Silliman on Sports
By Stan Silliman
COWBOYS-STARS SAD TWITTER WAR
When teams from opposing sports tweet, it’s not always sweet.
Especially when the two teams are bad, it can be downright sad.
We’re talking Dallas Cowboys and Stars, apparently no holds barred.
Let’s look in, shall we?
Josh Ellis of DallasCowboys.com started it by announcing that baseball was approaching with this tweet: “Just six weeks until pitchers and catchers, everybody.”
Unfortunately a retweet on their site came back with “Similarly, in the category of nobody-cares… the NHL is back.” Yeah, these two tweets were quickly removed from DallasCowboys.com site but the stuff had already hit the fan with not only one sport but two being slammed, hockey and baseball.
Hockey, the Stars, fired back with their own tweet “At least our #9 got the job done” followed by a picture of Mike Modano (No. 9) holding up the Stanley Cup from the 1999 playoffs.
So you see what happened there? The Cowboys, with only one playoff victory in 16 years, tweets that nobody cares about hockey (or baseball, for that matter), hockey responds by reminding us that they won a championship 14 YEARS AGO!! I don’t what’s sadder, a football team Tony Romo-ing in mediocrity or a hockey team, with barely a season to hang on to, resorting to a 14-year-old boast.
I will give the Dallas Stars their due. They know how to get their licks in AND they’ve been through twitter and publicized multi-sport snarkfests before. Rewind to 2007, and their friendly jabs with the Mavs, a team sharing their arena, when in response to the Donaghy basketball referee gambling scandal they ran billboards claiming “THE ONLY THING OUR REFS SHAVE IS THE ICE.”
Maybe the Cowboys didn’t know who they were sticking with their hasty tweet. You don’t stick a sticker and the Stars have been known to carry them high. In that year, their billboards also came after football: “One game a week? Does the N in NFL stand for Nancy?” Did the Stars stop there? No, those power hungry Frenchmen went after Golf, too: “Golf is for wimps. Can’t even carry their own sticks.” That billboard showed macho hockey players handling their stick.
Did they stop there? No! Dallas is home to a major league soccer team – FC Dallas – and the Stars put up billboards pointing out hockey is a tougher and more violent sport: “Soccer: One head butt and it’s an international scandal.” Was that enough jabs? No! The Stars kept on with “Soccer: Preferred Sport of terrorists” and then, if that weren’t enough “Watching little guys in shorts – Is that how you want to spend your summer?”
Football didn’t take the Nancy swipe lying down. The Cowboys came back with their own anti-hockey billboard “They play indoors but are on the Outdoor Network. What does that tell you?” Then followed with: “They speak French. How tough can they be?”
Baseball had to get in the hockey bashing act: “We may take steroids but we still have our teeth” followed by “You can see more scoring at a nursing home.”
Geez, what’s sadder than two middling sports team tweeting sweet nothings at each other?
I would bet the Twitter wars in Dallas get a little testy. Very funny one Stan!