Jim Brown- US PRESSWIRE
Depending on your outlook, Internet user-sourced encyclopedia Wikipedia is either the devil incarnate, or the greatest invention known to man. In all reality, it probably lies somewhere in the middle.
While Wikipedia does its darndest to comb through each of its quadrillion pages to fact check and ensure that each entry has at least some external validation, given the pure scope of the site this is impossible.
The picture below is one good example of how things can go really, really wrong:
I’m sure Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart would be interested to know that he named former NFL head coach, and current ESPN color analyst John Gruden as his newest head coach a few days ago.
Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley I’m sure would also be intrigued by the news that he is out of a job without his knowledge– although he may go through a double-take at Wikipedia given that the seat under his backside is one of the hottest in the country.
Whomever made this edit to Wikipedia is a troll of the highest caliber who some will certainly adorn with the troll crown after reading this article– even though the “author” is anonymous– while others will decry this human as just another idiot with nothing better to do that fake a firing scenario to get a few kicks.
Either way, it’s further proof that you shouldn’t always believe what you read at first glance, especially when it’s on a crowd-sourced forum like Wikipedia whose growth exceeds its controls.
You have to feel sorry for Derek Dooley here– he’s got enough to deal with.
The last thing he needs is troll issues. Nor do any of us.
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Kris Hughes is the College Football Network Manager for Rant Sports and a member of the Football Writers Association of America. You can follow him on Twitter or check out his Facebook page.
Kris is also the host of the Rant Sports College Football Hour on the TSC Radio Network on Sunday evenings at 8 Central Time and Rant Sports Radio on the Blog Talk Radio Network Wednesday evenings at 8 Central Time.
