Tag: Luke Ratliff

Alabama basketball super fan Luke Ratliff, known as ‘Fluffopotamus,’ passes away at 23

Alabama super fan Luke Ratliff, also known as Fluffopotumus, passed away on Friday night due to complications with COVID-19.

This story was written by Cecil Hurt and originally appeared on TideSports.com and The Tuscaloosa News.

Luke Ratliff, 23, a  University of Alabama student and the leader of the Crimson Chaos basketball campus support group, passed away Friday night after a brief illness.

His father, Bryan Ratliff, confirmed the death Friday night.

”He was my son and my best friend,” Bryan Ratliff said. “But he had an extended Alabama family that I never met and he loved them and they loved him.”

Ratliff was in attendance at Alabama’s NCAA Tournament appearance in Indianapolis and returned to Tuscaloosa on Monday, March 29, after UA was eliminated by UCLA the night before.

The official UA athletics Twitter account posted a tribute to Ratliff on Friday night.

Ratliff was profiled in The Tuscaloosa News last month. A native of Wadesboro, North Carolina, Ratliff came to UA as a student and spent five years becoming the most visible fan at Crimson Tide basketball games, often wearing a trademark plaid blazer in the past season.

“When I came to campus my fandom exploded,” Ratliff told The Tuscaloosa News. “I’ve always had a deep appreciation for the history of Alabama basketball, and you couple that with being a student here at the university and something special happens.”

Alabama coach Nate Oats publicly thanked Ratliff on his Twitter account – referring to Ratliff by his Twitter handle, @fluffopotamus88 – and also mentioned him on his radio show.

“They’ve taken me in,” Ratliff said in his interview with The Tuscaloosa News. “They’re good people and I appreciate how close they’ve let me get with the program. I feel like I owe them something. Because I feel like I don’t deserve half the things, half the recognition, half the acknowledgement, half the accolades that I get because I’m just doing what I love.”

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Mac Jones’ dad threatens legal action against Alabama student on Twitter

Alabama QB Mac Jones’ dad step into the twitter game to call for tweets to be deleted after one of them seemingly made a joke about Mac.

After it was reported that five members of the Crimson Tide football team have tested positive for Covid-19, rumors began to swirl as to who it may be. Another report from CBS 42’s Simone Eli states that those infected consist of an offensive lineman, a couple skill position players and a quarterback.

One important name that was brought up was Alabama’s expected starting quarterback for the 2020 season, redshirt-senior Mac Jones.

One comedic twitter user that is popular among the Alabama twitter community is Luke Ratliff (@Fluffapotamus88), a 23-year old Public Relations student at the University of Alabama from Wadesboro, North Carolina. Ratliff, gives his opinions on most large stories concerning the Crimson Tide, often times from a comedic standpoint.

Ratliff quoted a report which states the positions of the infected players and included a meme commonly used by members of the Alabama football twitter community.

However, it was in a reply to Ratliff’s following tweet where Gordon Jones, Mac’s dad, decided to chime in.

“alabama quarterback mike jones,” read the tweet.

A seemingly harmless mistake or an intentional play on his name in reference to the early-2000’s rapper Mike Jones. Regardless of the circumstances, Jone’s father had seen enough.

In a now-deleted tweet that stayed up for over an hour before being taken down, Gordon Jones claimed that Ratliff’s remarks were “libelous” and “defamatory.”

He gives Ratliff the opportunity to take the tweet down before “getting into the legal aspect.”

Screengrab via Roll Tide Wire

The tweet does make it clear that Mac is not the quarterback in question that may have tested positive for the Coronavirus, but it does present the possibility of bringing legal action against Ratliff if the tweet, or tweets, are not taken down.

Because the tweet was deleted we are led to believe that he’s no longer considering presenting Ratliff with any sort of legal proceedings.

The Alabama student stood his ground and refused to delete the tweet. In fact, he edited Michael Jordan’s 1995 famous press release to make it his own.

Roll Tide Wire will keep you updated on anything new that transpires between Ratliff and Gordon Jones.