Most of the time we do a Twitter Wars post, it takes a theatrical, comedic approach to media members scuffling in social media. Even in the midst of a Twitter fight, I'm convinced the parties involved are playing to the crowd just as much as they are trying to "defeat" their "combatant." After all, there is always a bit of an element of the ridiculous to adult sportswriters arguing on Twitter.
But then I came across this Twitter War between Seth Davis of Sports Illustrated, CBS Sports, and Campus Insiders and former Sports Illustrated writer John Walters. And, woo boy is this a nasty one. This Twitter fight is no laughing matter as the two sportswriters exchanged personal shots including Davis taking a shot at Walters' departure from SI and Walters mocking Davis' father Lanny helping the Redskins in their ongoing nickname saga.
For the backstory – Walters is a former SI writer who now operates his own independent site, Medium Happy. (In the interest of full disclosure, AA syndicated a post from Walters last August when he was freelancing for another Bloguin site.) In the wake of the controversial Oklahoma State report from SI, Walters wrote an entry on his personal blog about the inner workings of Sports Illustrated and the perceived lack of fact-checking that went into the story.
Davis is a Sports Illustrated writer who hosts his own show on Campus Insiders. What started as a simple tweet about Johnny Manziel turned into quite the ugly spat. Just another thing we can blame Johnny F'n Football for…
Yikes. I feel bad even scoring that thing. Although I will say calling someone a stooge is a vastly underused insult in today's world. What we're seeing on Twitter publicly is probably only a tenth of what's really happening here. Let's just call this thing a Double DQ and get these two guys a friendship cake.