I know that the society we live in today is rushed, everyone wants fast-food, entertaiment, news, sports etc etc. Our news media seem to always be in competition to "break" the story and I think this stretches to the common Joe as well. I am a frequent visitor to UGA message boards-honestly I do enjoy talking about UGA 365 days a year. Depending on which board you visit, you can learn more about our economy, movies, and of course UGA sports. But, I do get very tired of the social media networks when it comes to our college kids in Athens. I have a near teen daughter, so I get the need of today's youth to text and look at facebook. I guess I don't get the need for grown men and maybe women too, to almost stalk the social media networks looking for the scoop. I have not checked out other schools to see if their fanbases do the same, but I can only imagine some are worse-one state over comes to mind when it comes to fans over the edge. BUT, what I think separates UGA faithful from a lot of our rivals, we seem to like to trash our own. I simply don't get this. IF a Georgia Bulldog football player gets in trouble, for say DUI, he deserves some negative press. I support that. But, if a kid has pictures of him at a party drinking, and then folks call him out for not taking his football obligations seriously, I DO have issue with that. Fact is, we have no idea when the pictures were taken usually. We also are NOT at practice every day or at workouts. We are not in the classrooom with the kid, or working with him at the student center as he studies for his exams. We are not in the weightroom as he lifts weights, not in the film room as he studies his football assignments. Yet, despite all of that, some people seem to enjoy attacking a persons character. Granted, on a message board, you really can't know the truth behind who posts. Meaning, UGAfan#1 could truly be a Tech man, Bama man etc just trying to get something started. But, there are enough people that you know are UGA faithful attacking our own, I simply don't get it. Again, I am not one that thinks everyone should only post 100% positive reports or should hype a player to level that is beyond his abilities. I also believe everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion as that is what makes our country the best. But, I just don't understand why people feel the need to always post negative.
The fact remains, these kids are representing our university and granted they are getting a free education but they put in a LOT of work in and out of the classroom (not to mention they make a LOT of money for our school). They are also 18-22 and are going to make stupid decisions from time to time. If a kid makes a mistake, I just wish there could be more effort to avoid the quick judgments, avoid the harsh words, but instead say yep, he screwed up but he will learn from this and become a better person in the long run. Unfortunately, the way our society works today, and especially in the fish bowl of college football in the south, these poor kids probably have no idea that their every move is being followed. They are living in an almost Truman Show type environment whether they know it or not. Some are able to handle this easily but others struggle. I guess I am just tired of it all but then again, I am old school and don't even have a facebook account!
No comments:
Post a Comment