Can We be More Civil When Making Public Comments About Our Players?

Status
Not open for further replies.

gmubrian

All-American
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GOLD SPONSOR
GIVING DAY 2023
I humbly request that we as fans take a breath before posting public comments about our players by name, obvious reference or about the whole team. Keep in mind that these guys are human beings and deserve a level of respect, at a minimum, commensurate with that. We are their fans so you would think they would get a little better than that from us. They work extremely hard and very long hours to represent us and our school. We should be their biggest supporters. We should not be the ones turning on them and, tearing they down and causing them emotional harm.

As an aside, I feel coaches are definitely fair game for harsher criticism for obvious reasons (paid, adults, etc.) but, they are human too so, it doesn’t have to be mean. As an aside, I think talking about firing them right now is moot and a waste of all our time because it isn’t going to happen. About 1.5 to 2 years before his contract expires is when that discussion has any sort of meaning.

I am not calling anyone in particular out and this isn’t just in response to the SLU game so I ask that you don’t take these quotes to search for them and make direct references to them to create further animosity in our fanbase. I pulled them anonymously for a reason. I don’t want anyone to stop posting because of this. We need as many fans in this community as possible. I am just asking if we can be a little nicer when posting about our players. I was a little surprised (well not really) that we were talking that SLU would be a statement win at points before and during the game, and then losing to them by 1 point makes us “suck". That is as bi-polar as it gets.

Keeping that in mind, here are descriptions of our players that have been posted since our SLU loss:
"We don't have good enough players"
Player X "was horrible”
We have “no bench”
“I don’t believe they are any better than that”
“We suck”
Player x "shit his pants”
“This team ... isn’t even really close to good”
Except for player X “…the rest of the team is desperate to lose”
“Player X is missing half of his game”
“This team isn’t destined to do anything”
This team is “uninspiring”
“This team will be easily forgettable"

Does this sound like the supporters of a group of young adults? Isn’t that one of the reasons we follow college basketball (possibly instead of the NBA), to be supporters of young adults and all that entails? They aren’t the best of the best (yet) so it isn’t for that reason.

Trust me, the players know when they haven’t played well. They can feel it immediately. The coaches will likely tell them immediately or almost immediately during the game. They are going to get to watch it over and over again in film review. They don’t need you to publicly point it out in the most hateful way possible. And remember that at times, it may not even be the players fault, it may be the game plan they have been instructed to play. Maybe, just maybe, give them the benefit of the doubt. Why does it always have to be that they suck. Why can’t it be that their defender just got the better of them, or that the guy they defended just played really well that game.

They view our fanbase as their extended families. Many of them are far away from home and immediate family. For some of them this is the first time in that situation. While most of them are legally adults, some of them are as young as 17/18 years old up to 24 and that is not a fully formed adult in my experience with most people of those ages. Hell, I am still growing up and I hope to finish before I die. Keep in mind that I know for a fact that some of them are dealing with: girlfriend problems, problems with a child, family problems, mental health issues, family medical issues, personal medical scares and more. I have been a little vague on purpose and won’t go into more details, because I hope I haven't already said more than I should, so don’t bother asking me for specifics and please don’t try digging into any of these, especially, publicly.

I suggest before posting publicly about one of our players (here, twitter, or any public forum) that you pretend that you are posting about one of your friends. While we will provide constructive criticism of our friends at times, we don’t, typically, use negative adjectives when doing so. I suggest that if you need to vent about a player's poor play or need to throw insulting adjectives around about them or the team’s play, that maybe you do that in a private venue (in person conversation with friends, text a friend, private message, or phone a friend so it isn’t in writing to be quoted publicly somewhere). I am in my 50s and I don’t know that I could handle people watching everything I do at work and publicly airing their every criticism of how I do my job in a mean manner, especially those people that are supposed to be my supporters.

I am not asking people to avoid discussing the games and where we need to improve or situations where a player made a mistake. I am just suggesting that we just try to not be mean and offensive about it.

