Connor Cook and sportsmanship in the age of internet outrage

A short while after knocking off the then-undefeated Iowa Hawkeyes and leading the Michigan State Spartans to both a conference championship and a spot in the second annual College Football Playoff, quarterback Connor Cook made a small error in judgement. When accepting the MVP trophy for his performance in the Big Ten Championship Game, Cook grabbed the award out of the hands of Archie Griffin, two-time Heisman winner and Ohio State legend. The, stepping forward to be interviewed, he barely reciprocated Griffin’s attempted handshake. See for yourself:

Innocuous enough, right? Well if you listen to the easily aggrieved denizens of football Twitter tell it, Cook pretty much hocked a loogie in the face of college football royalty. It wasn’t a slip in etiquette; it was an utter disgrace to the sanctity of the sport, a sign that Cook lacks moral fiber.

If you think it is a bit ridiculous to take a small social faux pas and extrapolate it into a damning, broad-stroke character judgment, well, you clearly lack familiarity with social media’s collective obsession with snap judgments and disproportionate-to-the-crime scolding. Take a look:

"I'm still so salty about how disrespectful Connor Cook was to Archie Griffin last night. The more I see it, the more angry I get."

(And those are just the tweets with language appropriate enough for all ages. Feel free to search “Connor Cook + [any variation on an expletive]” if you a want some more, uh, colorful examples.)

Isn’t the state of sports discourse in 2015 just grand?

It’s arguable whether Cook properly handled the trophy exchange, and it’s easy to see why the moment didn’t look so good on camera. But c’mon: shouldn’t Cook be cut some slack? After all, he was fresh off leading the Spartans on an epic game-winning drive — a downfield march that lasted 22 plays, ate up 82 yards, and took a shade over nine minutes off the clock. Bumbling things a bit when it comes to expected podium decorum is understandable given the circumstances. Yes, Cook appeared a bit distracted, but it feels wrong to condemn an athlete for experiencing joy, for having a human reaction to a big moment. Fans get the privilege of experiencing wonderful emotional highs when watching a game; athletes should be granted the same opportunity, considering they’re the ones actually playing the game.

Cook to the safe route and apologized, sending out two tweets about the scandal (there are no sarcastic scare quotes large enough for that word)…

… but he shouldn’t have had to. While saying sorry was the wise choice, such an apology works to legitimize the initial controversy, and this whole ordeal should be met with an eye roll and a shrug by any reasonable person. But such mountains slapped together from mole hills are standard operating procedure in this day and age. Small mistakes are magnified; lapses in judgment are treated as emblematic of an entire mental disposition. Perhaps Cook’s gaffe was foolish, but it wasn’t malicious. Nor did it seem intentional. Yet in the framework of social media, where all errors are dire and shades of gray aren’t allowed, what Cook did was beyond the pale.

This is online outrage, in all its performative glory, operating at its silliest and most pointless. Social media can be a vector of change, and an arena where normally marginalized voices can be both heard and turned effective. Sadly, social media reactions all too often devolve into a pearl-clutching contest broken down into 140-character segments, a race to see who can be the most outraged at the smallest possible transgression. The hyperbolic baseline from which almost all internet communication extends encourages as much. In a conversational space where “I’m literally dying” is a normal response to a good joke and labeling even the smallest inconvenience “the worst” — no hedge, all hyperbole — is par for the course, it is not surprising that overreactions occur. The basic language of the internet, especially social media, is one of exaggeration, thus reactions are framed in a way that fits the mould. “Conner Cook is an irredeemable p.o.s.” carries more social currency than “Connor Cook, although he was reasonably excited, maybe should have shown a little bit better judgement when accepting his MVP award, because the optics of the situation looked a little funky.” The latter won’t even fit into a tweet.

When it comes to online outrage, it is easy to act as an accelerant. It requires no risk to be harsh in your judgments of a stranger, and when you see the most strongly worded — be they biting or clever or devastating or a combination of all three — responses be rewarded with retweets and favs (sorry, hearts), there is a strong temptation to be the most — and the most entertainingly — aggrieved member of the internet dogpile. Nuance isn’t valued, and neither is sympathy. Everything bad must be interpreted as irreversibly damning. It is through the unfair snap judgements of others that people reinforce their own goodness; it’s a wonder that more rotator cuffs aren’t strained from all the back-patting.

What Connor Cook did or failed to do on the podium should not have sparked any controversy, but people are always itching for a scandal, because people are always itching for a chance to elevate themselves by screeching about the flaws of others. In a conversational realm where people aren’t restricted in their expression, and in a space where definitive and hyperbolic judgments aren’t interpreted as representing discerning, passionate opinions, a “scandal” like the one the bubbled up over the weekend would be less likely to occur. But the path seems set. Wavering from the world of exaggerated offense just doesn’t seem probable. Yes, maybe Cook could’ve handled the trophy exchange a little better, but how his flub was handled by many others was far more embarrassing.