Updated: Winning Friends, Influencing People – Heber Springs Sports Editor Strikes Again

 

When Will Gilbert isn’t busy covering high schools sports for his employer, The Sun-Times in Heber Springs, Ark., the scribe spends his time making an ass of himself on Twitter, it appears.

You may recall it was Will Gilbert who started somewhat of a firestorm with his tweets earlier this year directed at Auburn head football coach Gus Malzahn’s wife, Kristi. We described his comments as lewd at the time. We didn’t describe Gilbert as dumb at the time. We do now, however.

After deleting his tweets, issuing a public apology to the SEC (not to Kristi Malzahn, mind you), and removing himself from Twitter (which was a smart move for someone we think is dumb), Gilbert showed back up on the Twitter scene with an all new account – @laketownsports.

The Heber Springs sports guy didn’t take long under his new social media moniker to be dumb on Twitter again. Late one night Gilbert went out of his way to offend Arkansas State University alumni, students and supporters, calling the Jonesboro campus a ghetto.

It was after this second instance of idiocy the Sports Desk requested and was granted approval to install the Sporting Life Arkansas Idiot Alert System. We call it the Will Gilbert Hotline for short.

The system works great, too.

We can’t divulge many of the details and secret intricacies of how the Will Gilbert Hotline works, but we have been approved to share this with you – the alert isn’t a ring or chime or bell or buzzer. When the system is tripped this is what we hear…

Yes, from every mobile device, landline, monitor, screen and intercom speaker inside the palatial penthouse offices of Sporting Life Arkansas this alert is audible.

And so it was tripped Friday morning. Hello, Newman. The Sporting Life Arkansas Idiot Alert System was blaring.

Will Gilbert tweets again.

What he said, and has since removed, was, “Has anybody ever asked what he was thinking in Knoxville 08?? smh” (shaking my head).

Gilbert’s tweet and question and strategic use of the hashtag #stoernover, drew this response from former Razorback quarterback, insurance executive and soon-to-be radio personality, Clint Stoerner, who is Heber Springs this weekend, volunteering his time, his energy and lending his name to support the Community School of Cleburne County.

[tweet https://twitter.com/ClintStoerner/status/330314517106020354]

 

We concur.

Then we noticed Gilbert backed off his original tone, heaped praise on Stoerner and rephrased what it is he claims remains a mystery to him – what was Stoerner supposed to do on that play? Oh, and he stopped referring to it as the Stoernover, too.

Gilbert purports to be a trained professional journalist and reporter of sports, so we thought we would include the video of the play in question for his review, study and perhaps to help him resolve the mind-boggling question that has been nagging at him for damn near 15 years now.

 

UPDATE

And there’s more. It appears there is a message board dedicated to discussing things in the Heber Springs area and someone started a thread there called “How does Will Gilbert not get fired?”

The back and forth includes Will Gilbert defending himself and fighting back against his detractors. The thread was removed, but we’ve got some screen shots we may share. Oh, and Gilbert took his Twitter account private Monday (May 6), too. Where’s the fun in that?

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