from profootballtalk.com...

Remember Mike Mitchell?  He was the No. 47 overall pick in the 2009 draft, the safety from Ohio University that Mike Mayock and the rest of the nation of draftniks thought Oakland took about five rounds too early.

On Saturday, Mitchell was reportedly the subject of a behind-the-scenes battle between Raiders owner Al Davis and the team's coaching staff.  We'll let you guess who won.

Let's back the story up for a minute.  2010 Seventh-round Raiders safety Stevie Brown practiced on Saturday. He spoke with the media about making the team.  But when the Raiders officially released their cuts Saturday afternoon, they still had one move left to make.

Here's where it gets fun.

A former Raiders employee-turned Florida radio host Andy Slater said that Brown was going to get the axe on his Twitter page.  This was hours before he news came out.  He also reported that "everyone in the organization" except Al Davis wanted to cut Mitchell instead of Brown.   Davis essentially wanted to avoid the P.R. hit and admit he made such a big mistake last year.  (Maybe Davis told them Mitchell "is a great player. Get over it.")

Jerry McDonald of the Oakland Tribune breaks down the timeline of Slater's tweets, which are fascinating. It's hard to doubt him when he nailed the news before it happened.

Apparently the coaching staff pushed hard for Brown, who also has impressed teammates. But after the Raiders couldn't find a taker for Mitchell in a trade, they cut Brown.  (Even if they didn't officially mention it on their website until very late last night.)

"Let me be clear, for those tweeting me on Mitchell/Raiders, coaches do NOT want him. Addition by subtraction," Slater wrote.

But as we know, coaches don't always get what they want. Especially in Oakland. 

Just another day in Raider Nation.

Twitter as a news source . . . about one step below Wikipedia.   A sad commentary on the state of American sports journalism as we begin the second decade of the 21st Century.  

This is actually a mainstream media story now.  And for twitter and the like, have to love technology as it is changing the game in the reporting industry.

Just consider the majors available in the JSchool.  Most kids are moving into the Online J, Broadcast, PR, and Magazine fields.  I don't know anyone personally in the JSchool who is in Newspapers/Editing.  Not to mention, the curriculum is going to be changing here soon to incorporate social media use in ALL majors.  It's time. 

Maybe it is a generational thing, I hear OCF's VCR still flashes 12:00

For the record, I don't "hate Twitter."  I even have an account.  I don't use it very much, though.  I just don't think it's always a very reliable way to get accurate information.  It is very easily manipulated by the source and certainly isn't as reliable as a face-to-fact interview.  As a supplement to other ways of gathering information it does have some utility, but a story based solely on someone's tweet, as this one appears to have been, is about as accurate as your typical Wikipedia entry.  I refer to the latter as the "ever semi-accurate Wikipedia."  

I'm surprise that the conversation that sprang from this post is about Twitter, and not the part where a former Bobcat that we lie to tout when recruiting future Bobcats, is turning about to be a bust.

Fascinating story.  I am not at all surprised by any of it (Mitchell not being worth a 2nd round pick, Al Davis getting in the coaches way, etc)