Since we don't have any actual sports to watch, I thought people may enjoy watching VT try to win a natty tonight against Coach Duggs.
8:37 PM - A date with Immortality #2 Virginia Tech vs #1 Tennessee https://t.co/tAnypyEQvl pic.twitter.com/5FAyLyBrSr— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) June 7, 2020
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Virginia Tech Football is tweeting from Wisconsin, USA?
Pete Morris is from WI, he has been in WI on his twitter account, so....
Any chance he can stay there when things open back up? ;^)
Suck it Duggs.
Expecting a lot of picks in our favor tonight!
Duggs disrespects his opponents.
The SEC let him get away with tampering with opposing players during the SECCG.
Duggs ain't never seen a Bud Foster defense.
Karma is a bitch Duggs.
The attention and clicks he has gotten through this are insane.
TYLER WITH THEPICK
Buying a Brock Smith jersey tomorrow.
Touchdown Barbour 7-0 Hokies
Lmao that untouched HB dive housecall
80 Yards to the house
14-7 Hokies
Joe Rogers baby!!!!
two interceptions in the first quarter. Dude's already got Manning face
Update: I am also buying a Joe Rogers jersey tomorrow.
21-7 HOKIES
NCAA 2014 is still a blast to play
My only complaint with Big Cat/Duggs is that it caused a run on the remaining copies, raising the cost.
Glad I got mine in 2013. Still using the PS3.
I use my PC for the latest games.
21-14 at the half
Smith takes two sacks to end Hokies' last drive in the half.
Joe Rogers for Heisman
3rd TD Pass by Smith
28-14 Hokies
Wearing out Duggs' busch league defensive playcalling
25 WITH THE PICK
Duggs in full meltdown now. 3 picks for DBU.
VT's vanilla roster in that game, has LT3 look like Cam Newton and the Defense can stop anyone. Good times. I still have a 5:1 W:L ratio online.
I don't know if I'm prepared to see the replies to a tweet from our official twitter account about winning a virtual natty.
Im confused...is this just a 30 year old tennesee fan in his moms basement playing against a computer controlled hokies team? (Sorry if this is a stupid question - and get off my lawn.)
He hosts a big sports podcast and has been streaming this NCAA Dynasty Mode coach since quarantine started for extra content.
Ok...so still questioning.....VT was being controlled by a computer and not another person? This was just the whiny tennesee guy playing against the game itself?
You are correct.
So is it normal for him to lose?
This was his first national championship game appearance in 5 years so yeah he loses a couple times a year normally. He throws tons of picks and abuses the AI's inability to cover a wheel route to win more than he should.
The actual gameplay itself is not fun to watch. If the game actually interests you, I would recommend watching Not The Expert play NCAA 14 on YouTube. I just watch Big Cat because his meltdowns are absolutely hilarious.
I got tired of that series after the first couple of seasons with the Pandas. Just not enough time to watch it all.
I really got into the DVSU series that he started in the last year. He doesn't run the same plays over and over again, puts players in different spots, and genuinely has fun playing the game. I do find myself skipping 10 seconds ahead a lot using the double tap feature. I'm so glad YouTube added that.
DINGO GANG😎
"Welcome back, ya dingos."
End of the 3rd. Hokies driving after a long pass
2TD lead
Rogers rams it home
Hokies 35-21
Just like in The Horseshoe
Fourth INT for DBU
That should seal the game
Bwhahahahahaha! Pick!
Sreen pass taken to the House by VT
Screen pass to Rogers goes the distance
42-21 Hokies
This one's right up there with the bass fishing natty fellas.
PICK 5
DBU IS ALIVE
While this is hilarious I hope our social media team is smart enough not to celebrate a fake national championship on twitter when we don't have a real one.
Booooooy do I have news for you. Check out hokiesports.com 🙃 🔫
It's funny you say this because before I came onto TKP I read multiple comments on twitter talking about how our of touch Tech and Fuente and Morris are for not having more social media posts about this. Does anything make the entire fan base happy?
