Welp.
Mississippi State defensive lineman Fabien Lovett, who criticized Bulldogs coach Mike Leach’s tweet that showed a meme of a woman knitting a noose for her husband during self-quarantine, entered the NCAA transfer portal on Friday.
Lovett wrote on Twitter that he had entered the transfer portal and has three years of eligibility remaining.
Lovett’s decision came one day after Leach posted the now-deleted tweet.
Maybe somebody needs to rethink his social media policy. If he has one, that is.
Get The Picture 
Mike Leach needs a social media “get back” coach. He also needs to do better than that piss poor apology. In the end, it probably won’t matter much in terms of MSU’s success in football. They haven’t won the SEC in football since 1941 and I wouldn’t expect that to change with a nutjob like Leach.
LikeLike
What!?!! Apparently he didn’t read Corch’s comments on the other thread…lol
LikeLiked by 1 person
I haven’t read the link, so I’m guessing he really is just transferring over the tweet, but my question is- is there really ever a bad reason to leave Mississippi State?
LikeLike
Haha, fair point. This kind of things always suggests the gears were already turning.
Incidentally, my wife and her brother moved to Starkville while they were still in high school. Her older brother did the same thing every morning: he’d walk down to the table for breakfast and announce “this place sucks.” They moved back to Birmingham after only 8 months of that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My theory is that everything about MSU and Starkville is so bland that they fade from the memory almost in real time. A few years on, even former Mississippi State players have no idea they played there.
In all my years I can remember Dickie Clark’s pick-6 against them in 1975 (immortalized by Munson on the James Brown record) and our rooskie in 2017, and that’s nearly it for all of our meetings with them in my lifetime- and I’ve been over to that sorry pasture at least twice…(I think)…
Their cheer should be “What? Who? MSU?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’d move back there for $$$
LikeLike
Starkville, the Pullman of the SEC….
LikeLike
So let me get this straight… this Ole Miss player was so “triggered” by a joke that’s he’s willing to disrupt his studies, sit out a year from playing football, learn a new system and make new friends?
Brilliant! Hopefully, he finds a school with plenty of “Safe Spaces” where he can be isolated from satire, comedy, sarcasm, old stereotypes and life.
LikeLiked by 4 people
The player’s father is worried about the lack of leadership at MSU and what that might portend. And he knows his kid was nit playing in Oxford for Lane Kiffin. Dummy.
https://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/2020/04/04/mike-leach-tweet-mississippi-state-football-coach-fabien-lovett-transfer/2947754001/
LikeLike
Well it pays to be informed, now doesn’t it? It’s not like Mike Leach hasn’t said controversial things in the past. Miss. St. knew what they were getting with Leach. If this Father was so concerned about potential leadership issues, then schedule a meeting with the coach and get data points directly from the source. That must have been too obvious.
LikeLike
According to the father, Leach’s failure to reach out was all he needed to know about him and his ability/capacity to lead.
LikeLike
LikeLike
Maybe for an encore Mike can mock Fabien’s “fat little girlfriend” and whine about how clueless today’s pampered youth is. Big recruiting winners.
LikeLike
Agreed. And when whining about pampered youth he should drill down on specifically how awful it is that kids aren’t loyal these days.
LikeLike
Transfer portal is a symptom of our times. Not commitment.
LikeLike
In ancient times a pirate’s word was his bond.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Really? What’s your source on that?
LikeLike
…. might have heard it in the excellent and under-rated docudrama Muppet Treasure Island. But I forget.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Every muppet movie is underrated, unless you’re enveloped in the cloud of enlightenment known as glaucoma medicine. “How was this NOT nominated?!”
LikeLiked by 1 person
TBH The Muppet Christmas Carol is on my list of 50 Favorite Films.
I cried. I laughed. I cried again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lifting your leg without pissing on yourself takes practice, as Leach is learning
LikeLike
If your looking to be offended you’ll find a reason …..It’s not hard. I’m offended people even try to be funny.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Leach loves the racist dogwhistle stuff. He thinks it makes him look clever. Him taking the MSU job was a mistake for everyone.
LikeLike
I think some people need to brush the powdered sugar off their candy asses.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Very poor internet media tried to make this into something. It’s nothing. One place said “highly recruited 3 star”
LikeLike
This was a joke about marriage. Unless I’m missing something. To see it as anything else really requires some mental gymnastics. There needs to be a noose plus something else for me to make that connection. I didn’t see the tweet so I don’t want to get my foot lodged too firmly in my mouth before I ask, was there more to it than a woman quarantined with her husband knitting him a noose?
