The Josh Innes Show - Online Abuse Of College Athletes

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Online abuse of college athletes was down during the NCAA Tournament. I am not condoning any sort of threats or abuse towards college players. However, we are turning these people into professional athletes and part of being a pro is dealing with BS from people online. There is a double standard as to how we view college athletes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alright, let's see here everybody. Headline reads, Study online abuse of athletes down during March Madness. Well thank Christ! People online are not abusing athletes as much during March Madness. Let's see how this study breaks down. Social media abuse targeting student athletes, including from sports bettorss decreased during March Madness, but tournament officials coaches experienced a spike in harassment, according to study results released Tuesday by the NCAA. And we'll get to the actual data on this in the numbers in a second. But I will tell you where I stand on this is if you want to start treating people and athletes in

college like they are professionals, they're going to get the same shit from people on social media that the pros get now many of them even if they weren't getting paid would still get shit because it's called 2025 and social media and 2025 is a horrible vile place and we get that but like just the other day we learned that schools are going to have like a 20 million dollar budget to pay players, you know in different sports, right? So we see that football, basketball are going to be the

ones that see the most I would assume football certainly. What do you think happens when people start getting paid to play a sport? They are what kids? Professionals. That's right. They are not student athletes. Again, cut the shit. Student athlete doesn't exist. It is a school for everybody else. It is a minor league and really professional football basketball system for the athletes. People are going to get paid. They have an option to get paid. I don't give a shit if someone's

20, 21, 22. What is the difference between a 21 year old who is enrolled at LSU making $2 million and a 21 year old who's playing for the Chiefs making $2 million. There isn't a fucking difference. They are both professional athletes so stop treating dudes who are quote unquote professional athletes as if they are some sort of different specimen than people who are playing college athletics and getting paid to do so. There is no differentiating factor now other than the amount of money they're getting paid. But the quarterback at Ohio State or like let's say it's

college basketball. I forgot the dude's name that was crying after I think after Kansas State lost and he's a guy who had transferred to Kansas State because he was getting paid like $2 million or some shit to play Kansas State and they didn't even win a game in the tournament or something like that. He was crying after the game. What is the difference between that guy who I believe then left that school I think and went somewhere else I might

be wrong but goes to a different school for more money or the dude who plays at Memphis guy named PJ Haggerty was at Memphis and they couldn't come to terms with what he wanted to make. So then he left for another school and is going to make like a million or two million. Whatever the number is, might be less than that but the point is just because you're only getting paid 500,000 versus an NFL player that might get paid 20 million you're still getting paid a large sum of money to play a sport. You are not a student athlete. You are a professional. Let's play some commercials and continue. The NBA Finals are finally here and after spending the playoffs all over the Pick Six app from Draft

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Limited time offer. Terms at pick six dot draft kings dot com slash promos. So that's how this thing goes, man. Like we, like I don't understand the idea of people who would like to continue to call these guys kids or whatever. If that kid were 20 years old playing for the New Orleans Hornets or sorry the New Orleans Pelicans, you would view him as a professional. But if he's a 20 year old playing basketball at LSU, just the fact that he's at LSU makes him a kid? Fuck off. Athletes were targeted in 15% of the abuse flagged by data science from Signify Group during the men's and women's basketball tournament this year, down from 42% last year. Sports betting related abuse dropped by 23% the study found. Here's the thing about the betting, and we talk about this all the

time with sports betting. All of these leagues are in bed with it, right? The college basketball tournament became something the world liked to watch because of brackets and while a bracket isn't a direct bet, you know people are putting money and trying to win big money on brackets. Like that was my, you know, my invite or my first foray into gambling was filling out brackets for a candy bar in middle school.

