Linsanity Meets Fitz’s Twittergate & Other Random NU Football Notes
By Lake The Posts on
The good news/bad news of social media is it defines instant trend-setting. Fitz found out the hard way that seemingly innocuous tweets can stir up a frenzy. At least that was until it was discovered it wasn’t actually Fitz.
Oh boy. This is just about the last thing I want to be spending my time writing about these days. Pat Fitzgerald created quite the buzz yesterday when the ripple effect of his tweet on the NBA’s newest sensation – Jeremy Lin – took hold in the social media world. Then things got weird. Insanity around Linsanity didn’t even spare Northwestern. Follow along, if you can. ChicagoNow.com was one of the first to report Fitz’s tweet about Jeremy Lin from Saturday night as the Harvard grad-turned-”overnight”-Knicks sensation was lighting up the LA Lakers. The following tweet appeared:
@coachfitz51: There’s finally a NBA player who plays hard and says the right things off the court
OK. Stew on that line for a second (I read it three times before saying, “I don’t get it”). That single tweet quickly caught the wave of fellow tweeters and those of NBA fandom were none too pleased. As you can read about here at ChicagoNow.com’s Paul Banks “Chicago Sports Guru” blog and also here at the very well respected Dr. Saturday blog, one fan went so far as to characterize it as racist (huh?!!). Now that is a joke, especially if you know Fitz. No, it’s absolute insanity.
A more general response from several NBA fans was that it was a sweeping generalization and in particular a certain set of Derrick Rose fans took special offense. However, in full support of the tweet, several well-known and several unknown Twitter users retweeted and agreed with Fitz. I’m prone to defend Fitz on almost all off the court matters. I was set to do so on this one as well, as I’m not a big fan of the NBA as it’s hard to find players that do go wall to wall every night in the regular season like they do in the college ranks. Making a statement in support of someone who seems to do it the right way seemed pretty harmless to me. Yes, I’m biased to no longer Love It Live or even Love It DVRed. Of course, there are several hard working guys who do it the right way, but to me, this was a non-story “story”. Again, I’m likely going to get called out for an inability to be objective on matters like this, but if there is one thing that Fitz is not, it’s confrontational (unless of course you run a recruiting scouting service, that is).
Well, just as I was diving in to the perils of social media and the irony that Fitz staunchly monitors current and prospective scholarship athlete’s social media presences, I then learned that it allegedly wasn’t Fitz at all. Now, both sites are saying that it was Director of Football Operations, Cody Cedja, the very same guy who was so instrumental in helping me with the Jack & Brian story and has been great to me throughout this past season. According to the below statement by NU spokesman, Doug Meffley, Cedja erroneously signed in to Twitter and used Fitz’s handle and not his own. Ironically, Cody “followed” LTP’s Twitter account that very night.
“While watching the Knicks game, Cody intended to tweet that from his own account, but he signed into Fitz’s and made — and subsequently deleted — that tweet. Paul Banks has updated his Chicago Now blog to reflect that fact. Being a Southside product, Fitz is a huge Chicago sports guy and big Derrick Rose fan…we want to make sure that fact is known!” – Doug Meffley, Northwestern University Feb 13, 2012.
Yikes. Isn’t this fun. Perhaps I don’t have a gauge on what constitutes what you care about, but my sense is this is not it. If I’m wrong, let me know and we can tweet about NU’s twittergate. If not, on to more important things like…
Tim McGarigle is Leaving…
The Northwestern assistant coach has left his alma mater to take a job as the Linebackers Coach at Western Michigan. I’m disappointed as the all-time single season tackle machine at NU is moving up the coaching ladder after a grad assistant gig for Fitz. I was hoping he’d find a way to work up the NU ladder, but so it goes in the land of collegiate coaching. FootballScoop.com broke the news on Friday.
Adam Rittenberg – Video Update of NU Offseason
Not surprisingly, the focus is on Kain Colter at QB and of course, the annual hope is not a strategy projection that minimal losses at the staring positions on “D” will translate in to victories. Click here to learn about Adam’s biggest off-season list of players who need to really make the jump for NU to have the success we hope for.
Pre-Snap Review of Northwestern
Our man Paul Myerberg (not Pete Thamel!!), checked in with his always crafty take on Northwestern at Presnapread.com. Pete’s Mad Libs approach to our coach is a poke at all of us who might be overlooking what the outside world seems to think of #51. Take a look at what I would say is his overly optimistic take on NU 2012 with a tad too much reliance on the age old few number of departing seniors equating to improved success on “D”. I hope he’s right as we were both wrong this past season. I’m trying to stay positive but the negative framing of having “not had a losing record in five seasons” is too much for even my purple Kool-Aid drinking self to stomach. Especially, when I consider our 6-7 2011 a losing season.
