Dejan Kovacevic created a stir on Twitter Wednesday afternoon when he pointed out a new website called Pirates Fan Advisor. I already wrote about it at Bucs Dugout, but if you haven't checked out Pirates Fan Advisor yet, please do. You're bound to be entertained. First, there's the video of Piratse president Frank Coonelly struggling to read a pre-written script:
And then there's the shoddy-looking website itself, which features an x's and o's diagram, as if baseball uses x's and o's. And then there's the text.
Pirate Fan Advisors are the most knowledgeable, passionate and sophisticated fans and have affirmed their commitment to being Pirates Fan Advisors by signing the "Fan Pledge." Typically, these fans are frustrated by the banality of traditional "fan forums" as the majority on those sites are simply not as knowledgeable.
Sports radio provides a forum for the "loudest" individuals regardless of knowledge base and traditional media "polling" is fraught with meaningless "results." Those are merely forms of entertainment and make no effort to capture and amplify the true voice of the fan. The Fan Advisor Network does just that in a meaningful, valid and objective manner creating a system by which fans are advisors and teams receive invaluable advice.
Think, for a second, about how amazingly stupid it is for the Pirates to associate themselves with a website that bashes many of the Bucs' most serious fans -- the ones serious enough to post about the Pirates, or call talk radio. (And by the way, the biggest sports-talk station in Pittsburgh, 93.7 The Fan, is also the one that broadcasts Pirates games.)
And what's the mechanism for acquiring all this "invaluable advice"? Oh yeah -- getting fans to pay to give it. There are three plans on the site, ranging from $9.95 a month to $600 a year. Anyone willing to part with that cash would have to be as stupid as the Pirates were for involving themselves with this in the first place.
UPDATE: The Pirates claim, plausibly, that they had nothing much to do with this beyond making a video for the site, although obviously, they shouldn't have even done that.