From time to time, I take it upon myself to visit the message boards of opposing teams. When doing so, I often stumble upon a few posts that are just too good not to mention on the blog. When that happens, Message Board Idiots is the product. Enjoy.
This week, Arkansas. Yeah. Fish in a barrel. As Ghost has pointed out, finding Arkansas doing and saying stupid things on the Internet isn't much of a challenge.
Leading off, a few quotes from the greatest message board in the history of the Internet: Hogville.
It's actually really difficult to find one single post that can really be torn apart at Hogville. So few of the people who post in that forum are neither capable nor willing to put together a post that contains more than two sentences. Every message board has posters who just blurb their way around the site, but Hogville contains pages long threads of unoriginal one liners followed by 20 e-pats on the back. It's just tough to poke fun at someone for saying, "Ole Mess is gonna be texting new coaches after we pour it on that ole pissant!!!! PIG SOOIE!!!!" It's tough because it presents no real challenge and becomes incredibly boring; and it's tough because, at Hogville, you face a serious dilemma of choice.
To really get a feel what insanity manifested into javascript and markup languages looks like, I would encourage all of you to visit Hogville, a site that is actually sponsored by a local television station. Yeah. It's that sad. Many of their posters, two years removed from having him as their coach, have a goofycompletely normal picture of Houston Nutt in their avatar or signature.
Seriously. And Arkansas fans still wonder why we say they're obsessed with Ole Miss and Houston Nutt.
Here are a few posts that I felt warranted my, err, analysis.
To begin, a classic from Lazarus P. Hog:
The Hogs are gonna mop the floor wet and wax it dry with the Webels! By the 4th Qtr Jevon Sneed will give way to Danny Nutt at Qb!
There are really three things worth mocking with regard to these two sentences.
First, there'sthe fact that Arkansas will "mop the floor wet and wax it dry with the Webels." Of course, there's the obvious use of the word "Webels." Arkansas fans: please, please stop saying Rebels with a "W." It reallymakes us hurt inside. It stings. I mean, intentionally mispronouncing our name? How low can you go?! That's as offensive as me calling you "Awkansar." I'm sorry, but I didn't want to do that just now, but I had to in order to prove a point. Doesn't it just cut you to the core?
Joking aside, when did someone honestly convince themselves that it was hurtful to us to call us the Webels? It doesn't even have another meaning. It'snot as if they're calling us Ole Piss which, at least, references something unpleasant and smelly. They're just replacing the first letter of our mascot name with a "W." Who cares? More importantly, there is the threat that Arkansas will mop the floor wet--as opposed to mopping it dry (a practice commonly referred to as "sweeping")--with the "Webels" before waxing it dry with them as well. I don't understand. We'll be wet. Are you going to apply wax to a wet Webel? Will that even work?
Second, there's the fact that Jevan's name is spelled "Jevon." It wouldn't surprise me if this guy was shocked on Saturday to find out that Jevan is, in fact, a white guy. He'll come back on the board and say, "was Jevon Sneed hurt? PIG SOOIE! TEXT, WOOD, BRUTHA, CALL PLAYS!" This has been a personal pet peeve of mine because people who, after the guy has started as an SEC quarterback for a year and a half, cannot correctly spell Jevan Snead still expect people to take them and their opinions on football seriously. If I were an idiot of the message board variety and began making prognostications on Razorback QB "Brian Mallard," should I expect people to actually put stock into what I'm saying?
Lastly, there's the typical mention of Danny Nutt. What is with Arkansas fans and Danny Nutt? They alwaysbring him up as if he's relevant to the program. He's not even a coach. I just don't get it. They constantly deride the guy before touting his idiocy and uselessness. It's a real exercise in self-contradiction, claiming to be above the guy, but still displaying behavior typically of feeling threatened by him and his actions or potential thereto. To Arkansas fans, the guy is Satan. To us, he's the other quirky guy on the sideline.
Next is this gem from PorkThis:
Nutt and Ole Miss were almost as over rated as Obama. We see both have taken a meteoric fall in the polls and both will suffer great beat downs in their next contest (Nutt and Ole Miss at the hands of Arkansas, and Obama at the hands of America).
Just... wow. Ugh... I don't even know where to go with this one. I'm struggling to avoid revealing any political opinions I may or may not have, so this isn't going to be a long drawn out portion of the post. Suffice it to say that I think it's incredible that Arkansas fans have let the lines blur so much between football coaches and presidents of the United States of America. Perhaps this explains the next piece of idioicy.
This one's actually from NAFOOM. A wonderful Hog poster came on to explain why FOIA requests against a college football coach's text messaging records aren't crazy. Ole Miss fan Big Slick posited that, "any fanbase that uses the Freedom of Information Act to get phone records on their own football coach (or anyone for that matter) is certifiably bat shit crazy." Gahogfan retorts that,
WTF?