Nope. Not even wins. Someone will bitch about how they didn't do something right during the course of the game. The final score could be 100-0 and someone will get on twitter and say, "It could have been 107-0 if they hadn't botched that sequence in the 2nd quarter by calling a run and then not calling timeout."
This a 1000%
Literally the best VT offense I've ever seen.
Defensive lapse. Long Pass for TD
49-21 Hokies
Rout is on
Duggs now on burger watch
It's a wrap now....49-21 in the 4th...
Pick #6
Damn, now I need to buy a Joshua Osbourne jersey too.
DBU!!!! 6 Picks!
Coach Beamer keeping it classy not dropping the burger on Duggs and just running out the clock.
Wow, just listening to him piss and moan about throwing 6 INTs in the national championship game is gold.
The UT fans in the chat calling for Duggs to be fired is too perfect. I love college football.
Garbage time TD by Tennessee.
49-29 with less than 15 seconds remaining
I am so confused
Feels like every year since '98
FAM
NATTY FAM
I only watched a few minutes but that guy playing Tenn sucks. Doesn't read the defense well or know what routes are open based on the presnap alignment (which you can fake and should when playing some one). But they weren't showing different defensive plays.
120,000 people watching the game against an internet and sports personality with 1 million followers. For the love of God Pete, tweet something to interact. Tennessee as well as the other schools he has done this with have been awesome.
Honestly I don't know if the sheer volume of Empty Trophy Case pictures the official account would get flooded with would be worth it.
To his credit he has tweeted a few things leading up to the game though.
He literally got both accounts wrong in his kickoff tweet. He is inept.
I was expecting zero engagement so he gets credit relative to my expectations.
Oh fuck nevermind I just went back and looked at the kickoff tweet.
Is he drunk? ffs
If you ever wanted a reminder at how bad Pete is at his job...
Tonight is a brutal reminder.
edit: This is great. Why wasn't this ready before the game? Jesus.
Hey, he retweeted the final score. What more could you ask for? /s
I know you're being sarcastic, but for folks in this thread that haven't been following Duggs, pretty much every other team's official account had graphics, live tweets, etc. during their games.
It's just so mind-baffling easy and he still messes it up.
At least iezzi sent out a couple tweets towards the end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
UT had a licensed apparel deal and made money.
Big Cat moves the needle. Just is what it is.
I know I said further up that he shouldn't do it but this was actually a pretty good way to acknowledge it without going overboard. I was terrified he would just straight up tweet the way he would if we actually won an NC.
Too much fun to watch. How about a back to back next season
VT has listed this "championship" on hokiesports.com.....🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
VT social effed this up. Huge opportunity, whether you like Barstool or not, and the team whiffed.
Pete in particular, but somebody else is helping call shots and continues to treat Twitter like it's a Facebook crowd.
My point being made right here! . Half the people on here are hoping the team doesn't do anything because it's fake the other are all over the staff for not doing enough.
In some cases you definitely can't win with everybody, but the tweet they ended up sending out has twice as many retweets as our next best tweet this year (at least so far as I can tell from scrolling back as far I can).
For the social media team, particularly on a platform like Twitter, I think the barometer for success should be interactions. Ideally they should be positive, but I don't think bad interactions are terrible for the program. Judging by that metric it was the best thing the Twitter account has done this year. Just for reference the second most rt'd tweet was Kendall Fuller's super bowl pick.
The people that don't think we should interact are likely in the demographic that we shouldn't be "targeting" anyway.
Free advertising. How could that be bad? Play along its as easy as that. Who cares if the twitter trolls do their thing?
You're right. A big reason I'm on the side of having wanted to do more is simply by looking at how Tennessee handled it. Top SEC program that doesn't tweet like it's 50 years old and looked like a program kids would like.
Pete is caught up in 2012 when brands all still colored within all the lines on social media.
Barstool Sports on twitter: 2.3 million followers.
Virginia Tech Fottoball on twitter: 181k followers.
VT's official account doesn't come close to the reach of Barstool. So even if they had done more, they're yelling down the hallway of VT fans.
