Look, fans keeping a positive attitude sounds great in theory, but it is like leaving a kindergarten class alone for an hour with candy and breakable objects, and then being surprised when the candy is gone, the kids are fighting, and some things are broken. And it’s going to be true whether those kids are in Minnesota, Iowa, Florida, or Alaska.
A D1 basketball player who is not playing well on a losing team is going to be talked about in a negative way by fans on social media/message boards/etc. That’s going to be true everywhere. You get the free education, stipend, free gear, and notoriety, but along with that is going to come some other stuff that you’d probably rather not deal with. Now, there is a big difference between someone ranting about a poor shooting performance on Twitter without tagging anyone vs. someone sending a player DMs telling them they are worthless. I don’t know what exactly was happening here, but I hope we all know that the latter of those crosses a line to being extremely inappropriate and borderline illegal.
I’d be surprised if we are a drastically more hardcore than other Power 6 program fan bases when it comes to going off on social media. I’m willing to bet negative recruiting could be done against every other Power 6 program by printing out a few comments from message boards and a few social media responses and showing them to recruits. (Look at Ohio State. And that was an All B1G First Team player who lead his team to a 2 seed in the NCAAs!)
So, yes, people need to calm down on social media in general, but I’m really not sure that it makes a huge difference to most players unless it crosses a line. Maybe Gabe is just a little more sensitive to it, and that’s okay. He was by all accounts a stand up guy here who did things the right way and gave his best. He clearly wasn’t happy here and next year is more than likely a rebuilding year for the program so a fresh start was probably best for all parties. I hold no ill will toward him, and wish him the best at Iowa State.
