Rumors of former Wisconsin Badgers football coach and athletic director Barry Alvarez’s death Wednesday were an exaggeration. It’s unclear quite where those started, but they got particular traction thanks to a tweet from Matt Finkes, a former Ohio State and NFL player who’s also worked as a local TV analyst on the Buckeyes. Finkes deleted the initial tweet here, but it was preserved in some screencaps:
Finkes has more than 18,300 followers on Twitter/X, so that got a ton of traction. And it led to a lot of work for a lot of reporters. That included Jim Polzin and Colten Bartholomew from The Wisconsin State Journal, who had to talk to current Wisconsin AD Chris McIntosh and other administrators to confirm that Alvarez had not, in fact, passed.
Despite a rumor this morning on Twitter, former #Badgers coach and AD Barry Alvarez is alive. Chris McIntosh told me he just got off the phone with Alvarez.
— Jim Polzin (@JimPolzinWSJ) March 6, 2024
Multiple Wisconsin administrators confirm former #Badgers AD and football coach Barry Alvarez is still with us, despite a rumor on Twitter this morning. Current UW AD Chris McIntosh spoke with Alvarez this morning.
— Colten Bartholomew (@CBartWSJ) March 6, 2024
Meanwhile, Finkes eventually offered this limited apology:
Apologize for the earlier tweet about @BadgerFootball Barry Alvarez. There was a post this morning from a reliable source. I did not research further. Happy Barry is still rocking!!
— Matt Finkes (@MattFinkes) March 6, 2024
And this got a lot of Twitter discussion:
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
– Barry Alvarez, probably— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) March 6, 2024
There are rampant problems everywhere with storytelling. Whether it’s news, sports, or weather, journalists and journalism overall, as illustrated here, do not seem to learn the important lesson.
Being first doesn’t make you always right.
Barry Alvarez is not dead. https://t.co/8pBm5juMLq
— Rich 🤑 (@RichNotInCanada) March 6, 2024
A lot of Ohio State fans with blue checkmarks still spreading the rumor that Barry Alvarez passed away even after confirmation that he is alive and well. Don't know which of those two facts is the least surprising…
— The Dairy Raid 🏴☠️ Ryan Andersen (@thedairyraid) March 6, 2024
It’s unclear what “reliable source” Finkes got this from. It doesn’t appear to have been on Twitter, as his deleted tweet looks to be the earliest one with the term “Barry Alvarez” that suggested the coach had died, with other discussion of the rumor coming after he posted that.
But this isn’t the first Twitter controversy Finkes (who played for the Buckeyes from 1993-96, was a sixth-round pick of the New York Jets in 1996, played one season for them, has worked on local Buckeyes and high school sports coverage for Columbus’ ABC6 and Time Warner Cable, and currently works as the director of development for Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center, as well as owning a coffee and chocolate shop franchise) has gotten into. On the sports side, that including quite the feud with CBS’ Jay Feely last fall. He’s also gotten a lot of attention for his comments on COVID-19.
At any rate, this is far from the first premature report of a death. That famously happened with Mark Twain (for the record, his actual quote was “The report of my death was an exaggeration,” so the popular reports of his quote on the reports of his death were themselves greatly exaggerated). And in sports, we’ve seen premature death reports for everyone from Joe Paterno through Pelé through Jim Fregosi, Ken Stabler, and Mino Raiola. But it is good to hear that Alvarez has not, in fact, passed.
[Matt Finkes on Twitter/X, Finkes image from a 2023 interview with Tim May of Ohio State Football on Letterman Row on YouTube, Alvarez photo from Mark Stewart of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on July 28, 2022, via USA Today Sports.)
