Dissing online is De Rigueur: almost anyone with an athletic ax to grind can do it on the World Wide Web

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 20, 2002 | by Patrick Hruby

As a long-suffering Cincinnati Bengals fan, Dave Young holds certain truths to be self-evident. Among them: The 1990s were a wash, the immediate future looks bleak and team President Mike Brown really, really, er, stinks.

"I'm sure Mike Brown as a person is a fine, nice guy," says Young, who runs a video and film-editing company in Los Angeles. "He's certainly loyal." But Young is so convinced of Brown's incompetence that he has put his money--and his server space--where his mouth is.

Two years ago, Young and friend Chase Peel created a Website devoted to Brown's mismanagement of the perennially inept Bengals. There, irate fans can lament Cincinnati's 11 straight non-winning seasons, lambaste its lousy personnel moves and join a Bengals boycott. For $16 a pop they can order oversized T-shirts printed with the phrase "Mike Brown [Stinks]" in block letters.

When it comes to online antagonism, Young has plenty of company. From Dallas Cowboys bashers to Martina Hingis haters, from New York Yankees detractors to Michael Jordan detesters, the Internet teems with dozens of "anti" Websites, all dedicated to trashing--and trash-talking--some of the biggest names in sports. Among the hating havens just south of your browser's toolbar:

* An antisite dedicated to NASCAR auto racer Jeff Gordon, which features him in a looping audio clip proclaiming, "I'll be the first one to tell you, I don't know a lot about stock cars."

* "The Official Anti-Martina Hingis Page" which offers an interactive poll that asks, "Who is the ugliest player on the WTA Tour?" and provides four answers that rig the vote.

* A half-dozen anti-Notre Dame sites, including one that has petitioned the U.S. Postal Service to stop advertising during Fighting Irish football games.

In the Web's wide world of fanaticism, only two rules apply: (1) anything goes; and (2) see No. 1. As a result, site sophistication varies. For instance, the no-frills "Lakers Are Losers" page offers little more than a rambling, 13-point evisceration of the Los Angeles Lakers and their fans. Its garish, oversized yellow typeface offers pronouncements such as, "I see no relation at all between Aristotle and Shaq [Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal]. Aristotle is this smart Greek dude, unlike Shaq. And I'm guessing Aristotle was not obese."

By contrast, an anti-New York Yankees site treats surfers to a multimedia experience, complete with Yank-hating discussion boards, Yank-bashing jokes, embarrassing Yankees photos, free e-mail accounts that end in "yanks-[stink]" and an interactive game that allows users to deface Yankee mug shots. The site also sells anti-Yankees gear, including a cap embroidered with "certified Yankee hater" and a T-shirt that reads "Go Yankees" on the front and "back to [heck]" on the back.

Then there's an anti-North Carolina page, which claims to "put the dot-com in Carolina [stinks]." The site averages between 800 and 3,200 hits a day with the men's basketball team coming off its worst season in school history.

"It's all in good fun," says the site's creator, Ron, a 43-year-old Winston-Salem, N.C., resident and N.C. State fan who requested that his last name not be published. "Down here, the college-basketball rivalries are incredible, and I just want to keep it going, knock the Carolina fans down a peg or two."

Last year, however, Ron got into a lengthy e-mail battle with a UNC fraternity. As the war of words escalated, the fraternity posted Ron's home address and phone number on a number of North Carolina Internet message boards. He began to receive anonymous threats and late-night calls. The fraternity also e-mailed the managers at Ron's workplace, calling him a jerk and pointing out that he was involved in a protracted electronic argument with a bunch of college students.

"I thought, `God, I'm going to lose my job over this,'" Ron recalls. "But the funny thing is that everyone at my company are N.C. State grads. Some of them even have Carolina [stinks] bumper stickers. So most of them got a kick out of it."

Shortly thereafter, the two sides called a truce, much to Ron's relief. "They even invited me to come down and visit," he says. "But I'm too old for that. I get invited to Duke frat parties all the time. They think I'm a hero or something."

Some antisites have grandiose ambitions (relatively speaking). In Chicago, a pair of tech workers created trade cade.com, a site that collected more than 16,000 signatures--some legitimate, some not--demanding that the Chicago Bears deal inept quarterback and former No. i draft pick Cade McNown. When the Bears finally pulled the plug on McNown by shipping him to Miami, the site retooled. It now features the quarterback in a Dolphins uniform, as well as a new petition directed at Miami's owners.

Young's site took matters one step further, calling for a boycott of a Bengals home game against the Arizona Cardinals in December 2000. According to published reports, the Bengals sold just more than 50,000 tickets--the lowest figure for any of its eight contests at Paul Brown Stadium. "I don't want to draw any conclusions, though," Young says with a laugh. "It might have been us. It might have been due to the fact that it was Arizona."