LikeLiked by 2 people
And I’ll add: the list of potential instruments of violence that can be knitted is pretty short. It’s not particularly funny, that’s my complaint. I will admit, I was born in Tampa, so defending eccentric and/or creamsicle pirates is kind of in my blood.
LikeLike
I agree in that I couldn’t see anything more in the joke (or any dog whistle intentions)- but I don’t get to decide how someone else sees it. I don’t know how extensive an apology was required; personally, I’d just try to take it under advisement going forward, as I prefer to err of the side of respect.
I asked an AA buddy of mine once how seeing the Confederate flag made him feel. “Honestly, fearful” is what he answered. That’s good enough for me- my right to wave one at Lynyrd Skynrd isn’t that important and he doesn’t have to hear any lectures from me about “heritage”.
It just works out better if we all extend respect to others rather than demand it for ourselves.
LikeLiked by 1 person
…. you mean the golden rule might actually be worth following?
LikeLiked by 2 people
I love this post, and agree with every word. I just think he saw something that was funny, lacked the cultural frame of reference to understand that a noose conjures up something very different for certain people, so he apologized, took down the Tweet, and I wish we could – as a culture – move on from there. The thing with the charges of dog-whistling is it implies malicious – and false – motives. There is a corollary to Occam’s Razor that says “never assume malice when mere incompetence will suffice.” I’ve always been grateful to have those friends who will pull you aside and say “hey man, you can’t say that, here’s why…” and prevents me from continuing to say certain things in front of people who might not be so gracious. This almost sounds like a Gary Larson comic. I would have never made the connection with race if it hadn’t been explained to me. I watch a lot of westerns, and they prominently feature nooses, but mostly it’s just bad white guys that get hung. Maybe I’m giving Leach too much credit. I’m going to see if I can get three or four more comments out of this topic, just really beat the hell out of this dead horse… 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
it does sound like a Gary Larson comic, so much so I’m now wondering if it was a Gary Larson comic re memed
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very well said sir…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I played hangman with my daughter when she was little.
Do you think there is any chance of saving her at this point, or is she doomed to join the KKK?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dad playing spelling game with daughter = grown man, likes to talk about how smart he is, having zero clue about the history of the noose in the state of Mississippi? No.
Mike’s a dumbass who likes reactions. Well, he got one. We can debate whether the reaction was reasonable or not. It doesn’t matter. You don’t see Smart trying to be funny on Twitter for a reason: being funny on Twitter sells books but it does NOT win football games.
You’d think a guy who is supposedly such a smart coach would figure that out.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not only that, think about how insensitive it is to men that have suffered spousal abuse.
I don’t think it would be an overreaction for the NCAA to suspend him for two years.
LikeLike
This is the point. ASEF is right.
And (once again) it IS possible to believe two seemingly (according to some) contradictory opinions here…
1) Most folks probably over-reacted to what was a funny marriage joke.
2) It was incredibly stupid and insensitive for Leach to post ANYTHING REMOTELY RELATED TO NOOSES in Mississippi, of all places, AND NOT KNOW IT WAS GOING TO BE LINKED TO LYNCHING IN EVERY MISSISSIPPIAN’S MIND.
Doing so showed he’s an ignorant fool. A smart and talented man in many respects? Sure. But definitely also an ignorant fool.
LikeLike
Let’s assume Lovett intended to transfer. Now he can go to the ncaa with Leach’s tweet in-hand and be deemed eligible to play without sitting out a season. Also saved the Lovett family those hefty fees from Thomas Mars. Well played.
LikeLike
Why do you think he is hit the portal so quick? And daddy is involved ?
LikeLike
Related question: did anyone lose part of a finger?
LikeLike
I regress to WTF, some days are better than other days. As you age this is a slow lesson to learn. As I was reading this derogatory icon from the Pirate I had misplaced my glasses and squintingly I asked my self why is everyone so upset that the wife was knitting a moose for her husband. So it’s not only the feelings of others that are misplaced but their eye sight or point of view as well.
LikeLike
He’s gonna realize in the SEC everything is under the microscope.
LikeLike
The one thing I take from this – and many things in this day and age – is that a certain amount of twisted humor is great for clicks and likes if that is your true goal, but it isn’t so great for leadership and teaching kids. Mike, what is your true goal?
LikeLike
The kid now has himself immediate eligibility just like our QB did, he has been incensed.
LikeLike
I’m not sure what anyone expected. People go on calling him a national treasure, etc but I figured it was only a matter of time before he did something that irked people again. He’s just not meant to lead in an era of being easily offended.
What he did was inappropriate but I don’t believe he’d go coach a team of mostly black players, in Mississippi, if he was racist.
