Mid-week frustration
Posted on November 19th, 2008 – 1:40 PMBy Kent Youngblood
Have to tell you, I find it a real pleasure to come into the office every day, fire up the blog, and then spend an hour monitoring the posts. Nothing better to do here than try to keep adults from acting like children, try to keep people from posting threats, challenges to fights, sexual references and folks who still think it’s funny to post under other peoples’ names.
This is football, right? Is this life or death?
Man. Now, I don’t know if most of you think this blog is worthwhile or not. I look at it as a way to augment what we put in the paper, maybe create some dialog. The way I see it, having looked at the string of posts, it is mainly used as a jumping off point for folks to talk back and forth with each other. All of that is fine. My point is, why should people who want to actually exchange ideas — rather than rants or threats — have to put up with dialog and language that most wouldn’t want their children to hear?
I have to say that I find this all very disappointing. I did some backup blogging when I covered the Wolves and Wild, but the level of discourse on those blogs never fell into the gutter like it does here. I’m done with this. No more warnings. I don’t care what your opinion is, pro- or anti-Gopher, pro-Mason, Pro-Brewster, whatever. If you can’t express it in a reasonable way you’re out.
38 Responses to "Mid-week frustration"
Great plan…
Gophs will have their hands full with the Hawks D - but I think they can handle it.
You tell em Kent.
Kent … I support your decision to enforce decent manners here. I will, myself, refrain from playful jabs at a couple of people here, although I am not responsible for everything that has been posted under my monicker.
In sending offenders to walk the plank I sincerely hope you will consider defamation, slander, and slurs against the head coach to be equally as egregious as threats and profanity and dispatch those miscreants as well.
About time! Thank you Kent, Love the blog I check it several times a day.
Great Kent, I hope there is a way to eliminate people posting with other peoples names. Would be nice if you could limit posts with paragraph after paragraph of the same thing,but I’m sure thats impossible.
Good work, Ken. I follow the blog consistently and I second the motion to clean up the blog. Go Gophs!!
Kent, I am glad you will not tolerate this foolishness anymore. Thank you.
Go for it Kent. You have a delete button. Please use it.
Be nice if you can track those who post under others moniker and send them packing.
Thanks Kent, both for the updates and your dedication.
Thanks Kent. I look forward to your insight everyday and greatly enjoy the football related discussion on here. It has become a task to sift through the grit to get to the gold. Your services are truly appreciated!
I agree with you Kent that some people take the losses way too hard! I appreciate your insights and thoughts on our Gophers. I am begging real fans to not sell their seats for Saturday’s game. Our boys need our support and it is down right embarrassing to be out numbered in your own stadium. Gophers 28 Iowa 24 and an Insight bowl bid against Kansas.
GOOD JOB KENT! SOME OF THESE GUYS GO WAY TO FAR!
Might want to talk to the Access Vikings folks - I believe you have to log in to post there.
That would be a great scenario ‘Don’t Sell..’ for us!
Our job as Gopher fans is to go to as many games as we can and cheer for our guys. Sometimes there is a bit of a grind in that task, nevertheless, if we want to get to top bowl games we have to demonstrate that there are people who do support the team at bowl, any year.
Kent–As I was reading your blog I thought you were getting carried away until I went back and read what was written yesterday. Wow, the board stooped to new lows and unfortunately I can’t blame it on Iowa fans.
I went to bed last night thinking how great it would be for the Gophers if the Vikings left town. I’m a Vikings fan so I don’t want that to happen but it seems like a real possibility if they can’t get a new stadium. If the Gophers are at the top of their game you would like to think a lot of Vikings fans shift to the Gophers, the ticket demand swells and a traveling fan base is instantly developed. Although now that the Gophers are locking down the borders it is good having guys like Walker Lee Ashley, Jay Foreman, and Moses Alipate as the progeny of Vikings that stayed after the NFL.
