BadJocks.com
Encyclopedia
BadJocks.com is a website
that covers sports-related misconduct and crime at all levels, from professional
to children's, by not only the athletes themselves but coaches
and spectators as well. Creator and content provider Bob Reno has since 2000 written daily items on not only well-covered events such as the rape charges against three Duke lacrosse players
and the Minnesota Vikings "love boat" scandal
but less-reported local events as well, with video
clips sometimes included. While the site's news and audience are primarily U.S.-based, foreign news, particularly soccer-related, has been covered as well. He bills the site as "Where COPS
Meets SportsCenter
". In 2008 Time
chose the site as one of 25 in its first annual blog index, and in 2009 Sports Illustrated
named the site one of the decade's five most influential blogs.
Generally, the site's tone is light-hearted, featuring Reno's acerbic commentary on the various occurrences culled from other media. Reno keeps an annual tally of several types of stories that occur on frequent basis each year, with three ("drunken
outbursts", "naughty cheerleaders
" and "streakers
and naked people
" at the moment) typifying much of the content. However, the fourth, high school
coach sex scandals, have been treated more and more seriously by Reno as many involve relations between adults and students
, and he was taken aback when these numbers regularly approached 200 each year, so much that he stopped keeping count in 2007. He has sometimes posted commentary and analysis of the phenomenon, with input from readers. He followed the Pamela Rogers Turner
case closely since she was a gym
teacher, and also the Debra Lafave
case, which like non-athletics-related scandals he had devoted considerable space to on BadJocks's sister site, DumbAssDaily.com. In the former, Reno posted a cell-phone cam video of Rogers dancing provocatively, one of several attempts to contact her victim that had gotten her parole
revoked, as well as her MySpace
, which officials there had taken down.
using the search strings "initiation
" or, less frequently, "hazing
". These eventually yielded albums of members of various colleges' sports teams
putting freshman
members through hazing rituals. Many of these involved women's teams, and Reno posted the pictures on his website in case the originals were taken down. Most featured the players wearing lingerie
outside their clothes and with various things, some obscene, written on their bodies with marker as they performed some humiliating task. The Catholic University of America
was seriously embarrassed by photos showing their school's women's lacrosse
team cavorting with a thong
-clad male stripper
, and later suspended the entire team for three games.http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2543418
Since some showed alcohol
consumption by students who were underage
, in violation of liquor laws and school policies, investigation
s were started by the respective colleges. Most stopped short of finding any serious wrongdoing and gave the students involved the benefit of the doubt.
However, in May 2006 a reader of the site found pictures of the Northwestern University
women's soccer
team putting its freshmen through hazing more serious than other colleges, and Reno posted them. The young women were shown drinking tequila
and other hard liquor and going through similar rituals as their counterparts elsewhere, with penis
es drawn on them in marker. In some shots, though, they were blindfold
ed had their hands tied behind their backs with duct tape
and were apparently performing simulated sex acts and giving fully clothed lap dance
s to players on the men's soccer team.
Other sites started making similar searches and posting the results. Reno merely linked to those, but the media often mistakenly credited BadJocks anyway.
The publication of the photos led to the coach's resignation. Northwestern suspended
the team. Reno and the site earned national attention. Many commentators said they were profoundly shocked to see women engaging in such degrading conduct.
BadJocks became so closely associated with the hazing pictures and the ensuing scandals that, in April 2007, the University of Minnesota at Duluth's athletic director specifically referred to it when explaining a new request that student-athletes not use Facebook
or MySpace
http://www.startribune.com/503/story/1111230.html. Reno responded that he doesn't troll either site and usually finds the pictures, if he's the one to do so, on Webshots.
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
that covers sports-related misconduct and crime at all levels, from professional
Professional sports
Professional sports, as opposed to amateur sports, are sports in which athletes receive payment for their performance. Professional athleticism has come to the fore through a combination of developments. Mass media and increased leisure have brought larger audiences, so that sports organizations...
to children's, by not only the athletes themselves but coaches
Coach (sport)
In sports, a coach is an individual involved in the direction, instruction and training of the operations of a sports team or of individual sportspeople.-Staff:...
and spectators as well. Creator and content provider Bob Reno has since 2000 written daily items on not only well-covered events such as the rape charges against three Duke lacrosse players
2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal
The Duke lacrosse case is a common name given to a criminal investigation into a 2006 false accusation of rape made against three members of the men's lacrosse team at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina...
and the Minnesota Vikings "love boat" scandal
2005 Minnesota Vikings boat cruise scandal
An alleged sex party occurred on October 6, 2005 on Lake Minnetonka with seventeen key members of the Minnesota Vikings football team; including quarterback Daunte Culpepper, Fred Smoot, Mewelde Moore, Pat Williams, Bryant McKinnie, Nate Burleson, Ralph Brown, Troy Williamson, Travis Taylor, Kevin...
but less-reported local events as well, with video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
clips sometimes included. While the site's news and audience are primarily U.S.-based, foreign news, particularly soccer-related, has been covered as well. He bills the site as "Where COPS
COPS (TV series)
Cops is an American documentary/reality television series that follows police officers, constables, and sheriff's deputies during patrols and other police activities...