Anyone who uses a lawful process that was designed as a tool to keep government in check is "bat shit crazy"?
Do you even understand the FOIA and it's purpose?
Yeah. FOIA was set up so that you could check who the head coach of a college football program had been texting on his cell phone. That's exactly why it exists. It doesn't have anything to do with terrorism, national defense or uncovering actual crimes that have been commited and orchestrated by government officials. We Ole Miss fans are apparently too stupid to realize this and just love having our government officials trample all over this by texting smutty things to their galfriends. Our Constitution is being shredded to bits by these infidelous big whigs and their thumbs! Thank God for the Freedom of Information Act! When given a similar response by OP4, the purveyor of NAFOOM, gahogfan responded,
It's absolutely the point. If they get a state cell phone, funded by tax dollars, then that's exactly what the FOIA is for.
And, if you want to get technical, it's an abuse of state property to use it so extensively for personal use. He was using a taxpayer funded cell phone to further his love life, and his pimp limp grew with every text.
The main point here, though, is that Nuttshouldn't have been dumb enough to do it on a state cellphone. How can you feel sorry for a man that makes millions of dollars, yet is too dumb not to get himself a ten dollar a month cricket phone to do his sexting on?
Yeah. I'm sure they didn't spring for the extra 10 dollars a month to make it unlimited calling and unlimited texting. What excites a recruit more than a coach saying, "sorry. I have to get off the phone. I can only allot 10 minutes to you. I have to call all these other prospects this month, and my school is cheap as hell. And it's a cell phone which may have been funded by State dollars and lord knows the legislature is gonna come down hard on me if I run out of my rollover minutes!"
As for him being dumb to have done it on a cell phone paid for by the state, I agree. But perhaps he didn't realize the level of crazitude that existed in his own fanbase.
Last, but certainly not least, here's the stereotypical fan who talks about why Arkansas is in a better situation than Ole Miss. Hogville user On Your Toes said...
This is exactly what I wanted to have happen to Ole Piss.
Fall in love with Coach Moobs and how he spins things, have a great first season, big bowl win, he is their coach for life. Next year, huge expectations, epic fail, "Nutt's still our guy."
Sort of a Hillary Clinton, "Stand by your man" thing.
You can have him.
We will never beg for mediocrity.
We will never beg to fall out of the rankings faster than HDN's texting skeels.
We will never beg for lip service coaching.
We will never beg for YOUR coach.
Yes! Ole Piss! Now we're throwing haymakers.
I will say that I had never heard Houston Nutt referred to as Coach Moobs, so he at least gets a point for somewhat original behavior amongst a group of folks not known for their originality. However, I guess I'm just not familiar enough with Nutt's chest. If he has "moobs," I haven't noticed. And even if he did, he's a man in his 50's. He can have man boobs if he wants. It's like fans making fun of Bill Snyder for being old or Mark Mangino for being fat. It's funny the first two or three times, but after a while it gets boring and juvenile.
Yeah. This is exactly what you wanted. You wanted us to go 9-4 in season one, with a victory over your own team. Then you wanted us to receive tons of pre-season hype and free advertising for our university for an entire off-season. I'm sure all those things were at the top of your Christmas wish list.
Don't you get it? Yes, Nutt still is our guy. At the risk of making some of the readers here hate me, I want to say something. Schools like Ole Miss, Arkansas, Kentucky and SouthCarolina are far too guilty of not knowing their place. At Ole Miss, we have to come to the realization that we should be happy winning 7 or 8 games a year withthe occasional 9 or 10 win season. In the short term, we do not have the resources to compete with Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and LSU. We don't. Our schools are smaller and located in smaller, more divided states. It sucks. It sucks hard. But those are the cards we're dealt. I'm personally disappointed at the way the season has begun, but I'm not ready to fire Houston Nutt. The season could still end quite well. The ship may have had the wind taken out of her sails, but it sure isn't sinking. I don't ever want to fire a coach who can do something like appear in eight bowls in ten years at Arkansas. Until Nutt has a season the likes of which 40 seasons of mediocrity have brought us to expect, I'm behind him. He'll keep us competitive.
I'm also a bit weirded out by the whole Hillary Clinton reference. So, we're as foolish as the Secretary of State of the United States of America? Say what you want about her politics, but Hillary Clinton isn't an unsuccessful buffoon.
As for the rest of what you say, awesome. We won't either, nor have we yet. We won't "beg" for mediocrity? Who has and who in their right mind would?
So that's Message Board Idiots ("MBI"). Do any of you have some to share?