August 09, 2007

The Rix Ultimatum

Remember Chris Rix, the awful Florida State quarterback who failed to live up to his clippings and never had much of a college or pro career? After finishing college Rix started a "training academy" for young football players, so that kids nationwide could follow in Rix's not-so-prestigious footsteps.

About a year ago Flash Warner, my onetime co-guest blogger at SportsByBrooks, noticed this, and mocked the unfortunate ex-Seminole in a BlogCritics post.

Aside from a "no hard feelings" e-mail a while later from Rix himself, Flash thought nothing of it until this week, when BlogCritics management received a letter from Rix, requesting that "this article be removed from your database, as well as all search engines." The former QB went on to threaten that "a federal subpoena" be served to both Flash and BlogCritics, should they not comply with the order.

Where to start? Rix doesn't seem to know the Internet very well, nor the law. First off, it's not quite so easy for a site -or, for that matter, Google- to remove a year-old article from its archives and search engines. There's something called caches, and something else called the Wayback Machine, and stuff from the Internet tends not to ever disappear into the ether.

Not to mention, Flash hasn't commited libel, or defamed Rix in any way- she's merely posted stuff Rix doesn't like. And besides- a "subpoena" is "a command to appear at a certain time and place to give testimony upon a certain matter." I'm not a lawyer, but I think Rix means either "injunction" or "cease and desist." He maybe should've had an attorney look over the letter before he sent it; with its extensive history of criminal behavior by athletes, Rix's alma mater must have some good lawyers on retainer.

Flash, to her credit, laughs it off:

Now, if my posts contained libel, I'd understand his threat. But I didn't make up lies about Rix or Champion Training Academy. I simply questioned the qualifications of Rix, who, as a primary instructor, claims to teach young quarterbacks qualities that - in my opinion - he never mastered. If Jim Kelly wrote a book titled "Winning the Super Bowl," or Michelle Wie ran an academy called "Making the Cut on the PGA Tour," I'd be within my rights to say, "Hey Jim? Uh, Michelle? Excuse me, but you know nothing about that."
We can all learn from this. From now on, I promise to never make fun of Ron Powlus, Dan Kendra, or any other disappointing former quarterback from a major university.

Posted by Stephen Silver at August 9, 2007 08:21 PM
Comments

Deadspin picked up on this today. Looks like you scooped them!

Posted by: Jeremy at August 10, 2007 05:47 PM

Rick Mirer, however, is always fair game.

Posted by: Gib at August 13, 2007 01:22 PM
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