Meets SportsCenter
SportsCenter
SportsCenter is a daily sports news television show, and the flagship program of American cable network ESPN since the network launched on September 7, 1979. Originally broadcast only daily, SportsCenter is now shown up to twelve times a day, replaying the day's scores and highlights from major...
". In 2008 Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
chose the site as one of 25 in its first annual blog index, and in 2009 Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
named the site one of the decade's five most influential blogs.
Generally, the site's tone is light-hearted, featuring Reno's acerbic commentary on the various occurrences culled from other media. Reno keeps an annual tally of several types of stories that occur on frequent basis each year, with three ("drunken
Drunkenness
Alcohol intoxication is a physiological state that occurs when a person has a high level of ethanol in his or her blood....
outbursts", "naughty cheerleaders
Cheerleading
Cheerleading is a physical activity, sometimes a competitive sport, based on organized routines, usually ranging from one to three minutes, which contain the components of tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers, and stunting to direct spectators of events to cheer on sports teams at games or to participate...
" and "streakers
Streaking
Streaking is the act of running nude through a public place.-History:On 5 July 1799, a Friday evening at 7 o'clock, a naked man was arrested at the Mansion House, London, and sent to the Poultry Compter...
and naked people
Nudity
Nudity is the state of wearing no clothing. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic. The amount of clothing worn depends on functional considerations and social considerations...
" at the moment) typifying much of the content. However, the fourth, high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
coach sex scandals, have been treated more and more seriously by Reno as many involve relations between adults and students
Ephebophilia
Ephebophilia is the sexual preference of adults for mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid 20th century, and has been more recently revisited by Ray Blanchard. It is one of a number of sexual preferences across age groups subsumed...
, and he was taken aback when these numbers regularly approached 200 each year, so much that he stopped keeping count in 2007. He has sometimes posted commentary and analysis of the phenomenon, with input from readers. He followed the Pamela Rogers Turner
Pamela Rogers Turner
Pamela Joan Rogers , a former elementary school physical education teacher and coach in McMinnville, Tennessee, had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy who was one of her students in Centertown Elementary School....
case closely since she was a gym
Physical education
Physical education or gymnastics is a course taken during primary and secondary education that encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting....
teacher, and also the Debra Lafave
Debra Lafave
Debra Jean Beasley, better known under her former married name of Debra Lafave, is a former teacher at Angelo L. Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. She pleaded guilty in 2005 to...
case, which like non-athletics-related scandals he had devoted considerable space to on BadJocks's sister site, DumbAssDaily.com. In the former, Reno posted a cell-phone cam video of Rogers dancing provocatively, one of several attempts to contact her victim that had gotten her parole
Parole
Parole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...
revoked, as well as her MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, which officials there had taken down.
College hazing pictures
In 2005, Reno began searching on WebshotsWebshots
-History:Webshots was created in 1995 by Auralis, Inc. in San Diego, California. It was initially a sports oriented screen saver sold at retail for desktop computers. Founders Andrew Laakmann, Danna Laakmann, Nick Wilder, and Narendra Rocherolle migrated the desktop software to the Web and became...
using the search strings "initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
" or, less frequently, "hazing
Hazing
Hazing is a term used to describe various ritual and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group....
". These eventually yielded albums of members of various colleges' sports teams
College athletics
College athletics refers primarily to sports and athletic competition organized and funded by institutions of tertiary education . In the United States, college athletics is a two-tiered system. The first tier includes the sports that are sanctioned by one of the collegiate sport governing bodies...
putting freshman
Freshman
A freshman or fresher is a first-year student in secondary school, high school, or college. The term first year can also be used as a noun, to describe the students themselves A freshman (US) or fresher (UK, India) (or sometimes fish, freshie, fresher; slang plural frosh or freshmeat) is a...
members through hazing rituals. Many of these involved women's teams, and Reno posted the pictures on his website in case the originals were taken down. Most featured the players wearing lingerie
Lingerie
Lingerie are fashionable and possibly alluring undergarments.Lingerie usually incorporates one or more flexible, stretchy materials like Lycra, nylon , polyester, satin, lace, silk and sheer fabric which are not typically used in more functional, basic cotton undergarments.The term in the French...
