BADGER HATE WEEK: No One Likes Nigel Hayes

It’s not a secret around these parts that we’re not fans of Wisconsin Badgers forward Nigel Hayes. You might remember our classic “Nigel Must Be Stopped” post back during the Badgers’ second consecutive Final Four run. That article generated 46 comments at the bottom, a wide majority of them from incredibly angry Badger fans who just really couldn’t handle the idea of someone not liking Hayes. Very weird.

Well, maybe not that weird.

Back in early June, Hayes took to Twitter, informing the universe that if he got 50,000 retweets, Wisconsin would schedule a road game against Toledo. You see, Hayes is from Toledo, and thus, it would be a homecoming game for the senior.

That was on June 9th.

On June 14th, ESPN’s Myron Medcalf devoted over 200 words to promoting Hayes’ cause. Why? Because he didn’t have the 50K yet. In fact, according to Medcalf’s article, he had less than 7,000 retweets. In five days. With more than 50,000 followers.

On June 25th, CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish wrote 350 words to lead off an Inside College Basketball column on Hayes’ endeavor. You see, this was important, because HAYES STILL DIDN’T HAVE 50,000 RETWEETS. 16 days after the original tweet, and 11 days after the ESPN article, nothing doing.

Wisconsin announced their non-conference schedule on August 25th, and lo and behold: No game against Toledo, much less a game in northwest Ohio. At some point between June 25th and August 25th, Hayes tweeted the fact that his quest had failed, which actually came a shock to me. I was pretty sure that the entire thing was just one long PR game by Wisconsin and they had already scheduled the game against the Rockets. Nope. Assistant coach Lamont Paris meant it: 50K retweets or no game.

By now, you’re probably wondering why I’m just telling you about the tweets. Well, there’s one reason for that: Hayes deleted the tweets. Here’s the link to the one where he begged for the retweets, and here’s the link to the announcement that he’s a failure. I can still see the content of the first tweet in the ESPN & CBS articles, but I only have my bookmark to remind me that the other tweet existed. I didn’t bother screencapping the tweets because hey: who deletes their tweets like that? Even Hayes’ Stone Cold Steve Austin video is gone.

The point here is this: Hayes had well over 50,000 followers at the time of the original tweet. He got both ESPN and CBS Sports to promote his cause and give people who aren’t even following Hayes to retweet him and give him a home game during his final season of eligibility.

And it didn’t happen.

There aren’t enough people in the universe that like Nigel Hayes enough to give him a touching moment to help wrap up his collegiate hoops career.

I was one of the first people to speak out against the Nigel “look at me being so precocious” Hayes parade. If everyone else is starting to turn on him, too, well, you won’t hear me complain.