I guess Gregg Doyel hates Arkansas the most

[BigLeagueChew]

<h1 class="storyhdl">Arkansas fans sink to another low over a
stupid hat</h1>

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By Gregg Doyel
<span class="fright">Tell Gregg your
opinion!</span>
CBSSports.com National Columnist
<span class="storydate">Aug. 18, 2010</span>

<div class="story-body hasByline" style="margin-top: 0pt;">

Arkansas
fans, I could let this one go. Lots of us in the media did let
this go. We're busy enough with real football stuff to write, what
with college teams getting ready for the season, NFL teams getting
ready, Brett Favre getting ready. Lots to do, the media is saying. No
time for those idiots in Arkansas. </p>

But for
this, I'll make time. </p>

For you idiots? I have all the
time in the world. </p>

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</td><td width="15"></td></tr><tr><td width="300"><font face="verdana" size="1">
Arkansas fans' fanatacism reaches new depths with their latest stunt.
<font size="1">
(Getty Images)</font></font></td><td width="15"></td></tr></tbody></table> Because you people are wrong, and you're not
just wrong. You're scary. You people just got mad enough at a
young woman, a local radio reporter named Renee Gork, to have her fired.
Her crime? She wore a Florida Gators hat to a Bobby Petrino news
conference. Petrino coaches Arkansas. One of his biggest rivals is
Florida. The hat was a poor choice, I won't deny that. It was
stupid, really.

But fired? You backward folks got her fired?
</p>

People don't act this way. </p>

Let
me tell you a story. It's about my best friends in the world, a
couple I've known for years. They have a child, a 10-year-old, who's a
wonderful kid except for the few moments when he acts out. And when
he acts out, it's bad. He loses control. He's almost unstoppable
when he's angry, but my friends stumbled onto a saying that stops
this kid in his tracks. When he starts to rev it up and lose
control, my friends tell him five words: </p>

"People don't act this way." </p>

And the kid stops. He's
just 10, but he understands expectations. He understands peer
pressure. He's a smart kid, and that sentence stops him in his
tracks. It shames him into stopping. </p>

And so now I'm
saying it to you, Arkansas fans, believing with all my heart that
you're as emotionally mature as a 10-year-old: </p>

People don't act this way. </p>

Look, this wasn't all
of you. If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of Arkansas
fans who didn't look up the reporter online, who didn't discover
that she not only wore a Florida hat but that she attended the
University of Florida, who didn't use that information to flood
her radio station with e-mails and phone calls demanding that she
be fired, then this column isn't directed at you. Because you already
understand: </p>

People don't act this way. </p>

But a lot of you did. And in Dan Storrs, the general manager
for KAKS, you found a patsy. You found a suit so empty that, when
told to fire a young woman -- when told to wreck her career, take
away her paycheck, ruin her reputation in an entire state -- he
gave in and did it. </p> <table class="data mRight10 fLeft" width="300"><tbody><tr class="title"><td>Arkansas Razorbacks</td></tr>

<tr class="subtitle"><td>Related links</td></tr><tr class="row1" valign="top"><td><ul class="multiLine flush mTop5">[*]Arkansas
broadcaster fired for wearing UF hat[*]Dodd's SEC preview: Hogs No. 3
in West[/list]
</td></tr>

</tbody></table>

Yo, Dan Storrs. Good employers don't act that
way. </p>

Dan Storrs is a terrible boss and a weak man,
but he's not the real problem here. He's a symptom, yes. He's a
hacking cough. He's a Kleenex full of snot. But he's not the
actual virus. </p>

You people, you Arkansas fans who
wanted Renee Gork fired? You're the virus. And you're contagious.
And that's why you must be stopped. </p>

And we've had
this conversation before, you remember? I do. It
was 2007, and Houston Nutt was still your football coach, and
some of you people hated him enough to seek his public records
through the Freedom of Information Act. You looked up his phone
calls and e-mails and whatever financial information you could get your
hands on. You found out stuff, and you posted it online. One of
you infiltrated his practice, pretended to be a reporter and asked
an awful question. </p>

People don't act this way,
but you people did it. You crept right up to the line of
acceptable fan behavior, hopped into your monster truck and drove
over that line and into the realm of fanaticism. And then you spun
out doughnuts in the Arkansas end zone. And I ripped you for it,
because people like you must be stopped. The virus must be
eradicated, or it will spread. </p>

