Social media on your average day can be an incredibly toxic place, but get ready for it to be even worse than normal today.
April 1, also known as April Fools' Day, is upon us. And college sports fans who like to religiously scroll social media looking for news on their favorite teams need to be wary of what they see come across their timeline.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that this is a time of the year where there actually is lots of breaking news in regard to players potentially entering either the NBA draft or the transfer portal. But it's not just basketball players potentially on the move.
Spring football practices are happening on college campus' around the country, and with that, comes players seeing the writing on the wall in terms of their place on the depth chart. Sooner or later, football players will be entering the transfer portal in hopes of finding a new home for the fall season. The transfer portal has even been cited as a reason for some programs, including Michigan State, cancelling their spring games. The potential exposure of players in the spring game could attract outside tampering and early promises of NIL money for transferring to another program.
Now that basketball is into the Final Four, many players on teams that have been eliminated are weighing their options. Or if you're like former Michigan guard Justin Pippen, you enter the transfer portal as your current team is getting ready to play in the Sweet 16. Most players will take their time to consider a number of possibilities before officially entering the portal or turning pro, but in the case of the portal there is a benefit to getting in sooner in hopes of snagging a good offer.
Michigan State basketball will be one of those teams eagerly awaiting some decisions. It's no secret that freshman guard Jace Richardson has been shooting up on mock drafts, but there could always be others that "test the waters" in the draft process before returning to school. I won't name any players, but fans are keenly aware of the possibility of one or more players entering the transfer portal.
In the past, fake stories of breaking news were much easier to identify on social media based on the lack of a "blue check" indicating the user was verified and lending more credibility to what they would post. Now that anyone can pay for that blue check on X (formerly known as Twitter), it forces the reader to do a little further digging into the potential validity of a story.
Bottom line: be careful what you believe to be "breaking news" on Tuesday. But realistically, that should be the approach we all take the other 364 days as well.