Twitter Fight! Peter King (sportswriter) versus Mark Cuban (wealthy sportsman, entrepreneur) ¿Quién más macho?

It started Saturday night, somewhere around 10 p.m. Central Standard Time.

I was watching the last minutes of the Florida-LSU game when I noticed that @Golflogsdon asked @SI_PeterKing if the new United Football League games would be televised.

King, a well-known football writer for Sports Illustrated, "retweeted" this question and, after an ellipse (which is the proper Twitter ettiquette) answered that HDNet would televise the game though he he didn't know what HDNet is.

The exact wording:

"RT @GolfLogsdon: Is UFL on tv anywhere? ... HD Net, whatever that is*".

@mcuban, who by all appearance is the Mark Cuban who owns the Dallas Mavericks and a lot of other stuff (though I can't be absolutely sure even though @mcuban's Twitter page does link to Mark Cuban's blog, saw the comment about HDNet and responded to @SI_King Peter with this:

"Just because you are clueless doesnt mean everyone else is Peter. Is SI still in business ?"

@SI_PeterKing "retweeted" the "clueless" comment and, with raised eyebrows, wrote:

"Nice to meet you, Mark."

Then @SI_PeterKing, after evidently pondering the exchange, tried to explicate:

"Never heard of HDNet till tonight. Sue me. I cover football, not television."

@mcuban came right back at him,

"And that justifies the condescending comment? "

@SI_PeterKing insisted innocence,

"Didn't know what it was. Said so."

***

This caused a tiny ripple in the Twitterverse.

For instance, @kylerhode (some guy in Kansas) asked @mcuban:

"got some built up hostility towards @SI_PeterKing? Honestly, only reason I know about HDNet is from reading ur blog"

@mcuban denied hostility, tweeting to @kylerhode in Kansas:

no hostility at all. I didnt even know he was still writing*. Just think he took a shot that was uncalled for.

to which @kylerhode in Kansas said to @mcuban:

Fair, but your shot back was pretty low too - the guy writes a ton for SI and is on NBC, great ambassador 4 football. Thx for reply

***

But @mcuban wasn't about to let @SI_PeterKing off the hook, asserting that @SI_PeterKing's explanation that he simply was answering a question about HDNet was more sinister than that.

@mcuban did this by tweeting:

No, you retweeted a comment to 85k. More than a few of whom recognized it for what it was and were happy to pass it on to me

Whew ... that appears to be the end of it. No further Twitter shots fired as of now. In fact, perhaps exhausted from the exchange, @SI_PeterKing and @mcuban quit tweeting the rest of night, at least publicly.

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*emphasis added
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(FYI: @SI_PeterKing has 85,945 followers; @mcuban has 105,339.

(FYI2: HDNet was started in 2001 by Mark Cuban and Phillip Garvin.)

(FYI3: Banjo Jones goes by @BanjoJones on Twitter. He has 306 followers.)