And in
hindsight, I failed. Because you people spread like chicken pox.
In 2007 it was a handful of you. This week, it was hundreds of you.
Maybe thousands of you. The radio station hasn't said exactly how many
e-mails and phone calls it received, demanding that Renee Gork be
fired, but it must have been a deluge. I've seen your message
boards, and you people were everywhere this week, ranting about
Gork and spreading KAKS' e-mail address and phone number, and then
celebrating your victory when this young woman was fired. </p>

Because she wore one SEC hat to another SEC school's press
conference. </p>

You people had her fired for that.
</p>

People don't act this way. Not any people worth a
damn, anyway. </p></div>

 

[gptdawg]

So what was the embarrassing question Pork Rind Jimmy asked Nutt back in Arkansas?

 

[615dawg]

He asked him flat out about the affair with the TV anchor from Little Rock.

I have been saying it for 15 years. No fanbase in the SEC should be feared more than Arkansas.

Nolan Richardson once took a top 10 team on the road to a top 25 Kentucky and got beat. He came back and his horses had been shot by a high powered rifle.

 

[RebelBruiser]

I posted it on Nafoom, but Arkansas's biggest problem is that their mainstream news media sources all either by choice or by force report like the Spirit/Gene's Page.

It's all fluff all the time. I think that's happened over time because the fans don't want to hear negative stuff. You wonder why both of our fanbases have segments that hate the Ledger? It's because we all have segments of our fanbase that hate to hear the truth when the truth isn't happy and sunshiny.

The difference for Arkansas is that no one else is in the state to keep them in check. They have no major metropolitan areas that are melting pots of fans of teams from all over the country, and they have no rival. It's all Arkansas all the time, and the loudmoth conspiracy theory types have no one to keep them in check. They push their agenda, and then it builds on itself. The media that's forced to report fluff then builds more and more of the crazy types that hate hearing negative Arkansas news.

I can only imagine if MSU and Ole Miss were in separate states and Chuck and Gene were the typical style of reporting you saw on a daily basis due to no one keeping us in check. It would probably make both of our fanbases crazy over time. The funny thing is that they don't know that they are crazier than everyone else. They think they are normal.

 

[JohnDawg]

Nolan Richardson once took a top 10 team on the road to a top 25 Kentucky and got beat. He came back and his horses had been shot by a high powered rifle.

is this for realz? If so, that's the most insane thing I've ever heard.

Arkansas has now officially passed Ole Miss for 2nd place in my most hated fanbase/school/team/everything list. They're still behind Alabama though. They're holding down the #1 spot by a huge margin.

 

[leftydog]

Arkansas sports media is as close to a state run media as you'll find in this country.

 

[leftydog]

to get rid of Nutt. People fronted major cash to do that. That's my personal favorite thing I've seen up here so far.

 

[leftydog]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/03/01/sports/main275679.shtml

Fire up the banjos - this redefines bat sh*t crazy even for arkansas.

 

[Agentdog]

I know we have had this conversation before. However, Bruiser is dead on in his assessment of Arkansas. Especially the media part and it has shown during this inncident. Immediately, the local radio sports shows ran to the defense of Petrino and the university right off the bat. First of all spinning Petrino was only joking with the reporter. Then as the news came out she was fired. The spin became that she tweeted once that she did not like covering Arkansas football practices and had posted other things about the state of Arkansas on facebook. Painting a picture it was about more than a hat. WHich the girl would have never been fired if not for the hat. I believe the radio stations official reason for firing her was they believed her actions caused her to have an averse relationship with the university. Therefore leaving her unable to fulfill her duties. Which is ridiculous because the media here is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the university. The reporters and anchors are the cheerleaders and she was not willing to be a cheerleader.

It is one thing for the fans to be fanatical. However, when supposed professional people make professional decisions based on some ******** feelings getting hurt.....ridiculous.

 

[615dawg]

I was under the impression that they lost a big game on the road to Kentucky and his horses were shot.

According to this link, they WON a big game on the road against Kentucky and his horses were shot.

Bat. ****. Crazy. Indeed.

 

[VirgilCain]

.

 

[615dawg]

[No message]

 

[VirgilCain]

.

 

[bigiron.sixpack]

[No message]

 

[RebelBruiser]

Exactly. They force their own media to be essentially a media relations department for the university. How many columnists do you see at Arkansas papers across the state that draw the ire of Arkansas fans?

