Trash talkin’ in today’s digital world

Published 8:54 am Friday, October 16, 2015

Oh, no. Just stop it.

This has gone too far.

And we in the sporting media sometimes wonder why it seems like college athletes, with all their “media training,” come off sounding like robots repeating the hard-and-fast party line.

Maybe you heard that Florida defensive tackle Jon Bullard was dissing LSU’s Leonard Fournette the other day.

No?

Neither did Bullard, I’m sure. Not intentionally, anyway.

But it was all over the Internet, so it must have been true.

Big headlines begging to be clicked.

The websites’ carnival barkers were screaming it from the www’s highest mountaintops: “‘Nothing we can’t stop!!!’ says Gators’ DT of Fournette.

Anything for a hit these days.

That wasn’t all he said, of course.

You mean it got worse?

No, not exactly.

What Bullard said first about Fournette was, “He’s the best back in the league.”

Nothing to see here, folks, let’s move along.

Oh, but Bullard wasn’t finished.

“We’re just going to have to rally to the ball and tackle him,” Bullard continued.

OK.

But Bullard still wasn’t quite finished.

“I don’t think … he’s nothing that we can’t stop,” the Gator continued, and suddenly, thanks to media relays, five-alarm alerts went off all over the Twitterworld, particularly in the Louisiana precincts.

That wasn’t even his whole quote. The juicier retellings stopped it right there, of course, many with handy reminders for LSU fans that they might ought to get properly riled up about it.

Bullard completed his deep thoughts with, “… but we have to rally to the ball because he’s an excellent athlete.”

Really, not that much to it — not that it stopped the Internet molehill-to-mountain makers.

Which is probably why you can hardly get a decent, heartfelt quote out of a college player these days.

Who could blame them?

What, exactly, did you expect Bullard to say? That it was useless to try to tackle Fournette? At least without an updated life insurance policy.

His coach, Jim McElwain, had an idea. McElwain admitted up front that “I know I couldn’t tackle him,” although despite what happened with Arkansas coach Bret Bielema on the Alabama sideline last week, there’s little chance that McElwain will be pressed into tackling service.

“Here’s what I told our guys,” McElwain continued. “Somebody jump on his back, maybe that will slow him down. Maybe somebody else grabs a shoelace and he trips.”

“I’m sure the way we tackle … I’m sure Leonard is licking his lips and saying ‘This is probably a chance to get 300, the heck with these 200 yard games.’”

That would be the opposite approach — killing them with kindness — and glosses over the fact that Florida is by far the best defense LSU and Fournette will have seen this year.

Some oversights against Tennessee notwithstanding — the Vols managed 254 yards rushing — the Gators’ against the run are second in the Southeastern Conference, behind only Alabama, and 12th in the nation.

To his credit, Bullard didn’t blame the overexcited messengers. “Lol it’s all good man,” he tweeted. “(I) know how you read it and heard it … It’s part of all this I enjoy it, trust me.”

Or, perhaps, he knows the dirty little secret that fans perhaps aren’t privy to.

Bulletin-board historians were quick to cite the example of Auburn defensive back Rudy Ford, who famously (and perhaps just as innocently) said stopping Fournette “shouldn’t be difficult.”

Ford seemed to have far less enthusiasm during the game, whiffing with little apparent remorse on one of Fournette’s numerous highlight reel efforts.

But, in truth, Auburn wasn’t a very good defense before, during or after Fournette was done gashing it for 228 yards.

Florida is.

Fortunately for Bullard, these bulletin-board affairs tend to stir up fans far more than players, truth be told, and any pregame posturing tends to be forgotten as quickly as the coin flip can be concluded.

Besides, the LSU-Florida series, whether either school likes having the other as a permanent cross-division rival or not, over the years has been too good, filled with far too much drama and fourth-down hijinks, to be sullied with such cheap tricks.

But, did we mention that the LSU and Florida secondaries have had a running Twitter war brewing over which schools lays claim to the title DBU — or Defensive Back U.?

That probably won’t be much of a factor either.