(Note: A correction has been made to this story. See the end of the story for more.)
Sometime between University of Arkansas football Coach Bobby Petrino’s April 1 motorcycle wreck and his April 10 firing, a Facebook group named Team Save Coach Petrino appeared online and seemed to attract thousands of supporters.
Media agencies reported the growing Facebook group membership as evidence of the loyal feelings of thousands of people who didn’t want the university to fire Petrino even after learning that he had hired his 25-year-old mistress and that she was riding with him at the time of his crash.
“Razorback fans are banding together in cyberspace to save Coach Bobby Petrino,” KARK-TV, Channel 4, of Little Rock reported of the group on its website.
And Jeff Schultz with the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote a piece titled “Arkansas fans, like Petrino, should be ashamed of themselves.”
In his story, Schultz comments acidly on the Facebook group’s 21,000-plus members, as well as on the 200 or so fans who protested publicly with signs that read “What’s wrong with scoring in the offseason?” and the like.
“The worst thing about sports is it turns normal everyday people into idiots, and I mean that in the worst-possible, blithering way,” Schultz writes. “The fans’ mindset: Forget about morality. Forget what’s right or wrong. There’s the Alabama game to think about.”
The problem with crediting loyalty to the alleged Petrino groupies on Facebook is that many of the members didn’t seek to join the group at all.
In fact, it would take only 35 actual Petrino fans with about 600 Facebook friends apiece to opt 21,000 such supporters into the group.
Facebook’s “Help” section offers this explanation: “Similar to being tagged in a photo, you can only be added to a group by one of your friends. When a friend adds you to a group, a story in the group (and in News Feed for Open or Closed groups) will indicate that your friend has added you to a group.”
In other words, news agencies commented on or criticized group members who, in the thousands, may not have been Petrino supporters at all.
For the Facebook uninitiated: It’s pretty common to accumulate 600 Facebook friends once Facebook users connect digitally with most of their in-person pals, second cousins, old college cronies, business colleagues and other acquaintances.
Many of the Petrino group’s members were added without their permission —including Arkansas Business Publisher Jeff Hankins, who left the group posthaste.
The 19,769 group members who remained as of last Monday morning simply might not check their Facebook accounts as often. Or perhaps they truly wanted to save Petrino’s job. It’s hard to say.
A message seeking comment from group administrator Amy Biggerstaff wasn’t returned.
(Correction, April 20, 2012: In the story’s first paragraph, the name of the Facebook group was incorrectly identified. The name has been corrected.)
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