Last week, I took a look at the action on Twitter during the Texas-Wyoming game. This week, I do the same, looking back at the Longhorn's game against the Lobos. Many of you made helpful suggestions in the comments of the previous post in this series. I really appreciate these suggestions. I haven't had much time yet to put your suggestions into practice, but I hopefully will in the coming weeks.
As a Longhorn grad who grew up in Buffalo, New York in the late 80s and early 90s, it was strange fun listening to Ray Bentley provide the color commentary for a Texas football game -- particularly when I don't recall ever watching a game that Bentley called, prior to last week's match up with Wyoming. For those unfamiliar, Bentley was a linebacker for the Buffalo Bills. He played on the Bill's first two Super Bowl teams, as a part of a very strong front seven that included Bruce Smith, Cornelius Bennett, and Shane Conlan. I wondered if there was anyone tweeting about this game who had anything to say about Bentley (who even mentioned Marv Levy once during the game). There were not -- zero tweets captured in my database this week mentioned Bentley by name.
Bummer.
In this week's Twitter recap, Longhorn tweeters enthusiastically jump onto the Daje Johnson bandwagon, cautiously consider Mike Davis, and seem pretty happy with the win against New Mexico.
This week, I haven't included the negativity index. One of the things that I have found over the last two weeks is that the major spikes in my negativity index occur when Texas' opponent scores -- other than that it is all noise. New Mexico didn't score, and so there is not much of interest in the negativity index. Let's hope this trend continues.
David Ash. The plot below shows the Twitter activity related to several key Longhorns in Texas' win over New Mexico. The biggest event of the night, from the perspective of those tweeting about the game, was David Ash's 49 yard touchdown run.
Leading up to the game, there was clearly some skepticism of David Ash. Below is one of my favorite examples.
About to get my "hypercritical of David Ash" on. #hookem #texas
— peter sim (@petersim) 6:35 PM, September 8, 2012
But the 49 yard touchdown run made a lot of people happy. I ran a report to find other terms that were showing up in tweets about Ash around the time of his run. One that came up was "VY." I clearly had to investigate, and found this tweet.
Who needs a deep pass when you can run 49 yards for a TD? Great play by Ash, channeling his inner VY there. Texas up 7-0. #Horns #Hookem
— Cedric Golden (@CedGolden) September 8, 2012
It was a nice run, but we probably shouldn't get ahead of ourselves just yet.
Mike Davis. With Davis' second quarter catch and run, there was a burst of twitter activity about Mike Davis. There was a lot of love for Marquise Goodwin in these tweets, as announcer Ray Bentley pointed out the nice down field blocking by the Olympian. The tweets that I perused related to Davis' touchdown range from ecstatic, to happy but still skeptical. Like the following tweet:
That's the Mike Davis that everyone wants to see. We just don't get to see it enough. Great blocking by Goodwin.
— Sean Adams (@thatsean) September 8, 2012
I think Davis needs to make a few more plays like these before we start preparing the bandwagon for its journey. And it seems that Davis has some work to do to live down that magic thing.
Mike Davis made some nice moves to get into the end zone for #longhorns. He calls himself "Magic"
— Austin Laymance (@JALaymance) September 9, 2012
Daje Johnson. Freshman Daje Johnson's bandwagon, on the other hand, appears to be rather crowded. Johnson's touchdown run/reception created the second most noise on Twitter during the game. Looking at the words that appear in tweets about this play, Longhorn fans were liberal with their praise.
Daje Johnson! A star is born! #HookEm
— James Wallace (@JDWWJR) September 8, 2012
Maybe. Or maybe after next week's game, Wescott will be writing an article about the lack of touches Johnson received in the Mississippi game.
Summary
Overall, this week didn't give Longhorn tweeters too much to get upset over. With no touchdowns allowed, turnovers, or even long plays given up, the mood of Longhorn fans on Twitter was upbeat. Next week should be interesting for this project, as Texas will play on a television network with a much larger audience. I am looking forward to see what effect this has on the Twitter action.