It was actually run by our PE coach. He's like, listen, you guys want to fill out a bracket winner gets a candy bar. Like that's how this shit is. It is gambling. It's in the same way that fantasy sports is gambling. Like I just love that people sit around and try to like spin things and legally they were spinning things forever about fantasy

sports enough daily fantasy, whatever isn't gambling. It's prop bets. It's gambling shut the fuck up. And I'm not saying that I advocate abusing people on social media. I don't and I don't do that. Like I'm not going to go find some kid that misses a shot or some dude that misses a shot, some 21, 22, 23 year old person that misses a shot in the NCAA tournament and attack that person mercilessly. Just like I wouldn't do it to a professional athlete either. I'm not a total imbecile, but that there's a difference between criticizing

people and being abusive. I don't know if they explain the difference between abuse versus like criticism as well. Like is it abuse to say, God, that guy sucked tonight? I don't think that's abuse. I think that's a statement of fact, especially if you sucked and you're making money to suck, then people should say that. If people are attacking you on social media and saying that you're, you know, like going over the top with it, then I guess that would be abuse. And again, I don't condone it. And I don't

advocate for it. I don't say you should get on social media and go attack dudes on a consistent basis, but what I am saying is these are not your garden variety student athletes. Angel Reese when she was at LSU was on a garden variety student athlete. Nobody gave a shit that Angel Reese went to class. Angel Reese was the big star at LSU and she had an NIL deal. It's just like Livy Dunn had an IL deals. Just like Jayden Daniels has an IL deals. Like you, like we got to cut the shit. And I know that this is like an old school, old man, Facebook uncle yells at cloud thing. But when someone's 20 years old and they're in like the military or someone's 20 years old and they're a police officer, they're not looked at as kids.

So let's stop looking at 20 year old dudes in college who in some cases are making 500, 600, a million dollars and stop looking at them as kids because they, what we are doing, and you've heard me talk about this a lot. What we are doing now is we are turning young people into adults far too fast and throwing them out into the world of adulthood, especially young athletes like this who starting from the time they're in Little League are being groomed to be big stars and college coaches are going to high schools and middle schools to talk

to these kids. They have an overinflated sense of worth, an overinflated sense of ego and they don't know what the real world is and we're going to have an era of people who come up as having no clue what the real world is. That's my biggest issue with this era in general is no one really knows what the real world is because everybody is so engrossed in this Twitter world and Facebook world and social media world where nobody knows what reality actually is. Let's continue.

The men's tournament featured the fewest outright upsets by betting underdogs 14 since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Social media abuse directed at participants in the women's tournament decreased 83% but the men's side saw a 140% increase in harassment, much of it directed at the selection committee and coaches. Well, I'm going to tell you why. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the reason why 83% of the abuse towards participants disappeared. This is because Angel Reese wasn't fucking playing

and neither was Caitlin Clark Clark right? Like this last women's tournament did not feature either one of them and because of that no one gave a shit. Look that's the Angel Reese effect. I would like to know what percentage of the hate and vitriol was directed at Angel Reese right? Like it had to have been a ton and 83% drop because Angel Reese ain't playing year over year. Let's see, there was a lot more, there was a lot in there that was directed at the NCAA committee from the outset of March Madness with some of the bubble teams who got in and who got out. A couple coaches changes that happened throughout March Madness seemed to trigger a lot of abuse as

well. North Carolina Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham, who chaired the men's selection committee received online abuse and harassment after the Tar Heels became one of the last teams under the field. Look, man, like I'm not telling you that it's right. I'm telling you just got to fucking deal with it. It's reality now there are certain things that are not right, but they are just reality. Like there is a double standard in the world, right?

Like you can sit there and fight about the double standards and how it's okay to be racist towards white people, but every other form of racism is bad, but you can tell white people, white women, they're the biggest pieces of shit. And it's like, it's a double standard. It is 100% a double standard because we sit there and we yell about, you know, inclusiveness and being kind to people. Yet there are certain groups of people that you are allowed to be unkind to and it is accepted. That is called a double standard. And you can sit there and bitch about the double standard and fight against the double standard, but the double standard is never going to fucking change. There are certain things that are never going to change. And one of them is people being dickheads on the internet. So you have to either learn how to compartmentalize it, you have to learn how to overlook it,

you gotta learn how to mute people. Because if you're going to be a famous person, and whether you like it or not, you're gonna be famous playing in March Madness, or you're gonna be famous playing college football, people are gonna know who you are, and especially in this era when you're getting paid to do it, people are going to have more attention paid to you. More people are gambling and as long as gambling is

legal and people are doing it and more people are doing it than ever because of how easy it is to do so, people are going to get pissed. It's like the Lance McCullers thing. I don't condone some guys saying, oh, I'm going to kill Lance McCullers family. I also didn't view it as a legit threat because it's some asshole on the internet. We found out that it was some asshole overseas on the internet doing this stuff. So like, I don't know, like it's just a different world. We're in a different era.