Feel free to rip me to shreds, though, if you need to do that to someone.
 

sleeperpick

Hall of Famer
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
I think one of the weirdest parts of this program are fans that get way too involved in being friends with 18-24 year old people that aren’t fully developed. How you would know they have girlfriend issues is one of the weirdest things ever posted on this board.
 

gmutom

Hall of Famer
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GOLD SPONSOR
GIVING DAY 2023
I think our players get off easy compared to much bigger programs with more passionate fan bases, but you make some valid points, Brian. I also think all of us can do more to provide context rather than knee-jerk responses.

For example, I posted in the SLU thread that nine minutes shouldn't pass in the first half before Bailey scores his first points, especially with Ticket out. Although I think Bailey can be more assertive, my comment was also aimed at the coaches needing to do more to get him involved — like calling set plays to get him more open looks.
 

mkaufman1

Administrator
Staff member
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GIVING DAY 2023
Thanks for the thoughts @gmubrian - your insights are always welcomed.

At least for me I take more of a neutral perspective. I’m also not a mean person so I can’t imagine insulting (or venting) like some use the forum to do. That’s fine.

Myself, others and @HoopsAdmin have made it a point as best we can to try to make this place about basketball and not hurling insults. We always have room for improvement but we are trying.

I don’t know what the solution is anymore and I’ve already been in touch with @HoopsAdmin to have him chime in. We’ve kicked around a lot of ideas including making our forum completely private so that nobody can read what we say without registration.

I applaud you for mentioning this and your unique perspectives. But all we can do is continue to try and be better, or privatize the forum in my viewpoint. I also encourage (and I know folks do this) to express anger via text. Hopefully other folks have constructive ideas to share and this doesn’t get too out of hand.

-Matt
 

GMU79

All-American
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GIVING DAY 2023
I humbly request that we as fans take a breath before posting public comments about our players by name, obvious reference or about the whole team. Keep in mind that these guys are human beings and deserve a level of respect, at a minimum, commensurate with that. We are their fans so you would think they would get a little better than that from us. They work extremely hard and very long hours to represent us and our school. We should be their biggest supporters. We should not be the ones turning on them and, tearing they down and causing them emotional harm.

As an aside, I feel coaches are definitely fair game for harsher criticism for obvious reasons (paid, adults, etc.) but, they are human too so, it doesn’t have to be mean. As an aside, I think talking about firing them right now is moot and a waste of all our time because it isn’t going to happen. About 1.5 to 2 years before his contract expires is when that discussion has any sort of meaning.

I am not calling anyone in particular out and this isn’t just in response to the SLU game so I ask that you don’t take these quotes to search for them and make direct references to them to create further animosity in our fanbase. I pulled them anonymously for a reason. I don’t want anyone to stop posting because of this. We need as many fans in this community as possible. I am just asking if we can be a little nicer when posting about our players. I was a little surprised (well not really) that we were talking that SLU would be a statement win at points before and during the game, and then losing to them by 1 point makes us “suck". That is as bi-polar as it gets.

Keeping that in mind, here are descriptions of our players that have been posted since our SLU loss:
"We don't have good enough players"
Player X "was horrible”
We have “no bench”
“I don’t believe they are any better than that”
“We suck”
Player x "shit his pants”
“This team ... isn’t even really close to good”
Except for player X “…the rest of the team is desperate to lose”
“Player X is missing half of his game”
“This team isn’t destined to do anything”
This team is “uninspiring”
“This team will be easily forgettable"

Does this sound like the supporters of a group of young adults? Isn’t that one of the reasons we follow college basketball (possibly instead of the NBA), to be supporters of young adults and all that entails? They aren’t the best of the best (yet) so it isn’t for that reason.

Trust me, the players know when they haven’t played well. They can feel it immediately. The coaches will likely tell them immediately or almost immediately during the game. They are going to get to watch it over and over again in film review. They don’t need you to publicly point it out in the most hateful way possible. And remember that at times, it may not even be the players fault, it may be the game plan they have been instructed to play. Maybe, just maybe, give them the benefit of the doubt. Why does it always have to be that they suck. Why can’t it be that their defender just got the better of them, or that the guy they defended just played really well that game.