Hopefully the new stadium creates an atmosphere that turns those Vikings fans into Gophers fans without having to lose our NFL team. I’ve already talked to a few people that didn’t attend games at the dome that bought season tickets for the new stadium so that is a definite positive. Plus, the season tickets for TCF are now sold out. That should help lock down The Vault (anybody have a better nickname for the stadium?)
Sort of a pointless ramble but that is what is on my mind today.
Kent I believe there are those who would love to see this blog shut down for many reasons. It could be that the party line is not followed on this blog or the do drop in bloggers love to throw crap out on the board. If you ignore them they will go away. Thank God our young children do not read this blog. I have to tell you though my children hear some pretty bad language in the halls at their schools. It does not make it right but it is the society we live in today.
On recruiting…
Lewan is probably the top guy coming in this weekend. He is a 4* OT from AZ and his dad played for the Gophers. He has offers from Miami, Mich, Neb, Wisc, Ariz, and ASU. He attended the Gopher football camp and we are his only listed schedule visit which are all good signs. We obviously can use good recruits on the offensive line.
Gainer is a 4* LB that visited Penn State last week. He is the top verbal in Indiana’s class and it will be tough to get him over “linebacker U” if he decommits from Indiana. MSU & KSU are also interested. His cousin is Kenny Watkins (6′0″ 195 that runs 4.4 in the 40) is a 3* safety that is visting and has also verbally committed to Indiana. It could be that both are a package deal. Watkins does not have interest from PSU so that could play in to our hands. I feel like we should be able to outrecruit an Indiana team that had a poor season, has poor tradition, and less to offer than the Gophers.
Demontre Hurst is a 3* CB that runs a 4.4-4.5 40. He currently has offers from Ariz, UNC, TCU, Wake, and KSU and Okl St is recruiting him. Arizona is the only other visit he has made thus far.
I think Jermaine Robinson committed to West Virginia last year but ended up at Milford Academy because he failed to make grades/ACT. This is the same prep school that WR Vince Hill (who did not qualify last year) and Asad Abdul-Khaliq attended. Obviously one of those worked out for the Gophers and the other did not. Robinson is a 4* CB that is tall (6′2″), skinny (165) and runs a 4.5 40 yd dash. Given the height I wouldn’t be surprised to see him add some weight and switch over to free safety because 6′2″ guys generally don’t have fluid enough hips to play CB and 4.5 looks better on a safety.
This trip doesn’t have the headliners or quantity that we had for Michigan but it is a pretty big weekend. Every player is well regarded and would fill positions of need given our weak o-line and all of the LB’s & DB’s that will be seniors next year. I think this is the second biggest recruiting weekend of the year. Getting Lewan or Gainer or a couple of the others would likely move us from #7 to #6 (ahead of Wisconsin) in the current rankings of verbal commitments for Big Ten schools.
Sorry that was such a long post but I felt like it gave a good run down on what recruiting services are saying about the players. Skip over it if you don’t care about knowing who we are recruiting. I know there are some posters that don’t care to know about players until they are on the field making plays.
Tbanks Kent. The last couple of days got pretty disheartening. I enjoy reading your posts, and anything you can do to make the comments about Gopher football and opinions on the team will be gratefully received.
Grunkiejr,
Don’t worry about the lengthy post - I always find that kind of stuff worth reading. Don’t know where you get it all, but it is great info.
Kent,
Keep up the good job. I enjoy the blog and check it everyday.
Grunkiejr, good information. I am excited about Brewster’s ability to recruit but am concerned about his game day decision making. It could be just because he has never been a coordinator or head coach prior to this and will hopefully get better.
Kent,
I’m glad that I have towed the line but other people people need to do the same!
JD34–I somewhat agree with you on the game day stuff. He is sometimes hard to figure out. Last year it seemed like we got off to a bad start in every game and then came out firing in the second half after we made our adjustments. This year has been different. Until the last few games our offense came out firing and consistently put together a long 70-80 yard drive to score a TD and then fell asleep until they needed to show up in the 4th quarter to put the game away.
