A different March Madness: Online hate for the athletes

A basketball with a March Madness logo rests on a rack in South Bend, Ind. The toxic cauldron on social media is one of the minefields players in the NCAA Tournament must navigate. When the post came up suggesting Terrance Williams II be left for dead in a ditch, his dad decided enough was enough. — AP

HOUSTON: It wasn’t so much that social media was criticising his son. That happens sometimes – especially after a loss like THAT.

But when a post came up suggesting Terrance Williams II, a junior forward for Michigan, be left for dead in a ditch, his dad decided enough was enough. Terrance Williams Sr.’s profanity-laced response to all the haters was, in many ways, an expected byproduct of social media vitriol that bubbled up after the Wolverines blew an eight-point lead in a one-point loss to Vanderbilt earlier this month – not in the NCAA Tournament but in the NIT.