Note: I waffled on writing this, but only after it was written. As a warning, as you’ll notice late in the piece, the writing gets shaky and flatly awful. In an effort to provide transparency, I didn’t edit it out… also, maybe I’m just dumb.
Twitter is a cesspool filled with grifters, shitbags, shitheads, shittymcshitsters and a bunch of other things that can be incorrectly combined with the word shit. Did I also mention grifters?
While I don’t recommend it, you can go to the mean streets of Twitter at any given time to find an immeasurable amount of moments. And when I say moments, I mean people telling other people how to feel, what to do, how to do what to do and how to feel what to feel and when to feel it.
Also, grifters.
Early aside: I despise grifters, if you couldn’t tell. Let’s digress.
Recently, I’ve noticed my Twitter worlds colliding more and more. Where one subsection of people I consider friends (or, at the least, good people) are going after the character of other people I consider friends (or people who were otherwise always very good to me).
We’re going to break the fourth-wall. It’s not to intentionally name-drop. There’s no value for me in it. After all, I’m so far removed from being a college basketball writer that not only have I failed to renew my USBWA membership for two years (cough… grift?), but I probably can’t name the top 10 freshmen in the country.
So, ugh, the wall is about to be officially broken as I essentially do this in a subheading format in the style of live blogging because if my last not-fully-thought-out post wasn’t enough, there’s now this!
Subscribe?
Seth Greenberg
I do not know-know Seth Greenberg. Like, we’re not besties or anything and it’s been a bit since we’ve talked. However, what I can tell you is that — no matter his opinions on things on Twitter — he’s always been extremely nice and helpful to me. As importantly, which I believe highlights someone’s character, he’s done it without needing/wanting anything in return from me.
Let’s travel back in time to give an example of Seth going out of his way to be nice to someone who, especially at that point, was nearly extinct as a college basketball journalist.
The time was way back in… well, the fuck if I remember the exact time because I have a poor ability to reference dates and locations and my general whereabouts. Anyway, if you want to find the exact date, you can. Awful Announcing has a post of my layoff, briefly discussing my separation from FanRag Sports.
Another aside: FanRag Sports was once rebranded as FRS Sports Network, because of the rag connotation, which actually reads as FanRag Sports Sports Network. Idiots. Nonetheless, I’d put our three-ish year run of college basketball coverage against anyone’s at the time. The FRS stuff is an ENTIRE different post for another time, though.
Circling-back to Seth. By the time I was let go from FRS, Seth and I had a mini-relationship of sorts. We’d sometimes go back-and-forth on Twitter, not in a combative way, then go in deeper conversation on whatever the topic was in DMs.
It was always civil, even if we constantly had disagreeing viewpoints. Nonetheless, getting insight directly from someone who coached at a major Division I college was invaluable, and it was forever welcoming when Seth provided me with his point of view (again, even if I disagreed with the nuts and bolts of some of his opinions).
So, when he saw the news FRS laid me off, he direct messaged me, asking if there’s anything he could do, wishing me well, and the like. Much like others who were laid off at the time, there wasn’t anything tangible Seth could do for me, the laid off, but I appreciated the sentiment.
Fast-forward a few months and one job later, I was let go again. This time while working for COX Media Group. Once again, Seth messaged me, telling me he knew it stunk to continue to get laid off in this unforgiving industry and to keep at it.
The CMG layoff was the straw that broke my back in terms of being a seriously active college basketball writer. I, instead (mostly by accident), turned my attention to becoming a behind the scenes guy for a sports outlet. It has, in the long run, turned out well for me due to better job security; though, you know, it’s not covering college basketball.
When I was at CMG, Seth said something I thought was pretty polarizing. I can’t remember what exactly his opinion was, but my boss asked me to cover it. There were obvious issues of bias at play, as I got along with Seth, but now there’s this column that “needed writing” where I’d presumably bash him.
As any decent journalist would do, I tried my best to avoid the task at hand, instead pitching any other story under the sun, hoping to avoid this clear conflict of interest. Nevertheless, that damn shitpost needed to be written.
Before I scribbled the thing, I reached out to Seth for comment, letting him know upfront I disagreed with his opinion and would be railing against it in a blog post. He declined to give comment, but did tell me to do what I had to do and not to hold back.
And that’s exactly what I did.