Too much of this stuff is put on a head coach though. Dunbar and Roof come up with a game plan and Brewster approves it. The coordinators work on teaching it–with the help of the position coaches–and the head coach makes sure everything stays on schedule. On game day the HC interacts with and possibly overrides the decisions of the coordinators and makes the tough decisions (time outs, what to do on 4th down, etc).
I’m not going to complain about getting aggressive against NU or getting conservative at the end of the half last week. Those are decisions Brewster made and it is only wrong because it didn’t work. Having better players makes every coach look smarter.
Hey Kent: It had to happen. Unfortunately some people are wise enough to conduct themselves appropriately. Hopefully it won’t have to be policed too often. I actually get a kick out of the guys who want to fight each other. So frickin lame.
Especially this year, this blog has been informative. I’ve learned from reading it and has deepened my appreciation for Gopher football. It’s amazing because I can spend all day Saturday watching college football and yet on Sunday have no interest in the pro’s.
Go Gophers. Coming home tomorrow morning. Would love to go to the Iowa game but have family commitments but will be able to watch the game! Don’t have Big Ten Network in NYC.
get a real job you whiney little kunt. you are ugly and someone should teach you some manners!
Thank you very much Kent!! I am sick of people talking about totally irrelevant topics on this blog! The focus should be on Gophers Football, period!! You wanna talk about the BCS or nonsense that has no place on this blog, then go find a blog where you can BS about that, but I am interested in the Gophers and the Gophers only! About time you draw a line in the sand!! Kent, can u please kick david_allen_coe off this blog! He really has no class and is obviously very immature!! Thank you Kent!!
You are doing a great job, sorry you have to put up people like that! Keep up the good work!
C ya david
One solution…make this a members only blog and require people to be signed in to post…that way if someone’s comment is flagged, the person / user is actually held accountable.
GO Gophers, that wasn’t really D_A_C that wrote that message. I don’t know him but that is completely out of character from his previous messages.
grunk, the people that post here often would also know this about DAC and that is why there was no response. Stick around long enough and you will be able to tell when someone is posting under someone elses name.
Bud and Grunk … Thanks for the comments. To Go Gophs, surely you can determine when someone else is posting using my name. There is a difference in style, language, sentence structure etc.
Oh yes, and dac will always be name calling. I think the 9:21 guy is the imposter.
As antagonizing as d_a_c has attempted to be toward me, I also agree that this was some dirty trick player, perhaps this pantherhawk or perhaps some of the gh/gi hit squad.
These types would attempt to have someone banned by using their hijack attacks. However, the common, ever day posters who may be extremely passionate and somewhat combatative will NOT let “dirty trick” players from where ever or whomever prevail in bringing down this blog that Kent has put so much good work into.
The “dirty tricks” players don’t have a leg to stand on if everyone uses some common sense, some brains and understands that blatent attacks are premeditated acts of ignorance.
That was NOT d_a_c who made that comment, I agree.
I like the ambition Kent. I hope the comments clean up but as a practical matter I think the urge to post something riduculous with virtual amonimity is just too temping for some. I realize you may be required to police comments as part of your job, and if that’s the case you’ll probably never win.
Never argue with a moron. The moron is likely to drag the argument down to his level and beat you with experience!
Also - Can’t we police the comments on our own? Can’t the strib set up something where we click an “offensive” button to report abusive comments. If an unpublished number of commenters click the offensive button the abusive comments could be automatically removed or the commentator could be banned for a period of time…. ?
Keep the board safe!
To have a civil board, you really only need to delete out 4-5 people. No need naming names as we all know who they are. Funny they all have posted in this thread already.
Funny that derek posted right there with all the others.
Big Ten wins are essential. This is the last chance for a Big Ten win in the 2008 season!