They view our fanbase as their extended families. Many of them are far away from home and immediate family. For some of them this is the first time in that situation. While most of them are legally adults, some of them are as young as 17/18 years old up to 24 and that is not a fully formed adult in my experience with most people of those ages. Hell, I am still growing up and I hope to finish before I die. Keep in mind that I know for a fact that some of them are dealing with: girlfriend problems, problems with a child, family problems, mental health issues, family medical issues, personal medical scares and more. I have been a little vague on purpose and won’t go into more details, because I hope I haven't already said more than I should, so don’t bother asking me for specifics and please don’t try digging into any of these, especially, publicly.

I suggest before posting publicly about one of our players (here, twitter, or any public forum) that you pretend that you are posting about one of your friends. While we will provide constructive criticism of our friends at times, we don’t, typically, use negative adjectives when doing so. I suggest that if you need to vent about a player's poor play or need to throw insulting adjectives around about them or the team’s play, that maybe you do that in a private venue (in person conversation with friends, text a friend, private message, or phone a friend so it isn’t in writing to be quoted publicly somewhere). I am in my 50s and I don’t know that I could handle people watching everything I do at work and publicly airing their every criticism of how I do my job in a mean manner, especially those people that are supposed to be my supporters.

I am not asking people to avoid discussing the games and where we need to improve or situations where a player made a mistake. I am just suggesting that we just try to not be mean and offensive about it.

Feel free to rip me to shreds, though, if you need to do that to someone.
Very well said. Guilty as charged. And yes, I recognized myself immediately in your first quote. I shouldn't have said that. Thanks for the comeupance.
I would like to add an addendum, though, if I could. I would like to see more courtesy among our posters toward each other. And I'm not just talking about when I am the one being hammered. Sometimes I read what is said here to each other, and I am just glad I'm not on the receiving end of the comment. It can get pretty brutal.
(Also, I'm curious. Do you guys think the players read this site?)
 
OP
gmubrian

gmubrian

All-American
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GOLD SPONSOR
GIVING DAY 2023
Thanks for the thoughts @gmubrian - your insights are always welcomed.

At least for me I take more of a neutral perspective. I’m also not a mean person so I can’t imagine insulting (or venting) like some use the forum to do. That’s fine.

Myself, others and @HoopsAdmin have made it a point as best we can to try to make this place about basketball and not hurling insults. We always have room for improvement but we are trying.

I don’t know what the solution is anymore and I’ve already been in touch with @HoopsAdmin to have him chime in. We’ve kicked around a lot of ideas including making our forum completely private so that nobody can read what we say without registration.

I applaud you for mentioning this and your unique perspectives. But all we can do is continue to try and be better, or privatize the forum in my viewpoint. I also encourage (and I know folks do this) to express anger via text. Hopefully other folks have constructive ideas to share and this doesn’t get too out of hand.

-Matt
You guys do a great job. It is a never ending battle to thread the needle. I have had the same idea turning this into a private forum idea as well, but understand it might mean the site doesn't meet HoopsAdmin's goals for this site. In the end, unless you charged a fee, you'd still have a wide audience (theoretically). I don't know the answer and wasn't asking you guys to take any action. I was just making a humble request of my fellow fans.
 

mkaufman1

Administrator
Staff member
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GIVING DAY 2023
You guys do a great job. It is a never ending battle to thread the needle. I have had the same idea turning this into a private forum idea as well, but understand it might mean the site doesn't meet HoopsAdmin's goals for this site. In the end, unless you charged a fee, you'd still have a wide audience (theoretically). I don't know the answer and wasn't asking you guys to take any action. I was just making a humble request of my fellow fans.
Thanks, appreciate it. We want it to be welcoming but in this day and age maybe it’s time to pivot. We all want to win, we all express ourselves differently. Perhaps making our thoughts private to some degree is the best so that we can have leeway on our expression to some degree. I also always say this is gmu basketball, and we are pretty small potatoes compared to many fanbases. It doesn’t excuse anything but perhaps we should be that much better.
 

tblack33

Hall of Famer
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GIVING DAY 2023
Very well said. Guilty as charged. And yes, I recognized myself immediately in your first quote. I shouldn't have said that. Thanks for the comeupance.
I would like to add an addendum, though, if I could. I would like to see more courtesy among our posters toward each other. And I'm not just talking about when I am the one being hammered. Sometimes I read what is said here to each other, and I am just glad I'm not on the receiving end of the comment. It can get pretty brutal.
(Also, I'm curious. Do you guys think the players read this site?)
I am going to get hammered drunk before the game and THUMBS DOWN all of your posts
 

FreeGunston12

All-American
Look, if calling the team uninspiring is crossing the line then what's the point of these boards? This is for the fans, right? And if players are choosing to seek this out, then they should be ready for the basketball discourse they see. If they don't like it, they should use it as bulletin board material.