outside their clothes and with various things, some obscene, written on their bodies with marker as they performed some humiliating task. The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America is a private university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by the U.S. Catholic bishops...
was seriously embarrassed by photos showing their school's women's lacrosse
Women's lacrosse
Women's lacrosse, sometimes shortened to wlax or lax, is a sport played with twelve players on each team. Originally played by the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the first tribe to play it was the Hauser tribe, of the Great Plains. The modern women's game was introduced in 1890 at the St...
team cavorting with a thong
G-string
A G-string is a type of thong underwear or swimsuit, a narrow piece of cloth, leather, or plastic, that covers or holds the genitals, passes between the buttocks, and is attached to a band around the hips, worn as swimwear or underwear by women and men...
-clad male stripper
Striptease
A striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner...
, and later suspended the entire team for three games.http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2543418
Since some showed alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
consumption by students who were underage
Legal drinking age
Laws about the legal drinking age cover a wide range of issues and behaviours, addressing when and where alcohol can be consumed. The minimum age alcohol can be legally consumed can be different to the age when it can be purchased. These laws vary among different countries and many laws have...
, in violation of liquor laws and school policies, investigation
Criminal procedure
Criminal procedure refers to the legal process for adjudicating claims that someone has violated criminal law.-Basic rights:Currently, in many countries with a democratic system and the rule of law, criminal procedure puts the burden of proof on the prosecution – that is, it is up to the...
s were started by the respective colleges. Most stopped short of finding any serious wrongdoing and gave the students involved the benefit of the doubt.
However, in May 2006 a reader of the site found pictures of the Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
women's soccer
Women's football (soccer)
Women's association football has been played for many decades, but was associated with charity games and physical exercise in the past before the breakthrough of organized women's association football came in the 1970s. Before the 1970s, football was basically seen as a men's game...
team putting its freshmen through hazing more serious than other colleges, and Reno posted them. The young women were shown drinking tequila
Tequila
Tequila is a spirit made from the blue agave plant, primarily in the area surrounding the city of Tequila, northwest of Guadalajara, and in the highlands of the western Mexican state of Jalisco....
and other hard liquor and going through similar rituals as their counterparts elsewhere, with penis
Penis
The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...
es drawn on them in marker. In some shots, though, they were blindfold
Blindfold
A blindfold is a garment, usually of cloth, tied to one's head to cover the eyes to disable the wearer's sight. It can be worn when the eyes are in a closed state and thus prevents the wearer from opening them...
ed had their hands tied behind their backs with duct tape
Duct tape
Duct tape, or duck tape, is cloth- or scrim-backed pressure sensitive tape often sealed with polyethylene. It is very similar to gaffer tape but differs in that gaffer tape was designed to be cleanly removed, while duct tape was not. It has a standard width of and is generally silver or black...
and were apparently performing simulated sex acts and giving fully clothed lap dance
Lap dance
A lap dance is a type of sex work performed in some strip clubs in which a naked or topless dancer performs an erotic dance either in immediate contact with a seated patron, or within a very short distance. With full-contact lap dances, the stripper may engage in non-penetrative sexual contact...
s to players on the men's soccer team.
Other sites started making similar searches and posting the results. Reno merely linked to those, but the media often mistakenly credited BadJocks anyway.
The publication of the photos led to the coach's resignation. Northwestern suspended
Suspension (punishment)
Suspension is a form of punishment that people receive for violating rules and regulations.- Workplace :Suspension is a common practice in the workplace for being in violation of an organization's policy...
the team. Reno and the site earned national attention. Many commentators said they were profoundly shocked to see women engaging in such degrading conduct.
BadJocks became so closely associated with the hazing pictures and the ensuing scandals that, in April 2007, the University of Minnesota at Duluth's athletic director specifically referred to it when explaining a new request that student-athletes not use Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
or MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
http://www.startribune.com/503/story/1111230.html. Reno responded that he doesn't troll either site and usually finds the pictures, if he's the one to do so, on Webshots.
External links
- BadJocks.com
- CUA lacrosse photos
- Deford, FrankFrank DefordBenjamin "Frank" Deford, III is a senior contributing writer for Sports Illustrated, author, and commentator for National Public Radio and correspondent for Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO....
; May 23, 2006; Women behaving badly: Sadly, the ladies have followed men's lead in sports Sports IllustratedSports IllustratedSports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
. - Nelson, Libby; May 25, 2006; Hazing scandal raises debate on web ethics; Daily Northwestern.
- Robertson, Linda; May 27, 2006; Athlete abuse no longer lost in the haze; Knight-Ridder Newspapers.
- Sandomir, Richard; May 18, 2006; On the Web, College Athletes Acting Badly; The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
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