In this day and age, if you make a mistake on your Twitter, everybody and their mother is going to see it.
Such was the case on Wednesday when Rutgers let loose a Twitter brag which said that Ray Allen, Rip Hamilton and Shabazz Napier — all of whom played at UConn while current Rutgers associate head coach Karl Hobbs was an assistant there — had combined to earn $1.1 billion in NBA earnings. (New Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell also played at UConn.)
Someone spotted an interesting sign being installed at exit 9 on the New Jersey Turnpike this morning pic.twitter.com/G2uR1QCbdr
– PENFIELD (@BpenfieldJ) August 31, 2016
ESPN’s Dana O’Neil and Deadspin were quick to jump on it, with O’Neil pointing out that by the transitive theory, SMU could’ve claimed ties to Allen Iverson and Danny Manning when Larry Brown coached there, and that Tennessee could now claim ties to Kevin Durant because Rick Barnes coached him at Texas.
The UConn fans are having fun with it, too. On The Boneyard messageboard, one fan made the above image of Rutgers claiming to own 11 NCAA championships in women’s basketball and four in men’s hoops.
Rutgers and UConn briefly shared residence in the Big East Conference, but now of course Rutgers is in the Big Ten and UConn is in the AAC, hoping for a move to the Big 12 or somewhere else.
“I’d rather be king of a crappy conference than the Rutgers of any conference,” one UConn fan wrote on The Boneyard. “They are more of a punchline than an athletic program.”
By contrast, one longtime Rutgers fan told me: “Rutgers finally gets UConn’s attention. It might be something that will continue in years to come as UConn stays an AAC power and Rutgers attempts to be a Big Ten power. Which would you rather be, a power in a Big Ten pond or an AAC pond.
“UConn so hates that conference. Thank goodness we got out of that mess.”
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