Outside of some great mix tapes of this kid there is nothing else to this recruiting thread. The same can be applied to all recruiting threads.
The pattern has been established for years now. Some excessively large percentage of posts in recruiting threads are tangents or not pertinent.
People come to these forums for many reasons. Some to lurk. Some to contribute. Those that choose to express themselves have different styles and different interests. Some posters are serious, some posters are silly, some are both. Some stay on topic, some go on tangents. This is a diverse community with diverse ideas how things should be set up.
In spite of this being apparent and pretty much consistent year in and year out (well I think it's apparent and consistent) there seems to be people who either don't recognize this or do recognize this but insist that someone change the format. That's code for make this place something that I want and/or need. For all the dissing of the women's forum, I believe they have a beige format that some of the posters in the men's forum would prefer.
Personally I find elements of both forums good and bad. In this forum there is a lot of male smack talk. In the women's forum the posts are polite. In this forum, the topics are seldom on topic and often hijacked by people who go after one another. In the women's forum there are less tangents just because people don't go after one anther the way they do here (As you know there are some posters in that forum who are uncomfortable with that format).
I personally can do without most of the need for people to attack players or posters that takes place here. Its juvenile imo. But the women's forum goes to the other extreme. I come away with the impression it's fake. When Tennessee and Pat Summitt went after Geno and UConn, I felt I observed the real nature of people in that forum. But that's subjective and even if accurate, I have no right to impose my preferences on them. I know I'm sounding judgmental in all of this, but the truth of the matter is no forum can be all things to all people. My philosophy is that we have a right to tell others what we think, but zero right to insist they conform to our way of thinking.
These forums are communities. And like all communities there are times when individuals won't have their particular needs met. Tom (
@temery) represents someone I admire. He's gone to a lot of effort to set up this site and did so with only a modicum of interest in sports. His actions have been spectacularly unselfish. I wish the many dissatisfied people in these forums would understand the altruistic nature of this act and learn to at least develop some modicum of accommodation to one another even if they can't offer the altruistic effort that temery blessed us all with by creating these forums.
