Bucs dealing with the realities of online bulletin boards

[tjw61]

Bucs dealing with the realities of online bulletin boards
Posted by Mike Florio on October 27, 2009 2:42 PM ET
Like most if not all NFL teams, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have a bulletin board feature on their official web site, allowing teams to post messages and otherwise interact.

For the bad teams, "interaction" quickly becomes "venting."

And the fans of the Bucs are venting by applying an unflattering nickname to first-year coach Raheem Morris.

Per JoeBucsFandotcom, they're calling Morris "Radio," the title character of a movie in which Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays a developmentally disabled man who finds acceptance with a local high school football team.

And now the moderator of the Buccaneers' bulletin board has asked fans to stop using the name.

Which, of course, will only cause them to use it more aggressively.

But here's the reality -- if you're going to have a bulletin board or a comments section and you want to keep the people who visit it from using certain terms or names, the only alternative to screening the submitted content by hand is to not have a bulletin board or a comments section at all.

Or to grow thicker skin.

As anyone who peruses from time to time the PFT comments, you'll realize that we've opted generally for door number three.

And I'm glad we did. Otherwise, I never would have known that my last name can be twisted into so many, um, colorful alternatives.

UPDATE: As one of our media friends points out, it's also possible that the "Radio" nickname comes from the "Radio Raheem" character in Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. But if that's the case we're not sure why the team would be troubled by the use of it -- unless there was general concern that some would assume the term relates to the Cuba Gooding, Jr. character.