I feel for big cat honestly the AI in 14 when it comes to interceptions is insane and can make the game unplayable. The opposing team will do fuckin hand stands and pick you off with their feet meanwhile your defense is so shitty that even if it hits em right in the palms and your pressing the catch button they still drop it like a hot potato. Over the years I've had too many rage quits from 14 and the way its setup.
Am I the only one that never used the catch button? I didn't even know that was a thing until I was playing against someone else. I let the AI do its thing, and it brought Ball St a national title, 3 Heisman finalists, and upsets over WVU and UVA every year.
Maybe I need to just do that but then they still f it up. The recruiting aspect is so much fun I just wish the gameplay was better. Downloaded the latest roster and damn McClease is leading the conference in rushing and devon hunter is a phenom of a kick returner. I need to get better at reading defenses so I can limit the pick numbers.
with the right routes, the linebackers usually will give away if they are in man or zone
I've learned how to read zone vs man in preplay stuff and pickup one on ones but every now and then forget to check the safety and get picked and thats an instant rage quit. Playing it has definetely helped my ability to understand this stuff but I need to go more in depth to learn the ins and outs. All I know is the PA corner play, inverted veer keeper and wheel routes bail me out too often.
I only use it when I have to adjust the reciever or defender.
When my 98 throwing power QB throws the ball 3 yards behind the reciever on a 30 yard pass I need to stop the reciever and high point the ball to not get intercepted. So need to use catch button.
On corner route often my defender can get there but I have to take control and sprint. So to get there and either seat the pass or catch it you need to press the catch button.
But other than that it seems like the catch button causes more drops in 14. Other versions it was clutch.
One thing they introduced on 14 that helped me get a lot of picks was the ball hawk feature. When a pass is thrown, as soon as you user the player defending the pass, you hold the triangle button. They will continue to find the ball and run with it and then make the play for the pick when the ball arrives.
here I was doing it manually like a sucker
And I still had my safeties and corners lead the league in interceptions every year.
Wait you hold it not just press it once?
Exactly.
man this brought me back, my senior year of college me and the three guys in my house made a joint dynasty where we recruited and played against each other for about 4-5 seasons, the head to head games were some of the most intense things I've ever been a part of
We did it boys and girls. We finally filled that trophy case!
Sigh....
Have fun with it on twitter, sure. Going so far as to update HokieSports to claim the natty title, on the other hand....
sigh
It was on their less than an hour I thought it was really funny. It even says Barstool NC.
Agreed. That doesn't belong on Hokiesports.
Look at it this way, how much ish would we lay over top of loluva if they had done this??!!!!
I mean we ripped into them for photoshopping fans into their Twitter images. We would have been justifiably ruthless
Love it. Just good clean fun.
This fanbase is really fascinating sometimes.
how so?
An argument about whether VT did or didn't do too much or too little to capitalize on a dude with an internet following and a podcast playing NCAA 14 dynasty as a fake coach during a pandemic and unprecedented civil unrest is just fascinating to me.
I did watch the "game" last night and it was pretty funny as well as the response from VT football. It's all tongue in cheek. But people here taking the stance that this will somehow help the VT brand or using it as an example of the failures of VT Football recruiting is what I find so fascinating.
Gotcha. Yeah, this has ZERO to do with actual branding or athletic department. It's June, with nothing else going on, for a virtual football game, being played by a guy in a basement against the computer (VT wasn't even human controlled....so we definitely shouldn't be taking any credit...just show how our humans could mess it up.) on Barstool Sports. It wasn't ESPN.
VT should get a trophy and have recruits pose with it like UNC does with Mack Brown's Texas National Championship. Same same.
Pictures awarding MVP trophy andgame balls to the standout players, shot from behind the player so you can see the video game player name on the jersey.
We can't have this line of thinking and then get mad at our athletic department for being stuck 10 years in the past. This has essentially been the #1 sports podcast in America for at least the past 3 years and averages over a million listeners per podcast and they do 3 a week. 125k logged in just to watch him play a fictional video game. Pardon My Take is in the heavyweight division of sports entertainment. Acting like they're not ESPN is like Blockbuster saying "Netflix who?"
