Big Bad John was one of my favorite songs when I was a kid.
Here's a rewrite tribute to the late Mr. Dean and all the SJ board moderators. Didn't spend a lot of time and apologies if anyone takes offense. None was meant.
Every morning on the web site you could see him arrive.
He stood 5 foot 6 and weighed 255.
Kinda broad in the waist line and snarky with his lip
And everybody knew that he was far from hip.
Big Mod, Big Mod, Big Bad Mod.
Nobody seemed to know where Mod called home
He just posted on SJ and kept the boards a goin'
He never posted much, was kinda quiet and shy
And if he posted at all it was to the others in line.
Some people claim he came from the Chicago Trib
Where he got in a spat over some women's lib
And crashin' blow from a Twitter post
Turned Sam Zell and his cronies into whole wheat toast
Big Mod, Big Mod, Big Bad Mod
Then came that fateful day at SportsJournalists.com
The servers crashed and the web site was doomed
Posters were locked out and web hits were none
And everybody figured it was resume time, 'cept Mod.
Through the bits and the bytes of this on-line hell
Came the words of a leader the posters knew well
He logged on and rebooted and hit excecute
And like an Indian IT his words were hard to refute
Big Mod, Big Mod, Big Bad Mod
With his baud rate used up Mod waited and stewed
Then a poster in Boise said, "Hey, my post just went through."
Thousands of SJers scrambled from their on-line mailaise
And now there was just Big Mod who was left there to save
With Facebook and Twitter and IMs they tried
But there came a whine from the other end of the line.
And everybody knew that it was log off time for Big Mod
Big Mod, Big Mod, Big Bad Mod
Well they never unlocked that worthless thread
They just started a thread jack of reasonable cred
They honored their leader with these few words:
"At the bottom of this web site likes a big, big nerd. Big Mod.