Dave Feit: Partial Rebuttal to a Hit Piece

Writer for Irish Times chose scorched earth over nuanced context in Nebraska football diatribe

Bruce Thorson-USA TODAY Sports

Regular readers probably know I’ve made a bit of a habit of chirping back at columnists who take unfair, excessive and/or ignorant shots at the Huskers.

There were the old Lee Barfknecht columns where NU was missing some unquantifiable intangible that Lee would not be able to gauge unless he could get regular one-on-one interviews with the athletic director.

There’s the Pat Forde drive-by pieces where he sees something labeled “two,” something completely different labeled “too”* and tries his hardest to make them add up to five.

*Intentional use of homophones to help make the point.

Just last month, there was the Matt Hayes column where he took a media day molehill and tried to turn it into Mount Everest built on a foundation of factual inaccuracies and hot takes. I’ll be honest: It’s fun to tear those columns apart line by line.

On Wednesday, a newspaper called the Irish Times published an absolute hit piece on Scott Frost and the Nebraska program a mere nine days before the Huskers are scheduled to play in Ireland. I considered grabbing a sword and defending my alma mater’s good name. I had a couple of folks reach out and request a rebuttal.

But I’m not going to do it.

The Irish Times piece, written by Dave Hannigan, is in entirely separate category as far as attack columns go. It felt personal. Calculated. Vicious.

During the pandemic when I’d read the stuff by Forde, Dan Wetzel and others, I would come away chuckling because I knew what they were trying to do: Stake out a moral high ground, look down their nose at those fly-over state hicks, and gin up a reaction via clicks, shares and comments. Get the Husker fans into a lather; rinse, and repeat.

But with the Irish Times piece, I came away with my jaw dragging on the floor muttering “what the ____ was that?”

I honestly have no idea what Dave Hannigan was trying to accomplish. Is he trying to “cancel” Scott Frost? Trash Nebraska football? Turn the people of Ireland against the Aer Lingus game, college football, and/or America? Was his goal to join Forde, Woody Paige and Bernard Goldberg on the Mount Rushmore of journalists hated by Nebraskans? Your guess is as good as mine.

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Trust me, there are many things that I want to say about Hannigan’s column.

Let’s start with what he wrote about Maurice Washington:

“A highly-regarded sophomore running back and kick-off returner, he was suspended as he awaited trial on felony charges in a revenge porn case involving distributing a video of an underage girl being sexually assaulted.”

This is a great example of how Hannigan presents information throughout his column. Technically, what he wrote is accurately describes the charges Washington faced in 2019. However, they are phrased in a very harsh manner, likely intended to shock and horrify his Irish audience.

For contrast, here is how Michael Bruntz of 247 Sports described Washington’s charges earlier this year:

“According to authorities, the message included an old, 10-second video of the girl, then 15, performing oral sex. Washington did not record the video, nor was he present during the recording.”

To be clear: I’m not trying to minimize the what Washington did. In 2019 I had no interest in defending Washington’s actions, or minimizing the crime(s) he was accused of. That has not changed in 2022.

My point is when given a choice between nuanced context and scorched earth, Hannigan always chose violence.

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But I still don’t want to do a line-by-line response.

A big part of that is me trying to model the behavior I want my teenager to use online:

• Ignore the trolls.
• Be the bigger person.
• Don’t allow yourself to get sucked down to their level.
• Focus on verifiable facts, not opinions.

Hannigan got my click, but I’m not going to give him free room and board in my head.

Sure, we could play a spirited game of “Whataboutism” and cite examples of wrongdoing by famous Irish athletes, leaders and/or citizens over the years. What about Northwestern, Nebraska’s opponent in the Ireland game? Surely, they have some skeletons in their closet. And if you think the Nebraska stuff is bad, wait until you hear what went on at (insert scandalous school’s name here)!

But what’s the point?

Dredging up 25+ years of dirty laundry has consequences. There’s no reason for Lawrence Phillips’ victim to have her name appear in a widely shared column just because some schmuck had an ax to grind. She deserves to not have her life defined by somebody else’s actions.

Mo Washington served 30 days in jail, plus two years of probation. No matter what you think of his crime, he did his time. He’s trying to resurrect his football career (and get an education) at Grambling State. Let the young man learn from his mistakes and make something of himself.

There’s no need to continue that cycle just to score points against a guy in New York writing for an Irish newspaper you had never heard of until Wednesday.

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If we’re being honest with each other, there’s another reason I don’t want to do the line-by-line rebuttal.

While we can take issue with how Hannigan spins and distorts - calling last summer’s NCAA rules violations a “debacle” is hilarious if you know the heinous crime NU got busted for - he uses a lot of verifiable facts. Those quotes attributed to Ron Brown and Mark Whipple before they were hired by Frost? They said those things. No matter how stupid the NCAA rule is, Nebraska violated it. Frost still needs to serve a five-day suspension. And so on.

Hannigan’s trick is holding up a mirror to some stuff* Nebraska fans would like to forget, and showing us our reflection.

*Let’s pause for a second and think of a few things he didn’t bring up…

Hannigan doesn’t care if the image in the mirror is distorted by time (Lawrence Phillips? In 2022? Really?) or by his own hand (such as why Mo Washington played in the second half of the South Alabama game in 2019). He just wants us to see the reflection and be uncomfortable with what we see.

So, while it can be fun to take Dan Wetzel to task for taking cheap shots at Nebraska, it would be decidedly less enjoyable to relitigate 25+ years of Husker misdeeds. I don’t want to write that, and I doubt you want to read it.

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The thing that really stuck out to me is how many things Hannigan found in the archives that were self-inflicted.

Nebraska’s NCAA violations. Ron Brown giving his address as “Memorial Stadium” before giving his homophobic remarks. Not publicly announcing that Washington’s suspension would be for the first half prior to the 2019 opener. Those are different than a player committing a crime and giving NU a black eye. These were avoidable mistakes made by people who are paid to know better.

Two things can be true here: 1) Hannigan was out of bounds digging up all of this old dirt to smear NU and Frost. 2) Frost and his program take too many unnecessary PR hits for things in their control.

For a case in point, let’s revisit Maurice Washington’s first-half suspension: all NU needed to do was issue a simple statement Friday at 5 p.m. or 30 minutes before kickoff saying Washington is suspended for the first half. Do that, and Hannigan (and everybody who took a shot at Frost at the time) loses the ability to play the “win at all costs” card.

Instead, there was no public statement. Even though the decision was a) not made exclusively by Frost, and b) was made a day prior to the game, the details were not revealed until after the game when Frost said “the plan was to sit him in the first half and play him the second.”

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Is there anything else we can learn here? It would be a shame to have read that hit piece and not be able to find some kind of silver lining.

Let’s end on this: If nothing else, Hannigan’s column provides some perspective on what it looks like when a member of the media has it out for a coach.

There’s a big difference between what was published in the Irish Times and an Omaha World-Herald reporter asking Bo Pelini a follow-up question in a press conference, or a breathless tweet about Ronnie Green leaving a parking lot.

So, there’s that at least.

Hopefully the rest of the Ireland experience is much more enjoyable.

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