Apple Cup | Fans are talking; who's listening?

"In your current job,if you were performing at the level of Bill Doba, would your company keep you around? Behonest."

— Post on Cougfan.com message board

"Frankly,I'm not willing to go through another season with Ty as the coach. Another season of defensive impotence, second-half collapses, six-game losing streaks and soon will take a year off my life."

— Post on Dawgman.com message board

If we didn't already know we're living in an in-your-face, you-just-gotta-hear-my-take era, the point was rammed home in Miami recently.

The Hurricanes, playing the program's final college-football game at the Orange Bowl, lost to Virginia, 48-0. A day later, a recruit at the game, Matt Patchan, told Cane sport.com, a Miami fan Web site, that "too many guys, it doesn't bother them that they lost the game.

"There's too many guys now at the 'U' that say, 'It's OK we lost. Well, what am I going to do tonight?' "

That prompted newspapers to react. Several 'Canes bristled at the recruit's criticism.

And imagine the squirming by Miami coach Randy Shannon. Presumably, he wants the recruit to sign. Yet the thrust of the criticism reflects badly on his program. So Shannon told The Miami Herald, "Everyone is entitled to their opinion."

This is the age of brassy, boisterous and bawdy. The era of scathing opinions on message boards and Jack from Maple Valley calling the local sports-talk station to register his disgust on whatever is on his mind, and then going back to doing whatever it is Jack from Maple Valley does after he spent 37 minutes on hold.

Thirty years ago, 20 years ago, maybe even a dozen years ago, the Miami story probably never sees the light of day. There were no fan Web sites then to hatch such a story, and most newspapers wouldn't have called a recruit after his visit.

Instead, the issue becomes a wedge that chips at the credibility of Shannon, and heightens the argument between supporters and detractors.

Sound familiar, Bill Doba and Tyrone Willingham? The coaches in the Apple Cup have been targets of a season-long symphony — make that a cacophony — of message-board barbs and talk-show shots, turning up the heat on their performances.

Of course, this is nothing new. Talk radio has been around for about two decades and message boards came to vogue in the late '90s.

But it's worth asking: Does the discourse truly have an effect on decision-making, or is it so much background clatter? Are the message boards influential, even if some of their patrons are mouth-breathing high-school dropouts who struggle to assemble a sentence marked by both a noun and a verb?

"You'd like to think not," says Florida coach Urban Meyer. "But I'm sure it does [influence]. I usually listen to talk radio when I drive in [to work] in the morning, and there's some pretty strong opinions out there."

Meyer says he'd prefer to believe athletic directors and presidents don't pay attention, "but I'm sure that's not the real world."

He's right. Ask Mike Price. The former Washington State coach had his infamous overindulgent night in Pensacola, Fla., in 2003, which became the subject of an Internet rumor on an Auburn fan Web site.

Soon Price found himself fired as Alabama coach before ever walking the sideline in Tuscaloosa. Fifteen years ago, it might never have sparked enough to become a brushfire that turned into a roaring inferno.

Last winter, there was Arkansas coach Houston Nutt, embroiled in a many-sided Internet controversy involving disgruntled quarterback Mitch Mustain and separately, Nutt's alleged relationship with an Arkansas television anchor, Donna Bragg.

Nutt felt compelled to issue an open letter in April, in which he got brutally frank: "I have not had an inappropriate relationship with Ms. Bragg."

Think Howard Jones or Bud Wilkinson ever had to do that?

Last year, Bobby Bowden endured an uncomfortable season in which his son Jeff, the senior Bowden's offensive coordinator at Florida State, got crucified in e-mails to the school and on the Internet.

"I had an official [at FSU] hand me e-mails about an inch thick," the senior Bowden recalled last week. "He wanted me to know what people were saying about [Jeff Bowden]. I said, 'I don't read that junk.' "

But apparently, university presidents do. After Washington fell to Arizona late in October to fall to 2-6, UW president Mark Emmert sent out a form reply to Huskies fans who deluged him with e-mails of concern about the program. He couldn't remember having so responded in 13 years as a president and chancellor.

While Doba and Willingham have been roasted regularly for losing seasons, nobody in the Northwest has been a lightning rod like coaches at Oregon. Both football's Mike Bellotti and basketball's Ernie Kent went through family problems in recent years, to the accompaniment of much message-board gossip.

"I think it's had a huge impact," says Bill Moos, the former Oregon athletic director, on the new-age forces. "There's a lot of people that really haven't developed an opinion when they wake up and can be swayed by what they're hearing and reading.

"I never read the [message boards], but I always had people on my staff who did, who would keep me informed as to what the pulse was."

None other than the nation's most famous college-athletics donor might be a regular message-board denizen. Around Oregon, the belief is that Phil Knight likes to check up on recruiting Web sites, if not visit the inflammatory realm of the message board.

"Uh, secondhand," Moos confirms. "I never had Phil tell me, 'I'm reading that.' He's a die-hard Oregon fan, and I had heard through others that he would tap into things like recruiting."

So, for an athletic director, a question: How to determine what the prevailing sentiment is from the vocal masses, and how to judge whether it's actually representative of the entire constituency?

"I think the Internet and talk radio have changed the nature of our business more than anything I've dealt with in my 30 years," says UW athletic director Todd Turner.

"It's forced us in many ways to have to deal with faceless, nameless, genderless, coverless people — that we're not sure who they are, whom they represent or what their agenda is."

Then there are the e-mails, which Turner says can number up to 100 a day. He says his administrative assistant, Liz McFarland, tries to acknowledge many of them, and she'll relay a summary of the content and make sure he reads those from names they know.

"You can let it be a factor," Turner says. "But I believe in my own analysis in decision-making."

As Stewart Mandel wrote in "Bowls, Polls & Tattered Souls," a glimpse into the jumbled world of college football, the heightened chatter around today's game can create a divide that defines a coach's tenure — especially when it spawns sites like FireRonZook .com, launched by detractors of the ex-Florida coach.

"Without question," wrote Mandel, "the one positive to emerge from this trend has been the newfound weight of the voice of the people.

"In a sport where the fans often find themselves ignored, if not patronized, by the powers-that-be — they've only been asking for a playoff for the past 20 years now, and they sure do appreciate being bumped out of their 40-yard-line seats to make way for more luxury boxes — there's no denying their increased influence in many schools' coaching decisions."

So for coaches like Doba and Willingham, it's come to this: If you're going to get fired, at least you hope it's the right guys doing it.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com