2012 ArticlesBy Matt Yoder on

What would the end of 2012 be without one last Twitter War?  It's been a while since we've seen SI's Richard Deitsch step into the squared circle as bitter rival Darren Rovell retired earlier this year with his move to ESPN.  As Rovell has departed from the scene, Deitsch has yet to find a new foe to engage in a battle of wits.  

Deitsch is one of the top combatants we've seen in the Twitterverse, perhaps it's why many have shied away from engaging the crafty southpaw (at least I imagine him fighting as a southpaw, it just sounds better from a storytelling standpoint, anyways).

But Friday night, new CBS hire Doug Gottlieb decided to step into the ring and take a swing at the best.

Bad idea.

It went so horribly wrong for Gottlieb that he conceded defeat AND took the unseemly step of quickly deleting all of his tweets to Deitsch except the battle-ending concession and apology.  Thankfully, we've reconstructed the scrap from memory and collecting RTs from bystanders.  So for one last time this year, get your popcorn and your party hats ready, here we go…

It all began when Gottlieb wedged himself into this conversation and told Deitsch to stick to things he knew about, belittling him as someone who merely covers people who cover sports.  Gottlieb even threw in a "shhhhh."  By this logic, Gottlieb should have no right to talk anything other than basketball, but perhaps that fallable reasoning is why Gottlieb deleted all of his sparring tweets to Deitsch.

If memory serves me correct, Gottlieb sarcastically replied here about comparing resumes.

Although some of it is cut off, Gottlieb dismissed the Olympics as not mattering because it's watched by "women and old dudes," which is one of the most bizarre comments I've ever heard from someone proclaiming to have superior authority over others who wish to discuss sports topics.

Even before the deletion of the tweets, there was only one decision that could be made here.  A 1st Round KO in favor of Richard Deitsch.  This fight wasn't even close from the start.  Gottlieb started this Twitter War by being the third man in to a civil discussion between Deitsch and Seth Davis (who had an interesting episode with Spencer Hall in the past week), but he wasn't up to the task.

The CBS upstart felt the need to declare Deitsch as unworthy of ranking all-time great basketball players because he didn't play or doesn't consistently cover the game.  Maybe it was a harmless bit of sarcasm at first, but then Gottlieb carried it on to an admittedly weird level.  If nobody could offer opinions like that, 98% of the sports media world would be out of a job. Also, Gottlieb would have to give up his own radio and television career, but I'm not sure he wants to do that any time soon.

The hole was dug deeper when Gottlieb then took a strange shot at the Olympics and tried to say one of the most watched sporting events in the world didn't matter because women made up a sizeable portion of its audience.  Yikes.  At least he came to his senses in the end, did the right thing in apologizing, and peace was made with Deitsch.

With Deitsch landing his classic style of powerful pinpoint precision punches, this was a demolition job reminiscent of a young Mike Tyson.  That water skiing tweet was the Twitter War equivalent of this…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sO9oazcxBjE

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