Seth did not hold a grudge against me for it; at least not that I’m aware of. If he did, he hid it well, as he wished me well after I was laid off from CMG.
Then I started to use Twitter less. In turn, I talked to Seth less. If I had to guess, I’d say over the last two years, we’ve exchanged words over DM maybe two or three times. It was to check on each other during the pandemic. What we said in that conversation is obviously between us.
I’m rambling a bit here, but this part about Seth was to — I think, I’m not 100 percent sure because live blog post style! — highlight how people can be completely different in terms of how they view things, but still get along well.
Moreover, how someone “famous” like Seth, often used as a punching bag on Twitter, can still be really good people without announcing how good they are to people for attention — aka the Twitter special via grifters.
Super hard pivot coming and…
Jon Rothstein
Jon is a legitimate friend. Not a casual friend. He’s someone I talk to often, text with and speak to on the phone. For anyone who followed my career, and most of you are already aware of Jon due to his presence on CBS and Twitter brand, it’s likely confusing as to how two completely different types of CBB media can get along.
I did not know Jon at all (as a person) until he joined FRS. At the time, I had a semi-cool title as Head of CBB or something at the outlet. When he was being brought in, I was against if, if I am being honest.
Again, I don’t yet want to do to a FRS-heavy post, but the CBB staff at the time was brilliant. A bunch of under-the-radar reporters, some excellent but unknown feature writers, and somehow forgotten about veterans who previously shined for The AP, all contributed to what was the best CBB staff I ever worked alongside.
A bunch of mostly unknowns, we were covering Final Fours, interviewing coaches and players, breaking stories and the like. It was us agains the world. Despite few taking notice — or as much notice as I believe the staff deserved — we were building something special. I didn’t like idea of FRS’ CBB vertical going from Unknowns Vs The World to Jon Rothstein Featuring A Bunch Of Unknowns.
I voiced my concerns to my boss (who goes unnamed for now but he is awesome), who told me to get over myself.
Jon came in and, while it added to my daily workload, was easy to work with. A nice guy who would regularly hit me up to talk hoops, pitch ideas, brainstorm some stuff, and exchange trade secrets (obviously he had and has far more than I did, but at the time I was still getting inside information from smaller programs).
Over time, when you work as close with someone as I did with Jon, you become friendly.
As mentioned earlier, I eventually got let go from FRS because fuck me and fuck college basketball coverage, apparently. There’s a deeper cut than this oversimplification, but the incredibly small moral of the story isn’t to put a failed newspaperman with no digital experience in charge of a digital only platform… especially if he looks like Michael Keaton’s version of Batman if the Dark Knight decided to give up on life.
What’s this post about again?
My first call after I got let go was to my boss to thank him for my time at the company (a different boss called me to lay me off… who I am also still friends with. Life is fucking weird). He informed me that he was also let go. It was no secret that I was a “This Boss Guy,” so maybe it was a two-for-one special for new management.
Whatever. Craig is a snake. So were others.
I made the announcement on Twitter and before I could fully catch my breath, Jon called me. He told me how much he appreciated me and my help and whatnot. We talked for a bit, then I had to go tell my wife that I no longer had a job.
Boo!
A similar thing that happened with Seth happened with Jon as I did the “no more college basketball writing” tour, but it was above and beyond. To make my point, I’ll need to lift the curtain a bit.
Through NO FAULT of these other people, when colleagues in this industry realize “you’re all the way out” and don’t plan to return, they tend to lose touch with you. You have nothing left to offer them. Their time can be better spent networking with people who can help them land jobs, freelance gigs, etc.
It’s natural. It’s normal. It’s not anti-those people.
What’s odd, though, is that Jon never lost contact with me. He did the opposite, leaning even more on our friendship after I left the production side of the industry. I had nothing to offer him in terms of news, scoops, jobs, or anything that could possibly benefit him. And yet, he still called and texted and G-Chatted (yes, he’s a G-Chat guy) me.
This wasn’t to obtain anything from me. It was to make sure I was doing OK. That my family was well. To see if I needed anything. It was never about him. He always makes it about me and my family.
When the majority of the “friends” I met in the industry left my side (again, see above for why that’s fine/normal), Jon didn’t. I was 100 percent no longer a college basketball writer and he still wanted to shoot the shit with me about college basketball, life or events.