And I don't think you are giving the young men enough credit for being resilient. You don't have to protect them. Surely they have overcome a lot to be where they are when others weren't making the cut. They can handle it, just like they can enjoy the overreactions after a big win.

I'm not saying there isn't a line, but I haven't seen anyone mention girlfriend problems or mental health issues, etc. until this thread. That doesnt need to be put out there even to try and defend them. Its weird to bring that up. Everyone is just talking about basketball here. I think that was in poor taste more than anything anyone said after the SLU game.
 

sleeperpick

Hall of Famer
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
View: https://twitter.com/daytonmbb/status/1614112906815340544?s=46&t=ofLTAAgza9xrtZPSeOlvNA
if people think all 8 mason fans are bad on a message board just realize we are probably the most tame fan base in the A10. Daytons point guard was told to sleep outside in the cold tonight on Twitter. Hopefully our fans and maybe our players (they don’t read this shit stop coddling them like swim mom on reading Wednesday’s) who get sad and depressed at a message board can realize it happens worse almost everywhere else.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Patriotsince81

Hall of Famer
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GOLD SPONSOR
Noon tipoff and that's a challenge. Out here it's a 7am tipoff...a little more difficult.
Well, according to Jimmy Buffet and Alan Jackson.....It's 5 o'clock somewhere.
Don't forget Sheryl Crow - "I like a good beer buzz early in the mornin"
 

Patriotsince81

Hall of Famer
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GOLD SPONSOR
Getting the thread back on track. Interesting read for those interested. One of many.

 

Jack Strop

Starter
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
Remember the overriding theme that surfaced when the Bills/Bengals players effectively cancelled the remaining of their game following Damar Hamlin's near death experience: "It's just a game."
 

tblack33

Hall of Famer
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GIVING DAY 2023
Remember the overriding theme that surfaced when the Bills/Bengals players effectively cancelled the remaining of their game following Damar Hamlin's near death experience: "It's just a game."
Comparing someone dying on a field and being resuscitated to *check notes* people saying a player had a bad game on the internet? Give me a f**king break. There is no discourse if you can’t discuss the negative aspect. These guys are tougher than you give them credit for, and if they aren’t then this is a good first lesson in that it’s a big, mean world out there. Things on these boards and the internet in general have toned *way* down over the years compared to how it used to be (and in a good way), so if players can’t handle hearing they had a bad game on the internet AFTER THEY HAD A BAD GAME then they either need to stay off the internet, or build some resilience because I hate to say it but that is life.

Also don’t sell me the unpaid young guy BS, some of these guys are making money on NIL (some of them more than most posters here), the average age on our current roster is over 21. If you are in your early 20s and the above noted comments are too much then I think that says more about you then about the fanbase.
 

Patriot Lawdog

Starter
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
I've said this for 20+ years now, if I were a coach my first instruction would be to never visit message boards, fan sites, and limit any sort of social media use. Whether people are posting negatively or positively, it rarely has any upside to reading. As people have pointed out, this fan base is very tame in comparison to any P5 school or even some within our conference. Do I think some comments are out of line and dumb?Yes, but I guess I always consider the source. If I think that person has limited basketball knowledge then I view myself as being above them. Does that make me a condescending a-hole at times? Sure, but better to be that than upset by every "you suck or so an so sucks" comment.

People also need to be careful about limiting the discourse of a fan base that has been severely weakened over the past 10 years. We need almost everyone we can to be interested.
 

NewPatriot

Starter
This has been an ongoing debate on VRN for years. Some parents and or uncles of players, in fact, have interacted directly with our fan base in the past on VRN.

The last one being the Uncle of Justin Tillman.

Not only that but recruits and their families look at message boards to get a read on fanbases during the recruitment process.

Go Patriots today at noon!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top