I keep seeing on here "half of our fan base wanted them to do less and half of them wanted more. can't please everyone." Well the half of our fan base that wanted less is probably the half of our fan base that doesn't understand the benefit of growing our social media audience for our football program or the effect that social media has in general on recruiting these days. Our social media needs to be targeted at a younger audience. Did we completely swing and miss on this? No. Did we take full advantage of this opportunity? Also no.
I'll post these again.
Barstool Sports on twitter: 2.3 million followers.
Virginia Tech Fottoball on twitter: 181k followers.
ESPN twitter: 35.4 million followers.
Not quite Blockbuster and Netfilx when ESPN has over 15 times the number of followers, I mean, we are talking about a twitter post, right. And then you toss in our little bit, who'd I'd venture a guess is probably 75% Hokies following VT Football on twitter...what do we actually gain with our posting it. Barstool reaches a broader base than VT Football. They already spread the game results on their feed.
How does VT Football on twitter posting about a completely fictional football game reach more people, or grow our social media audience? You say it should be targeted at a younger audience. Do you think they care about a fictional game? Heck, they don't even know what EA Sports Football is! Why would they care about a 2017 made up game with made up rosters? Not sure where the opportunity is.
Trust me. I completely understand how you don't see the opportunity here. My reference to Blockbuster and Netflix was meant to reflect a company sitting at the top not recognizing the up and coming success of another company in their field and adapting and changing to capitalize on the opportunity and dominating that market. Podcasts are a booming product in sports media and ESPN has been slow to adapt. They've lost that market to Barstool and The Ringer. On average, the number of people that tune in for Sportscenter are the same as the number of people that listen to an episode of Pardon My Take.
Tech football has 181k followers. Barstool Sports has 2.3 million. Each time Barstool retweets something from the Tech account, it then reaches almost 13 times its normal audience. If another athlete, media member, or celebrity then retweets barstool's retweet it spreads out to their followers. It's a domino effect. Patrick Mahomes was actively engaging with them when he was the coach at Texas Tech. You don't think young recruits saw that and noticed? You see recruits constantly retweet graphics schools made for them as if they were in the NCAA football video game and almost every recruit and current college player is dying for NCAA games to come back so they definitely know what it is.
We aren't talking watching on TV. You were talking about reach. And comparing straight apples to apples, ESPN has 15 times more followers than Barstool. Period.
Making a graphic for a recruit is way different than celebrating a fantasy game with fantasy players.
Using followers as your main metric for what makes a Twitter account good is sub-optimal. There are accounts out there with millions of followers who get a couple hundred likes per tweet. The engagement to follower ratio is where the real information is.
I don't disagree. But when the follower number is 15 times the other...even if 2/3 were just looky-loos, it's still more engaged. While some don't like ESPN, it's still there. And we're discussing a fictitious game that occurred yesterday. Not setting up something in the future. The action was yesterday, and by all metrics, ESPN is bigger than barstool. That being said, Barstool tweeted the action anyway. So, not sure we could have added anything to the picture..........just my thought. I mean, it was a made up game. Period. We didn't win anything real.
What's confusing? The straight numbers? Or the made up fictional game?
You asked
That has been explained to you. If you don't understand the concept of marketing via social media or your only response is "yea but it's not ESPN" then there is zero point to this conversation.
So, now we want Pete taking a full swing at a fictional game in June....for the opportunity.
Heck knows what that would look like....careful what you ask for.
Edit: I'll say it again. If loluva had embraced this and gone full bore like you wished VT had done, we'd be having a bonfire over here in their honor, completely taking them to task. But hey, Marketing!!!! Amiright.
Some people think this is fun. As long as it isn't offending anyone getting in on the joke in a way that doesn't embarrass ourselves (see the pregame tweet) is a no lose proposition.
You trust our current VT Football account to handle this without embarrassing ourselves?
We did with the pregame tweet, but I'm still glad we even tried.
I think you're overestimating how embarrassing just getting in on the joke actually is though.