LikeLike
For those of you who minimize the player and his reaction top Leach’s twitter joke, I’d suggest reading some of these quotes and think about whether there is the remote possibility that people who are not you walk in different shoes than you do:
Ole Miss LB C.J. Johnson: “It sickens me when I see [a Confederate flag] on people’s cars on campus. If you have the Confederate flag on your vehicle, you have a problem. And I don’t care if it’s socially what you believe in or it’s morally what you believe in or you’re just doing it for s—s and giggles. It’s just the fact of what it stands for. It’s almost like you might as well put a tag on the front of your car that says ‘n—–.’ That’s really what it boils down to. You might as well just put a big tag on the front of your car or hang a big flag on the back of your car and just say the N-word.”
Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason: “When you’re talking about African-American athletes, there have been guys who have never stepped outside of talking to black people — period. And that’s the only way they’ve made it through.”
Auburn DB Jonathan Jones: “You’re wary of people’s intentions. If I wasn’t playing football, would they still want to hang around me? That always crosses your mind. You have to deal with that. This is still America, and racism isn’t that far away.”
https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/sec-football/sec-coaches-players-thoughts-race-relations-college-football/
That Derek Mason quote is the most jarring to me.
LikeLike
Can the OM player choose to go to another school?
#1 player MS, #5 ILB, #79 nation.
LikeLike
It’s always best to leave intent out of things. Interpretation and inference is the safest way to determine what is offensive and what isn’t.
LikeLike
I still don’t think the racial component was self evident. We’ve been hanging people for as long as there have been people. I certainly get it, once it was explained to me, and yeah, you can’t ever draw a noose if your context is Mississippi, but there is no self-evident race angle here. The thing that makes a hate crime a hate crime is the intent. This was a cartoonist making light of the effect of quarantine on a marriage. My question is: why are we acting like Mike Leach drew the damn thing? And if this cartoon was drawn and published without anyone hearing a word about it being racist, my guess is no one else saw the racial component until an eccentric college football in the Deep South posted it on his twitter account AND one of his players, an African American, suggested it was in poor taste. Leach agreed and took it down. But Leach did not create the artwork. It required several other steps before anyone knew to be outraged about it. We wouldn’t even know it existed if this kid hadn’t raised the issue. And I’m certainly not criticizing him – he has a right to see this from his vantage point. But this is not a symbol that is so obvious as a swaztika, or a confederate flag, without something else. This was about marriage and quarantine and trying to make light of a bad situation. Has anyone here ever read the Far Side, by Gary Larson, which ran and still runs in just about every daily newspaper in the United States? It was an homage to that kind of humor. It just wasn’t very funny.
LikeLike
Read it again from the quote above:
“You’re wary of people’s intentions”
It isn’t that the cartoon, or the person who passed it along, is demonstrably racist. It does apparently raise questions in some people’s minds about where Leach is coming from. The apology apparently wasn’t satisfactory to at least one kid and his family.
We can either respect that perspective or we can diminish it. I’m pretty sure I know what tack a racist would take on it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
One caveat: if this cartoon was published in Nazi/Aryan Nation/Racist Weekly/Gays Must Be Eliminated literature and was drawn by Steve Bannon, there were some exit ramps Leach should have taken to avoid the controversy.
Btw, I think Leach’s marriage might be in trouble. Did anyone consider that angle? That is a cry for help. Lol
LikeLike
This post just completely decimated my productivity today. I need structure people. I can’t work from home. The ADD is just too strong.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If I am disturbed, then the problem lies within me. I can’t change anything that anyone else does, says or thinks. I can only change my attitude.
LikeLike
Sounds pretty racist to me.
LikeLike
Your handle is the best… lol
LikeLike
Sure has been an awful lot of whitesplaining around the blog lately. Please tell us more about how your harmless personal experience with the flag trumps the awful experience that millions of African Americans have had with that flag. Maybe your right to wave the flag isn’t that important compared to showing respect to others. We’d probably get more respect if we showed respect to others first. The South has its problems but it also has many wonderful aspects. That flag isn’t one of those wonderful things, and I don’t need it to be proud of where I come from.
LikeLike
I always thought sports was a way to unite us all. Maybe that’s why the left hates it so much.
LikeLike
Or maybe that’s why comments like this belong in the Playpen.
Just sayin’. At least that’s all I hope I’m doing with you.
LikeLike
I appreciate the wide latitude you have always given everyone here… especially me. Take care.
LikeLike
I’ve always felt like if my actions could be construed by a certain group of people as offensive, even if it requires a great stretch of the imagination and isn’t intended to be offensive to them, that I should discontinue my action out of respect to the feelings of others.
That’s why we need to get rid of Uga as our mascot.
LikeLike
If members of peta were disproportionately good at football, we would.
LikeLike