I'll give you a quick background story.
For a while now, Jason Hewitt has been growing a beard. One assumes that is because of his goal drought, which finally came to an end Wednesday night and would normally mean that he will now be shaving off his beard. This situation however is what has led to Simmsey crossing the line on Twitter.
After first making a post about Geoff Woolhouse requiring surgery, he posted the following:
"Talking of operations is that beard coming off @hewy17 or are you off down the mosque this afternoon?"
As if that wasn't bad enough, he further compounded it by following it up with another tweet.
"Breaking News: Steelers forward @hewy17 buys wife @stacehewitt new dress" and attached an image, which can be seen (hopefully) at the link below:
https://twitter.com/Simmsey/status/424146553905741824/photo/1
Unsurprisingly, this has caused mass uproar on social media.
Here are my views on this as well as one or two other things.
I personally think that it is indirect/implied racism, it is prejudice and it is certainly politically incorrect. I'm glad this has backfired on him. This is the same man that offended the Panthers fan base a few years ago after the Steelers won the league (I won't repeat what he said) and has also had incidents earlier one this year. One that sparked a reaction from a Steelers sponsor on twitter and also a rumoured incident with a Panthers fan while trying to sell 50/50 tickets in a period break.
I sincerely hope that the club does something about this recent incident, even if the saving grace is that Simmsey made those tweets on his personal twitter account rather than the clubs twitter account.
However, that doesn't get away from the fact that this is the man that is in charge essentially of the clubs PR. It is him that makes posts on twitter and facebook as well as getting stories out into the newspapers etc. This is the same man that also does the press releases for the clubs website, which over time has featured several mistakes of some form.
It is very easy for people to connect him with the Steelers and incidents like this could potentially backfire on the club and hurt it's image, especially when this club prides itself on being professional and is also trying to widen it's audience and attract more people to come to games and support the Steelers. That is the main issue here. The wider issue is that with Simmsey having been such a public face for the league and sport in this country in the past, it can also have a negative effect on the image of the league, something with fans around the league will certainly not want to happen.
Yes David has some very well informed opinions on hockey and the like through his own personal experiences with the sport and various clubs over the years but that by no means excuses him from behavior like this.
The man can come across as being very arrogant at times and acts at times like he can do no wrong and to me that can easily be shown in the way in which he tried to defend his comments earlier by posting "Some of you lot should come to East Birmingham for a day. Harmless banter."
It's not harmless though, is it?
Another thing that gets on my nerves is that photos from Steelers games or Steelers news, tends to get posted to his personal social media accounts BEFORE he posts them to the clubs social media accounts. That's just wrong in my eyes. It doesn't matter who is in charge of the clubs accounts, they should be posted to the clubs accounts first and foremost. That's just my opinion though.
Don't get me wrong, he does do some good things for the Steelers club and he does also help other clubs financially by doing these "evenings with" to help raise more money for other clubs in the league and in fact the country, but there is going to come a point soon that somebody clamps down on his behavior or even worse someone at some point is going to get so fed up with him personally that they end up smacking him one.
In my opinion, he has made too many mistakes in recent years. The only roles he should publicly have within the club are helping with the 50/50 sales, announcing on game nights and doing the voice over for the highlights on Steelers TV, even if there are some people that are tired of hearing his voice. I'm sure he has minor involvement behind the scenes with one or two other things as well.
I think that enough is enough now. It's time somebody reeled him in a bit. He has crossed the line a few times before but this in my opinion is a new found low line that has been crossed.
Something needs to be done before more incidents like this happen. Not just with Simmsey, but league wide too. After all, Simmsey isn't the only one that has steeped out of line this year, in my opinion.
You know the drill folks.
@IAmMcCausland
@TomWalkeden
@AwkwardGinge
@FrozenSteelBlog
Cheers!
Alan
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