Like I said, some people think this is fun, a lot of people don't care, and a minority will find it so dumb as to get mad about it.
We need to remember this conversation next time we discuss recruiting and we see the "They're 18 year old kids! Who knows what they're thinking? They're so unpredictable" comment.
You literally have someone explaining to you how we could have better capitalized on the opportunity to market/connect with the high school/college demographic who has an understanding of how they think and people still seem to flat out not get it.
You want some background? I have a 17 and a 19 year old. Huge sports nuts. The older one was recruited for college. Yeah, they are explaining how they perceive it to potentially play out for "marketing." I'm also telling you with experience how they think, perceive, and get the social media over a fictitious game. i never said "they're 18 and unpredictable..." I've asked why we wanted our VT social media to do more last night, given the current state of our social media. Very large difference.
Your discussion evolved into understanding it (I think), but started with asking what the VT account tweeting anything would have done. I'm in the camp of they could have done more, but don't think Pete's right for it...but that's a much bigger conversation that I think a lot of us agree with.
And sorry for my comment being so directed at you - seemed like the right place. Was more in general to people in the thread and throughout twitter who complain that we interact with Barstool or that it's a fictitious game.
That's sorta my point..."VT should have done more." "Man, Pete sucks." It's a careful what you ask for situation.
So we should ignore/not embrace free advertising because it will only reach 2M people and not 35M people?
The 2million IS advertising for us. They hosted the game. That happened.....
What more do you want? For VT to retweet something from Barstool? Which goes to mainly VT fans anyway...
For VT social media (which gets roasts on the reg) to do soemthing....that will get roasted, again?
I think we did pretty close to the bare minimum. I'm no social marketing expert but here are some ideas - twitter poles around final scores, get our alumni to tweet at Big Cat (could lead to future interviews), engage in a little harmless trash talk, challenge/invite Big Cat to something in the future that could expand the relationship. Hell, we could try to court "Coach Duggs" to come coach the team that just beat him in the championship. There are many ways to capitalize on opportunities and I'd just rate our effort at about 3/10.
For some context, here is Tennessee's twitter engagement in May (also note Texas Tech, which was the previous team that Duggs coached):
>
I mean I get both sides of this argument, but most of what I saw anyone say about this, other than just having fun on social media over it, is that it shows how far VT has fallen off since the NCAA Football franchise was shut down.
I guess any publicity is good publicity, but it doesn't exactly make our current real life program stand out in any good way. In fact, quite a few comments I saw from a wide array of fans was that we were celebrating this because we didn't have anything else to pride ourselves on. Even the RedditCFB account was dunking on our empty trophy case afterward.
I literally could not care less about the whole thing, but there is definitely a bit of cringe associated with this.
I dislike Barstool and wouldn't care otherwise, but Barstool and Big Cat have millions of followers on social media, collectively, and therefore that makes it an opportunity missed.
Tech tweeted out 8 times about this. Not to count individual players accounts and coaches.
Compared to 12 for Tennessee which was the team being controlled by the barstool idiot. They had a lot more content to work with so I'd say they did ok. What more were you looking for?
Not once during the actual game, when 120,000 people were actively watching and following. And when we did tweet, it was with typos and tags that didn't work, as seen below
Meanwhile Tennessee took the time and effort to make graphics for touchdowns, etc. And therefore generated a whole lot more interaction on social. It's these types of things that seem trivial on the surface, but really work to establish your brand.
Tennessee was the team that was being controlled by a human all along. All other teams were AI.
'Establishing a brand" by using a game that can be manipulated to take ODU to repeat Natty's but can't with Tennessee.......that "Establishing a Brand"
It's like watching a Facebook conspiracy theory uncle try to use Twitter.
Because many on here can't make it through a single thread without spouting an opinion in response to one comment and spouting a contradictory opinion in response to another comment.
It is all a joke, regardless of what you are mad at this morning. People just gotta bitch about something I guess. Good to know we still have first world problems during a pandemic.
I just started the 4th quarter. I'm loving this.
He relies too much on the wheel route by his RB, but then again we all have our go-to plays.
