The surprise trade of wide receiver Randy Moss from the New England Patriots back to the Minnesota Vikings was not broken by a hard-charging sports news writer. It wasn’t announced in a press release. Instead, a commentator best known for color and comedy tweeted his own DM. “moss vikings.” And thus was a shitstorm born.
Although there’s no indication that ESPN‘s “Sports Guy,” Bill Simmons, will join Mike Wise in carrying around his own hind-quarters, Twitter didn’t do the guy any favors.
Some have suggested, what with it taking a half hour to delete the errant tweet, that this “moron with twitter on a blackberry” was less a klutz and more of cynic. It certainly focused the sports and sports-journalism world on Simmons as a breaker of news. And it made Simmons’ 1,266,022 followers the first stop on for a sports news story of some import.
“(T)the circumstances that led to my accidental ‘moss vikings’ tweet are pretty funny. I will tell the story in Friday’s column.”
Simmons’ colleagues like Adam Schefter must be doubled over with laughter and on the edge of their seats with anticipation, as they actually were working hard on confirmations prior to the blurting. Once the tweet went out, however, those without a line on the trade went cuckoo bananas trying to figure out what was going on. Down in social media town #sportsguydms became a thing.
Story via Lost Remote | Moss photo by Keith Allison
