’t win Boston a title next year when Pierce, Allen and Doc Rivers leave town.

So you are faced with a scary possibility:
By the time you read this there is a very good chance 3 of the NBA’s second round series will be sweeps. If you know the NBA they will not reschedule games because the playoffs just absolutely need to end in late June.

So what are you to do? I suggest watching the hockey playoffs which have actually been entertaining.

Now considering hockey is on Versus and you might not be able to watch it I am sure TNT has you covered. They will have to play something instead of the NBA.

Let’s see what they got:

Air Force One – I never saw this one so I checked out amazon reviews, one is titled “Just simply wants to make you weep for America,”

Blue Streak – You can actually watch Shaq! Oh wait no, that was Blue Chip… I have no idea what the fuck this movie is

The Chronicles Of Riddick – Remember when people thought Vin Diesel was a good actor? Me neither

The Legend Of Zorro – No, not The Mask of Zoro, the movie that got enough people to warrant a sequel. This is the sequel who’s plot attempts to teach youngsters that the only reason California is a state is thanks to Antonio Banderas

Mission: Impossible III – Ok I actually kind of liked this one, I am a sucker for Philip Seymour Hoffman

Payback – Mel Gibson movie and the plot is described as “Porter is shot by his wife and best friend and is left to die. When he survives he plots revenge.” Great title for a movie about plotting revenge. Speaking of Mel Gibson, he was banging a porn star

Paycheck – A John Woo movie starring Ben Affleck?!? How have I never heard of this

Ransom – GIMMIE BACK MY SON!!!!!!!

So yeah, thanks NBA for not bending and ruining any momentum the playoffs have.

There are reasons that sports and music don’t mix often in our pop culture. I think the main thing is if you are good enough to be a pro-athlete you probably can’t sing and vice versa. The only person who could really do it was Shaq, I have a friend who still knows the Shaq Fu album word for word.

I bring this up because we actually had a good moment recently with Jerry Stackhouse doing an admirable job with the National Anthem before the Bucks playoff game:

And to balance the scales here is Scott Stapp’s horrible song for the Florida Marlins, also came out recently (please keep this out of ear’s reach of children – they may die):

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