You are probably right.

All this makes me chuckle a bit.

First, it's unfortunate these young men made the decisions they made. Hopefully sound minds will prevail and appropriate punishment will come and lessons will be learned by all.

But there are murders that happen daily by teenagers in our country, and I challenge anyone to find a forum with 17 pages worth of opinions in regards to those crimes.

In short, it is what it is. Bad decisions are made daily. Do the best you can, through action w/ authorities who can actually impose. If appropriate action isn't taken per the law, challenge authorities with the law and action. Social media opinions will get one nowhere and cause more harm than needed in the situation.

Lastly, those who are assuming these boys cheated in the past through their THSBA placements or their jackpot placements are out of line. Is there a chance, of course. But just the same chance of someone else doing such who just hasn't been caught yet. Stop assuming with no evidence and stating it as fact. That's a crime too.

Peace Out!

If the murderer was on video committing the crime, admitted to it afterward, and the DA chose to not take action.......there would be more than 17 pages. See how ridiculous your example is? I think Jpurdue nailed it and all of the backlash is on TPWD heads. If they would've pursued the charge and faced legal consequences for their actions it would not be as huge of a deal in most minds.

N2Bass this is a fishing forum so you should expect for people getting caught cheating in a bass tournament to have this information show up on the fishing forum.

You may have to go to the Texas murderers forum to get the latest lowdown on 18 year old murderers

Kudos to the mods for allowing his thread to keep going. The law may not pursue charges against the cheaters but at least this thread will serve as evidence of their actions for a very long time and hopefully deter others.

He’s 100% right.

Yes, I agree that TPWD would not be getting bad press over this had they taken some type of action other than dropping all charges. As far as the young men involved, they would still be getting talked about on the Internet no matter what direction things went. Cheating in bass tournaments always brings this type of social media reaction. Cheating in bass tournaments pisses people off and they are going to express their opinions about it online.

What's done is done! They are kids! They have earned a label that will follow them for a long time. Should they be able to earn there way back? Yes but it would be a long hard road and they would be questioned all the time. Best way for them would be never fish another tournament together. They should ask some veteran fisherman for advise and probably just fish as co anglers so there is a unbias witness until they can mature and learn from the mistake. Mom and Dad should sell the boat and let them work and save there way into another one if that's what they want to do. Like others though if u ever screw up again they should banned for good from tournaments.

100% correct. The internet and social media backlash on this story is quite honestly out of control. I was pretty shocked by some of the things I saw on facebook last night related to this topic. No matter what the keyboard warriors say, these are still minors. They are teenagers that made a mistake. Personally, I'm not ok with all the adults plastering the pictures of these kids all over social media. Post their names, tell the story, make sure all the tournament directors know who they are, etc. I'm good with all that. However when you take it to the point of digging through their social media and posting it on other pages that is just simply taking it to far. My wife is a teacher and we have had to deal with more than one situation where a kid has been shamed on social media for one reason or another. Many times when you combine the teenage mind with mass social media shaming things can take a very dark turn. I think it's time for everyone to take a deep breath on this one.

I agree , some of these comments on Facebook are crazy. I am concerned that this affects the kids in other ways besides just not getting to fish. You see it time and time again where things take a turn for the dark side and I really hope this isn’t the case because these kids are being hammered.

Lol. Sounds like there's a lot of folks who need to run for office as the local judge!

And this is why social media platforms have been proven over and over that they can lead to depression and other issues. Too many care too much about who is on the other side of this screen and not about themselves. The mere fact that it was said they were snapchatting their "Catches" during the tournament proves this point. If so many young people weren't so worried about impressing people they do not know, they may not be so inclined to do things that may lead them to trouble.... like cheating.

I will not condone what was done by these teens. But now I'm at a point that watching these threads, the posts on FB, and everywhere else, it's gone too far. These kids will be mentally scarred for years if not life. Which in some right, is warranted. But some of the hateful things being said, even an adult would find hard. Posting their school pictures was the point of no return.

I have a feeling, we're going to see this come back around to those posting photos, etc.

No one is going to win on this.

There were multiple bad decisions made over multiple days, that they even slept on. They had plenty of time to know what they were doing was wrong and fix it. And yet they continued to take the low road and got caught.

Yep, we don't want any of their photos posted here. I think the photo above is from another incident that happened with a different person. If I am wrong, please let me know so we can pull the photo.