Recruiting Update
WildcatReport.com reported that Northwestern has been the first Big Ten school to offer Trent Hosick, from Kansas City (Staley HS), MO. According to one of the most glowing reports I’ve ever read by Louie Vaccher, Hosick, a dual-threat QB led his team to a state championship over current NU 2012 class member Mike McHugh (WR). Northwestern offered him without a commitment to his desired QB spot, as Hosick had a prolific RB and didn’t quite throw enough to convince the ‘Cats he’s ready for QB. However, Vaccher’s report on his character made you feel like Hosick was Tebow-esque. Hosick will likely get an offer from every Big Ten school and NU continues to invoke the first-to-offer strategy as part of the recruiting advantage. Stay tuned to WR for more.
Survey Says…
Here is what you had to say about our 2012 recruiting class in our recent poll:
How Do Feel About The 2012 Recruiting Class?
- Talk to me in three years (40%, 225 Votes)
- Ecstatic (39%, 218 Votes)
- Good, not great (21%, 116 Votes)
Total Voters: 559
Total non-story, particularly because it wasn’t Fitz who tweeted this.
That being said, it is edifying to see a 4-year college grad from a great school doing well in the NBA…..While I don’t agree with the substance of that tweet — I think there are plenty of good/ethical/smart men playing in the NBA (we hear far too much about the bad apples) — the Lin story is clearly a good one.
“Total non-story, particularly because it wasn’t Fitz who tweeted this.”
Maybe, maybe not. It’s kind of a smokescreen from the Athletic Dept. if you ask me.
Either way, should be a non-story.
what does thamel have to do with pre-snap? is he involved?
Random topics for discussion:
I think NU should be scheduling some “local” teams for their early season basketball schedule. Wouldn’t there be more interest in games against ISU, DePaul, NIU, Loyola, Valparaiso, etc.? Do we really need to play teams like Stony Brook, Texas Pan American, Mississippi Valley State and Texas Southern? Playing teams like these isn’t going to help sell any season tickets or draw the type of crowds two “local” teams would. Who cares about beating cupcake teams by 25 or 30 points? It doesnt add much to SOS, either.
If NU is really “Chicago’s B1G Team” someone should tell Dick’s, Kohl’s and Sports Authority. Once you leave the north shore it is impossible to find gear for anyone other than U of Illinois and ND.
I was just at the ISU-Bradley game in Normal 10 days ago. ISU’s basketball facility puts Welsh-Ryan to shame. It is the difference between an arena and a gym. W-R is a joke for a B1G team. How they get any recruits to sign there is a miracle.
Ryan Field isn’t exactly a first class facility for football, either. Visiting fans have to go home shaking their heads in disbelief and thanking their lucky stars for their own facilities. We have next to no parking, amateurish concessions and half the time we make fans stand in long lines waiting to get in due to malfunctioning electronic ticket scanners.
Sorry to sound like such a whiner, but come on. Some of these things aren’t that difficult to address. I think many of the higher ups at NU have their heads in the sand. Time to address some issues and become a first-class operation on par with their academic standings.
It’s interesting to me that visiting team fans at Ryan Field get seats behind their bench down low – probably better seats than many get at their home stadium. When I’ve bought tickets to Minny, Illinois, OSU, Purdue, Indiana, PSU, MSU, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Michigan over the past four years ‘Cats fans are always in the farthest end zone seats and up high. (OSU was earlier.) It’s nice to be nice but it gives the visitors contact with their rooters that none of them give us.
Now that NU has announced that several million dollars are being spent on a sailboat storage facility is there any word about the athletic facilities report that we expected to see last spring?
I’m all for better facilities, but many visiting fans are thankful that they pay half the price at Ryan Field to see their team than they do at their home stadium. They happily trade better nacho cheese for better/cheaper seats to see their team.
Hmm . . . this story doesn’t pass the smell test. Cody Cedja “mistakenly” signed in to the wrong Twitter account? I don’t think so. Either Cedja handles all of Fitz’s tweets, which is even more reason not to waste your time reading posts on Twitter (although I spend a few minutes every day on this site, so who am I to talk?) or Cedja is taking the bullet for Fitz.
As for the quote itself, either Fitz or Cedja is an absolute idiot for saying it and should be held accountable. Kobe Bryant doesn’t play hard? Grant Hill doesn’t say the right things after the game? Those are 2 of many who do those things, and anyone who thinks otherwise is perpetuating an inaccurate stereotype that yes, smacks a bit of racism.
Agree that it smacks of racism. Whenever comments are made about a non-African-American NBA player as “smart, not talented but sees the game, he’s taking pictures, not talented but makes the most of what he has” the inference is that African-American players do it on athleticism whereas the “others” make it on brains and less athleticism.
There’s a program called TweetDeck that allows you to control multiple accounts just by clicking a tab. It’s absolutely a possibility that it was tweeted on the wrong account. I do it all the time.
Complete non-story. I don’t see the racism, but if there is it cuts both ways. The implication is that an Asian (or any other non-black) can’t possibly be athletic enough to play in the NBA.
Joe – As a non-Twitter user, thanks for the enlightenment. So it appears that Cejda probably did post the Tweet. Like I said above, even more reason not to waste your time following “Fitz” on Twitter.
As for those who keep brushing this off, if it was a complete non-story NU would not have rushed out a press release that referenced Fitz’s South Side roots (I always thought Orland Park was a western suburb) and his affection for Derrick Rose.