I am so jealous of the sports Internet today.
First, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio gets into a Twitter feud about page views with an anthropomorphic jaguar and I think, “wow, I’ve been writing about sports online for a while now and I’ve NEVER gotten insulted by a foam mascot. What am I doing wrong?” Then, as if God were directly messaging me, USA Today’s Mike Garafolo gets into an Internet slapfight with Urkel. With the actual Steve Urkel.
Here’s how it started:
Harmless, right? Jaleel White (who is probably never going to be identified as “the star of SyFy’s original game show ‘Total Blackout'”) thinks New England Patriots tight end Jake Ballard is going to have a big year. Ballard responded. Social media and celebrity culture sometimes tie threads of randomness together too closely, so Garafolo said what a lot of us (who, uh, follow Urkel on Twitter) were thinking:
You’d think he’d know better than to raise the ire of a man who created a robot version of himself, multiple clone versions of himself and an atomic bomb, but here we are. Jaleel saw the tweet and responded with the same kind of fury that destroyed Carl Winslow’s living room so many times:
Like I mentioned, I’ve been writing online for a long time and aside from a few run-ins with minor celebrities (Rob Liefeld hates my guts and Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings told me I wasn’t famous a few times) I’ve never gotten into a full-on beef with a fictional character or 1990s icon. Do I need to start throwing shade at JT from ‘Step By Step?’
Oh, wait, I know … maybe I can become the subject of a passive-aggressive eCard tweet from Kate Upton!
