Ethics and Message Boards?

I pose a couple of questions to the board. [i]What is the purpose of a sports boards? Should fans evaluate/state there views about the teams performance in their private life, or on message boards, or both? Should fans evaluate players performances on message boards? Should fans evaluate coaches? Should fans evaluate coaches character, and or players character? [/i]

IMO fans have every right to evaluate performaces, ability, and effort of the team they cheer for. They may be wrong in their views but they have every right to do so. This is what makes watching sports so much fun and gives us the opprtunity to learn more by coming together with differnt views.

It seems fairly obvious to me that the hive is agianst this kind of analysis. I think they would answer that the purpose of sports board is propaganda . They do not believe in the evaluation of players in any negative or honest way and most donot in regards to coaches as well. They actually believe they help recruiting by having posts that beg prospects to sign with us. Their practice write ups are always happy faced, they jump up and down about every recruit that we sign no matter how respected by scouts, and they get angry if anybody questions the coaches decisions. They have never made any acknowledgment that they were wrong about Gailey or the countless wrong predictions they have made over the years. There is no accountability on that board.

Now BBO is the exact opposite many posters believe anything should and can be posted. Seems they believe coaches and players need to be evaluated. However, there is more accountability with BBO as many have vast differences of views and ethics and call each out all the time.

Here is my take. Welcome to the real world. Everybody is evaluated all the time. It is good for you. Coaches are paid good money there is no reason for the people who buy there product to not evaluate them or lie to themselves and IMO they have every right to make there view public. Players are a little bit more tricky. They are not being payed and they dedicate a ton of energy that the fans enjoy. However, I think it is perfectly ethical to evaluate a player in regards to there performances. It does not mean that the player is any less of a good person. I have met a ton of average football players who are great people. Also anybody who has made a DI team is increadible in comparison to the regualr population.

I think that fans owe players and coaches honesty in there evaluations. As long as they are trying there best to be fair to the player and coach then they should be able to do so.

Now often I hear people say unless you have played football you should not make any statements about performances. I think this is absurd. There are some things that the layman most likley would not know compared to people who have actually played, but there are a ton of things they could know and if you watch enough many things are pretty easy to pick up on. I played football for 9 years of my life and have been watching Tech football for the past 23 years. Even if I did not play those 9 years of football there would be a ton of things that I could speak about with some decent insight. So I don't think you need a degree to talk about football intellegently.

Just wanted to use this icon it is so cool!

Tech Head

What a great thread to get player input on internet board purpose.

Of course, I frequent buzzoff and have similar impressions to yours. For me, buzzoff offers more in-depth discussions about the football team, which I find much more interesting than the Hive topics. I prefer debates and analyses to uniform color/come play for us threads.

Yes, a sizable crowd at the Hive (let's not lable everyone) believes in keeping the board a rah-rah session and also promote the idea that critical assessments harm recruiting, etc. I personally don't see how a mentally strong recruit would possibly make their decision based on a few fans' opinions. Do you really think any recruit of Alabama/Georgia/Florida would change their mind based on some internet board criticism? A pretty good number of Georgia fans were calling for Richt's head after they were blown out by Tennessee last year. I don't think any recruits immediately jumped off board.

If I'm a strong, confident recruit, I would like the fact fans care enough to delve deeply into analyses of my play. A strong coaching staff should not fail to gather the right men for Tech because of what a few fans say on the boards.

To me, you draw the line on board ethics when you start attacking the coach or players personally. Who really has the expertise to analyze the heart, soul, character of someone from as far away as their home computer? I can understand taking issue with publicly stated philosophies by the coach (i.e. the Georgia game is just another game) and the public persona, but I'm wary of jumping to character decisions.

But, the players'/ex-players' opinions obviously carry way more weight than any fan opinion. So, I sure wish Rhodes/Oliver/any other ex-player would comment on the player perspective of the proper board site philosophy.