I don't view threats and abuse in the same way that I once viewed threats and abuse. I used to view these things as something serious. As I told you in my experience, and I've been getting far less abuse on social media because I'm out of sight out of mind. I'm not on the radio anywhere. I'm not pissing people off. I'm trying to keep my nose clean for the most part so I can get a fucking job. But like, you know, you look at when I was in Philly, people used to write me legit letters. If someone's going to write you a letter to tell you they hate you, that takes time to do that shit. If someone's going to write you a letter to tell you that you're terrible and horrible and they want you dead, that's something that you should take seriously. If someone's angry over a baseball game and they can go to their Twitter and in 10 seconds send you a message that you suck and you're terrible and they hate you, how viable is that? And again, it sucks that you're some 18, 19 year old person and you're getting tons

of shit on the internet from people over a college basketball game, but there are the pros and the cons of playing these things. If you don't want to deal with the heat that's coming from assholes on the internet, don't play fucking basketball. Like that's just how this works. Like I don't know what to tell you. You can't have it both ways. It's like people want the celebrity and the money that come from having a 19 year old dude being a star basketball player at Duke making 500,000. They want that but they don't want to deal with the negative.

You know who has to deal with the negative every day? LeBron, Luca Doncic, Pat Mahomes. Like these dudes have to deal with that shit every day and exponentially more than some random college athlete's gonna have to. So again, I'm not telling you it's right. I'm not telling you that I do it. I'm not saying go out and shit on these college players, but they have to understand that once you've gotten into the world of being a pro and that's what you are. The school thing does not matter. You're hopping from school to school to school for the most money. You are a professional that actually has far fewer regulations to deal with than a real professional does. Like you should get criticized

more. Like LeBron has to sign a contract and stay somewhere and could be traded against his will, in theory. Now he probably has like no trade clauses, but like these dudes in theory could think they're set somewhere and can be traded tomorrow and have nothing to say about it. You know what a college athlete does? College athlete goes to campus, LSU wants him and they're going to pay him $500,000 this year. Cool. He has a great season. Then Florida calls and wants to give him $1.5 million next year to play and he can just hop and it

doesn't matter. There's no limit on the times he can do it. There's no, there's no, there's nothing. There's no contract. There's no binding thing that says you're here for two years. These college dudes actually have more leeway and more freedom to move than pro players do. So stop and cut the ****. I don't care that they might be 20 years old. LeBron was 20 years old in the NBA and LeBron took more shit when he came into the league than any human on the planet. And that was before social media and no one gave a shit. But some college kid misses a shot and some betters are fucking pissed and it's like, oh these poor kids. What if that poor kid's making $500,000 and is on his third fucking team? Then what? Again, I'm not saying to go criticize people and shit

on people and dump on people, but if we're trying to move out, like everybody wants to talk about the new era of college sports and how this isn't the under the table, bags full of money era of college sports, great. They are pros. Talk about them like they are professional athletes. Do not talk about them like they're just good old boys in school and man I got to go get an A on my term paper or I can't play. The school thing doesn't mean a fucking thing. Dudes are driving Lambos on campus. It doesn't matter. Gone are the days when

it was kind of sketchy that Eric Dickerson shows up on campus in high school in a gold Trans Am and people are like, I wonder who bought him that Trans Am. It says his grandma bought him that Trans Am but his grandma lives in a fucking trailer. How did she afford a gold Trans Am? Because you know it came from SMU or it came from Texas A&M or wherever. Now, these dudes make enough cash and they should because they generate a bunch to go out and buy lambos and fucking bentleys and bugatties and shit and they drive to the game like they're fucking pros then they should have to deal with the same shit that pros do.

They've got it fucking easy relatively speaking. Anyway, more to come.