FSU Fans Respond to ESPN’s Fishing Expedition

FSU faithful had their Christmas festivities interrupted this afternoon when news of a fishing expedition surfaced. Being that it is Christmas Eve the following only seems appropriate…

“Twas the night
Before Christmas
When all through the web
Many fans were tweeting
in light of the fishing expedition

The shots had been fired
It became very clear
In hopes
That ESPN
Would someday be fair.

The records were nestled
All safe in Bristol
While visions of allegations
Danced in their heads

And Finebaum with his ears
And fans with their facts,
Were not settling down
For there was a mishap

When out of Tallahassee
There arose such a clatter
Fans sprang from their festivities
To see what was the matter

Away to the web
Fans flew like a flash
Logged on to Twitter
And blasted the bias…”

But in all seriousness, today the general public was informed of an apparent fishing expedition taken on by ESPN. According to a post today by Talgov.com, TPD was contacted by an ESPN reporter in September of 2014 whom requested any existing police records from TPD that contained the names of 360 specific individuals, identified by ESPN as Florida State University athletes. Ultimately, ESPN was provided with over 300 police reports which had the names provided by the reporter either listed as a witness, victim, suspect, reporting party, etc.

Notably provided was one case in particular that is still under investigation which lists FSU halfback Dalvin Cook as an “associate in the case”. The case involved an aggravated assault by two men who are alleged to have brandished a firearm at a neighbor on July 17th 2014.

It is important to note that TPD released a statement as well in light of releasing this information. Said statement by Tallahassee Police Chief Michael DeLeo can be seen below.

"“We are committed to ensuring that every citizen of this community, including our university students, know that we take every report of possible criminal activity seriously…We also have an obligation, under state law, to respond to national media requests such as this and have done so professionally and with a commitment to openness.”"

Given an inch, it would seem that many outside of Tallahassee took a mile to build negative perception about Cook. FSU fans infuriated by this fishing expedition took to Twitter by simply using the hashtag “#BoycottESPN” (Started by twitter user “@DJCURTI5”). While none of these fans will probably ever boycott ESPN, it is understandable to get such a preposterous hashtag trending.

Why?

It sheds light on the other half of the story that involves the fishing expedition that this reporter had to partake in just to acquire these records. Many outside of the city of Tallahassee will not do the digging to understand this. Perhaps a trendy hashtag could possibly change that as many would wonder why anyone would want to do something as ludicrous as boycott ESPN.

Without further ado, here are some tweets by the hound dog that has been dubbed “#FSUTwitter”.

Needless to say, other fan bases have taken notice to this and fired off. FSU fans have promptly fired back. This can be seen below.