That was some good low calorie fun watching Big Cat lose to a fake VT team last night. Guess I'll check TKP to see why I should actually feel bad about it.
Best comment of the day! I watched it earlier and had fun. It was a good way to start Monday. I'm afraid we might be called apologists on here for not having something negative to say about it. Joe Rogers should have won the Heisman!
Norm Wood tweeted about it in an old man yells at clouds kind of way. Someone replied and said his name translates to "average penis" and I cannot stop laughing. It also reignited the feud with Parcell with Andy explaining where it comes from. Hokie twitter is a unique place.
Norm is right. Sorry, not sorry. And it is completely un-shocking that Parcells would try to latch on to it.
By the way...
French may need a broader paintbrush.
Couldn't disagree more with the "stoolbar" comments, but I know French loves his hot takes.
I reckon I'm a shitbag 🤷♂️
I will defer to the people who know you.
My "hot taeks" at least are my actual opinion. I really get sick when I smell cheese, hated Top Gun, and think James Worthy is the most underrated basketball player in history. If a stranger sidles up to me at a bar and asks, that is the same thing I tell them. TKP members who have met me can validate.
I take that over "hot taeks" that are BS, but are floated to drive people to disagree just to generate traffic. Especially when those hot takes include "Even though I never condone rape if you're a size 6 and you're wearing skinny jeans you kind of deserve to be raped right?"- David Portnoy, founder of StoolBar. Even if you assume it is a joke, it is lame, lowest common denominator garbage. I started doing my film reviews specifically because I got tired of "Real Men of Genius-Pro Sports Heckler Guy- from your lofty perch, you shower nuanced coaching points like "RUN" and "THROW THE DAMN BALL" analysis and commentary on sports. StoolBar is the epitome of that garbage.
Your passion for nuance is really apparent here.
Yea that site is the embodiment of "women can't be on the sideline of sports" it's disgusting.
But we need them for recruiting!!!!!
/s
Barstool is an odd part of the world, kinda like the 4chan of sports media.
Where do you get this at all? Their college football podcast and majority of their college football content is hosted by a woman - who used to be a sideline reporter for ESPN.
That can't be true, that would imply that my sweeping generalizations might not be completely accurate.
Where do I get it? Maybe the numerous times people paid by that pizza reviewer or the pizza reviewer himself have said disgusting things about women, forced female employees to wear certain clothes and commenting more on their looks than their ability to be sports reporters. Would you like a list?
No one on this site supports Fox News then right? Or did Roger Ailes get a pass?
What to the actions of one awful "channel" have to do with another awful one? They can both be bad, hell that guy from NBC morning show was awful
Too. Here is the difference they were all Separated from those companies and Called out by viewers Barstool and pizza reviewer send their legion of honor Online fans to attack people who call them out. Just look at the whole Ponder incident.
That was just one of the most egregious examples. If you look at the comments under the post of their blog, or the responses to Norm (who, of all the beat guys, I have not agreed with often), my comment is much more applicable than you are giving credit for.
-barstool, particularly their internet army, are lame
-josh parcell sucks
-norm wood was being a wet blanket, and doing so for attention, which is lame
all 3 of these can be true at the same time
Let me see if I can summarize the game for him.... "FUCK!"
"gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this, gotta shark wheel my way out of this...."
He puts the tiniest pinch of long cut in, still somehow has to spit after every play, throws at least 3 INTs, and whisper yells "fuck" at least 10 times. How people can watch the entire stream every time is beyond me.
"even though its a fake sport, its fuckin' real!"
This comes to mind about this situation.
I tuned in last night late in the 4th quarter, and it was glorious.
I don't know if "gloriouser" is a word, but watching the first quarter right now, and it's gloriouser. His reaction after the 2nd VT touchdown (75yd run) is beautiful. "I work so hard for that touchdown and they just do that? Oh my God."
Edit: I love how he's calling his own meltdown, and it's not even out of the 1st quarter. "This is a meltdown. We're on meltdown watch." LAWL!
This one got off the tracks. Closing it up before it runs off any more.