I used to hate Twitter. I thought it was dumb that you had "followers" and had to use "I'm a 6th grade girl texting you on my phone"-style English to fit your thoughts into 140 character blurbs. And what does it say that our whole method for communicating with these followers is to restrict our thoughts to character-limited fragmented sentences where it is nearly impossible to say anything substantive?
Well I still kind of agree with my last statement, but I've recently changed my tune on Twitter. Where else can you find out interesting nuggets like the fact that aftermarket college football tickets for Nebraska @ Wyoming two weeks ago were going for over $350? I mean, let's be honest, you're never really going to ask a question that will result in that being the answer. That answer will not show up on Jeopardy. And in some respects, I kind of like the fact that I found that out... the substance isn't that important, but what it means is what's important. I can find out something I never knew, and was never going to know, by following certain people on Twitter (for the record, that little nugget came from Darren Rovell, whom I will add I wish I'd had the opportunity to meet on Sailgate, although maybe it was for the best that I didn't considerating my mental state on that trip).
So I've gotten more into Twitter recently. Mainly my tweets involve telling a couple of my friends that we all need to make sure we're wearing purple shirts on Fridays and that we should drink a lot (#letsgetsailgated). I follow Darren Rovell and some local Chicago stuff and a few friends that I haven't talked to very much. It's relatively interesting to keep in touch with what's going on in the minds of these people, and conversely I hope that I occasionally provide some veritable nuggets of my own.
Bear with me, I promise I have a point.
I think one of the more dynamic components of Twitter is to asynchronously share information in near-real time with almost anyone. The following point may be slightly morbid, but if we'd had Twitter in 2001, do you think it's possible that we figured out the terrorist aspect of the first plane hitting the first World Trade Center and potentially could have mobilized the Air Force/Navy/Army to stop the second? I'm not implying anyone did anything wrong that day, but could the dissemination of information on Twitter helped define the issue earlier than we could by the means available in the day? (Probably not, would be my personal answer).
Bring it back, a little less depressing right now. Say you just saw a car accident that's going to cause traffic problems on Halsted. You tweet it, and someone checks it out and takes the train home instead of the Halsted bus. Pretty cool, you just helped someone avoid an annoying situation. Or, you tweet that you just found an awesome new bar that's having drink specials on a Friday, your friends/followers see it and change their plans to check out this new bar and have a great time and save some money. Another #firstworldvictory.
Or, this situation. Let's say you're watching a football game. Maybe a college football game. Maybe a college football game that involves Northwestern. Maybe a college football game that involves Northwestern playing at Illinois on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in October where a Heisman candidate just came back from injury and is currently an incredibly efficient 10-14 with 4 touchdowns (a career high for the guy). Maybe, just MAYBE, you think the coaching staff has bent over, turned their necks ninety degrees, and shoved their heads so far up their own asses that they are literally eating their own gall bladders.Maybe, just maybe, you think the coaching staff needs a little advice.
Twitter to the rescue!
I propose that Jim Philips install a direct line Twitter feed that shows up on Fitz's famous laminated playcalling placard.
There should be software on this device that analyzes all the Tweets (i.e. filters out the "you fucking suck" Tweets and finds the ones with something legitimate to say and summarizes them) to give Fitz another opinion that isn't coming from his crack-off-a-stripper's-ass-snorting assistant coaches. In that case, it's possible that he will realize he should get angry, but at his coaching staff, not the referees, or the grass, or his headset. Maybe he just doesn't know that Dan Persa has thrown a touchdown on 40% of his completions. Maybe he just doesn't know that we've called 75% of our plays to be runs, and maybe he just doesn't know that Mike Trumpy got carted off the field.
Maybe he just doesn't know.
I'm not excusing the fact that he doesn't know. He should know, he's accountable, he's the head coach. But I understand that between the pregame, pre-halftime, post-halftime, and postgame interviews, and spending a lot of time yelling at Jacob Schmidt to "GET AFTER IT!!!" that he may lose track of a few important things, like the fact that a defense that's doing this
is much more effective than a defense that's doing this
If he had Twitter to help him, he might know that we held Illinois to 10 points through 2.5 quarters while playing 4 down lineman with a combination of blitzes and stunts that forced a pick (in the endzone, on an incredible play by Ben Johnson), a lost fumble (the second one game after we'd already shat ourselves), and something like four sacks.
Maybe he would have realized that playing soft zone with 3 rushers against a Big Ten team and a quarterback like Scheelhaase that Scheelhaase is going to figure out that Jeravin Mathews is a smaller version of Usain Bolt and knows next to nothing about how to play cover corner and he can just play catch on a Big Ten football field like me and my buddies used to do on Long Field against no defense.
October 1, 2011 was a football coaching atrocity. I'll be honest, preseason I picked us to lose this game. I thought we didn't match up well against Illinois, and they were too enigmatic with too good of a playmaker in Scheelhaase (not to mention their running backs then went all jizz-in-your-face last year at Wrigley). But after yesterday, that didn't matter. We decided to take the foot off the gas when up by only 18 points, on the ROAD, and gave it back to them. Dan Persa got hurt and came out. Somehow, with a gift from the football gods, we got that fumble back in Ill-annoy territory and ended up taking the lead with 1:15 left to play. After watching them come all the way back the first time, did the coaching staff learn that the prevent-victory defense wasn't working? We had every right to win that game, but did the coaching staff know how to do it?
No. But Twitter might have told them.
-YOM
*"Today's track" isn't necessarily going to happen all the time. I just have found some new (for me) music recently that I want to share.
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