Sorry to intrude on your martyrdom
You know, that word has been kicking around with me too in reading this and many a prior thread. IMO, only one Boneyarder was even inconvenienced by the Tennessee "onslaught." Because this narrative of people being subjected to personal agony seems to be hardening into accepted Boneyard lore, it might be well to set the record straight.
The NCAA complaint was born on The Summitt, its experimental charges adopted by Ms. Summitt & Co. against what should have been their better judgment, and let fly "anonymously." (Snicker, snicker.)
The motives for the whole pile of crap were basically low-down but clothed in smarmy good-of-the-game trappings. "Let's get the rules clarified." Bull. Why not clarify them with the Dayton Flyers?
But no one was harmed by having his or her posts included in the complaint. The objective was to show that Boneyarders were engaged in out-of-control recruiting efforts. The complaint failed. Hey, you always wanted to be published. Next case.
If your posts were quoted (more accurately, just reproduced
en masse) so what? We always counsel 'Yarders to stay the hell away from recruits. Some listen, some don't, some listen but don't seem to get it, some act miffed at the bloody NCAA trying to tell them what to do.
In this instance, a few could've stood to be more circumspect in their posts, whether what they were doing was OK or not. We're a glass house here, aside from our ability to throw stones, and lots of noses are pressed to the window. Er, wall.
But no large men in trench coats came to 'Yarders' houses in the dead of night and removed family members for enhanced interrogation. Tony was and probably still is raked over the coals and mocked on The Summitt just for being Tony. If I were they (a hideous, practically unthinkable thought, rather like the first sentence of Kafka's
The Metamorphosis), I wouldn't like him either. But he wasn't harmed by the NCAA complaint.
One of us had to put up with a half-hour telephone grilling by UConn compliance counsel over his cardboard signs with the neat limericks incorporating recruits' names. Unpleasant, perhaps, but the gentleman used to jump out of airplanes with people shooting at him. He can endure half an hour with a lawyer, even if he might sensibly find the company of Viet Cong snipers preferable.
The FBI thing had nothing to do with the NCAA complaint and happened years later. It sounds awful, but it was just a huffy online report of an unauthorized quote from a pay site that should've been, but wasn't, password or otherwise protected.
The huffiness may have been inspired by Doggydaddy's ongoing diplomatic efforts as regards the Summitteers. He kills them with kindness, but the vile creatures die hard.
The revelation of the existence of the complaint appeared you-know-where. Doggydaddy was never contacted and never in the slightest danger of indictment, believe me. At least not for this; I'll refrain from generalizing.
We've always been cooperative and indeed proactive about respecting copyrights and the like. People who are compensated to write can't have subscribers, for example, disseminating their stuff for free. A little direct communication and this rather impulsive invocation of Elliott Ness disappeared into the ether.
Yes, the whole effort by the Lady Vols management in that period of time to knock down UConn was ill-conceived, patently invidious and in the end demeaning only to its authors.
And yes, the efforts of the online LV contingent to perpetuate a shadow campaign of malicious innuendo and baseless, often ludicrous slanders of every sort are offensive. May they drown in their own bile, slowly.
That said, the rumors of truncheons and hot pliers being applied to Boneyarders' sensitive skin are greatly exaggerated. It's possible to get just a bit overly emotional about these things. The "victims" are, of course, free to detail their tribulations. But I'm not expecting it, and please don't. You have my sympathy in advance.
That's easy to say if you weren't personally affected in the process.