I can't think of any. You know why? Because they aren't allowed to write that way without losing their jobs. Rick Cleveland would've been out of a job years ago with his style of reporting if he were doing it in Arkansas. Other than being not the best writer and having odd ball opinions, there is nothing wrong with sometimes having a dissenting opinion...except in Arkansas.

 

[Agentdog]

.....the man won a NC for Arkansas and played for another. Meanwhile, he gets death threats and his horses harassed twice. He left his position with the university on very bad terms and just recently made a public appearance at the university. Things are not normal up there.

 

[leftydog]

Which is the liberal, hippy free rag up here. So, they are hated on principle even before they cover sports.

 

[jwiley.sixpack]

Do any of you even live in Arkansas or near Fayetteville? First of all, the only research Doyel did for this article is read social networking posts and posts based only on rumor. Today, Doyel was asked to call in and did to the very radio station that he wrote about and agreed that he did not do adequate research to back up his claims. The woman was not fired because she wore a Florida hat to a press conference, it was because of other reasons too. It was the last straw. The woman who was fired even told national media that she was not fired because of this incident, but because she could have done a better job. During work, she would post messages to social networks such as facebook and twitter about how much she didn't like her job. I live in Fayeteville and go to school at the University of Arkansas, and I can tell you that our media is not only positive. They tell it how it is. We don't go into every season thinking we are the best team and etc. We know where we are. We also know that we get no respect from the media and when they do cover us it happens to be things like this; especially when ESPN told Petrino not to go to Arkansas. What if these things were said about any of your teams? Or even if it was because of the hat, would you want a voice and representative of your school or favorite team a loyal fan of another team in the same conference? I wouldn't think so. You should read some of the articles written by those who actually contacted sources involved in the incident including the radio station. I personally think that Gregg Doyel should be fired. He has had a long history of trying to be the reporter thats on the edge in the sports world. The University of Arkansas is not the only school where he has ragged on and made false accusations including a previous article where he poked fun at M. Beasley's medical condition. Instead of stealing the spotlight and getting national attention, he lost a ton of credibility in Arkansas. Don't be like Doyel guys, do your research and don't make accusations off of what you have heard. This was very unprofessional and hearing the man talk today, make himself look like a phony jerk. Instead of arguing with legitimate facts, he spat out insults the whole time calling names and making stereotypical jokes. This is lousy journalism and the only thing he should be writing is his own resignation.

 

[patdog]

But for a reporter for Hog Sports Radio to wear a Florida Gators cap to a press conference and then not take it off when Petrino called her out on it is more than just "poor decision making." I can't believe anybody would be so monumentally stupid to do something like that unintentionally.

 

[IBleedMaroonDawg]

Do any of you even live in Arkansas or near Fayetteville? First of all, the only research Doyel did for this article is read social networking posts and posts based only on rumor. Today, Doyel was asked to call in and did to the very radio station that he wrote about and agreed that he did not do adequate research to back up his claims. The woman was not fired because she wore a Florida hat to a press conference, it was because of other reasons too. It was the last straw. The woman who was fired even told national media that she was not fired because of this incident, but because she could have done a better job. During work, she would post messages to social networks such as facebook and twitter about how much she didn't like her job. I live in Fayeteville and go to school at the University of Arkansas, and I can tell you that our media is not only positive. They tell it how it is. We don't go into every season thinking we are the best team and etc. We know where we are. We also know that we get no respect from the media and when they do cover us it happens to be things like this; especially when ESPN told Petrino not to go to Arkansas. What if these things were said about any of your teams? Or even if it was because of the hat, would you want a voice and representative of your school or favorite team a loyal fan of another team in the same conference? I wouldn't think so. You should read some of the articles written by those who actually contacted sources involved in the incident including the radio station. I personally think that Gregg Doyel should be fired. He has had a long history of trying to be the reporter thats on the edge in the sports world. The University of Arkansas is not the only school where he has ragged on and made false accusations including a previous article where he poked fun at M. Beasley's medical condition. Instead of stealing the spotlight and getting national attention, he lost a ton of credibility in Arkansas. Don't be like Doyel guys, do your research and don't make accusations off of what you have heard. This was very unprofessional and hearing the man talk today, make himself look like a phony jerk. Instead of arguing with legitimate facts, he spat out insults the whole time calling names and making stereotypical jokes. This is lousy journalism and the only thing he should be writing is his own resignation.