Ugh… hard break?
The Relation Between Those Two And Bloggers
My roots are as a blogger; though I dabbled in more journalism as my career got longer in the tooth. Bloggers are good for the industry because they are mostly not access merchants, can be objective (well, non-fan sites), and offer a perspective traditional journalists simply can’t.
College basketball is especially weird like that. Roster turnover is so insanely high that if you want to be a reporter worth any salt, you need your main connections to be the coaches. If your main pipeline to information happens to be the coaches, your point of view is going to be skewed heavily in one direction.
It’s natural. It’s also why bloggers are good for the industry to offer balance to that coach-friendly traditional coverage. Even when I began talking to coaches more, I stayed connected to my blogger roots, never romanticizing coaches in coverage. This was easier for me than say a Rothstein, Greenberg or Jeff Goodman, as I never wanted to do reporting. I just wanted to write features.
Anywho, along with people like Seth and Jon, I’m friends (or on good terms with/they have been good to me) with a bunch of CBB bloggers who despise Rothstein, Greenberg and some of the traditional media.
It’s a weird spot for me as a person. A selfish perspective, I’m sorry. All of these people, from Jon and Seth to unnamed blogger friends, are all friends and/or good to me, but they all dislike each other (well, it’s a bit more one-sided with bloggers going after the tradionals without the traditionals responding).
The bloggers don’t “know” Jon or Seth (or even Goodman, who I barely know, but has also always been kind to me) like I do. Sometimes I think they don’t understand them enough. Sometimes I wonder why it feels like they’re going out of their way to bash those guys’ takes — even if the take in question is bad.
Clearly, I could be blinded by friendship. Maybe it’s not them not seeing how good these people truly are, but it’s me not realizing their coverage lacks in whatever area.
However, to all of that I say: Eh. Fuck. Mother Fucking Piss And Shit.
College sports is broken at a fundamental level. Coverage of all college sports is as well. People feeding into it aren’t given a pass for being a byproduct of the NCAA’s exploitative model; although I still firmly believe this connects to a large conversation about the human divide.
We, as people, mostly have good starting foundations. I know, for a fact, Seth, Jon, unnamed bloggers, etc., are all coming from a place of good intentions. Where they go after differs, but malicious intents and evil deeds are none of their preplanned endgames.
It can be for those shifty grifters, but not for these guys.
The divide between Jon/Seth and Unnamed Bloggers doesn’t rest in who is good or evil. It rests in how they traverse the media landscape, prioritizing different aspects of college hoops (and the people in it) while they make the treacherous voyage.
Now as an outsider, I’ve unfortunately learned there’s no X-that-marks-the-spot for college coverage. However you try to attack it, you’re going to fail. Not because you lack the skills, but there’s only so many avenues you can take to be successful, and no matter which one you choose it results in feeding the NCAA beast, its tropes and the underbelly of other issues the governing body represents.
That was a random, eh?
As people, at the ground level of each as a human, they are good. I refuse to believe otherwise.
Much like how I could disagree with Seth but be civil to the point of good discourse; or be the complete opposite as Jon in how we cover(ed) CBB, yet remain friends; I hope one day there’s a place for an understanding to be had between them and the bloggers who provide the NEEDED balance to counter their traditional coverage.
I’m meandering now, as I don’t know how to end this. I have no gut-punch close or witty ending.
The Unnamed Bloggers (they go unnamed since it’s unfair to single one out; though I understand I’m making bloggers a bit of an unfair monolith) are good to me. Seth Greenberg has always been out-of-his-way kind to me. Jon Rothstein is a true and good friend.
I don’t agree with all three parties’ way of covering the sport at all times. More often than not, I disagree with it. It would be insane if anyone agreed with someone literally all the time.
I know them all to be fundamentally good, so I think only highly of them, despite my qualms with how ALL of them sometimes attack CBB coverage.
Maybe that makes me naive. Maybe I’m a fucking idiot. Maybe it’s Maybelline.
More than likely, I value people over a broken industry.
Oh, and I’m definitely also just a fucking idiot.
Joseph Nardone covered college basketball for nearly a decade at various outlets. He’s now trying to write fiction because he’s a fucking idiot and a glutton for punishment. Twitter is @JosephNardone. If you say mean things to him, he’ll just yell at his ceiling.