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Big East Twitter (now known as X) was pretty vocal — and split — on how it viewed Ed Cooley’s decision to leave Providence for fellow conference rival Georgetown last spring. The move was controversial. There was certainly a division
among fans from both programs on the move.
In the last week, a documentary — “Divine Providence ” — came out through an X account called “Big East Films” that documented Cooley’s move to Georgetown.
The documentary is over an hour long, featured several interviews with people connected to both Providence and Georgetown and addressed several controversial topics — including one person claiming that Cooley was involved in an affair during his time at Providence.
Since then, the “Big East Films” account on X has been taken down and a DePaul fan has come out taking responsibility for both the account and documentary: “BlueDemonDegen (BDD).”
On Monday, Big East fans came out to rally in support of BDD after they revealed private X messages from college basketball reporter Jeff Goodman, threatening BDD with potential jail time and that Goodman was going to try to track him down in the offseason.
“How do you look in orange?” Goodman messaged BDD.
“You are a bad human being!!” another message read from Goodman.
All that and more was revealed to the world on Monday in an extensive thread posted on BDD’s X account.
“Today’s been weird because I’ve been working,” BDD said during a 25-minute phone interview. “I work 8-5 today. I had to do all this s*** outside of my job, and I go back and try to focus on my job and couldn’t because my phone would be absolute dust every two seconds. A lot of support mainly. I’ve seen a lot of anti-Goodman comments and a lot of people in solidarity.”
Goodman initially reached out to BDD 52 minutes after the documentary was released saying that he “loved it” and asked BDD to reveal his real name. Afterwards, Goodman turned to threatening and insulting BDD privately on X.
“The DMs were bullying,” BDD said. “I didn’t even really want to release them when he sent them. It was when the “Big East Films” account went down, I thought I better tell the story or whatever because people want to know, and people are throwing accusations around.”
Goodman did not immediately respond for comment.
Blue Demon Degen, who asked to stay anonymous for this interview, is a DePaul grad with a background in film. They decided to pursue making this documentary about Providence and Cooley in August. They then teased the idea about the documentary publicly last month and received a good amount of support.
Their goal and intention behind this film was not to make any money, according to BDD.
“Everyone, including me, went through this incredible saga last year that started in roughly late 2022 and it’s still ongoing,” BDD said. “This is an incredible story. That’s really all it was. This would be an incredible documentary, somebody should make this and it came to me pretty quickly that I should probably make this.”
In the last 12 hours, the documentary has received over 30,000 views on YouTube and has been promoted by several prominent social media people — including the owner and creator of Barstool, Dave Portnoy.
While the film goes on to accuse Cooley of multiple controversial issues, BDD said that neither he nor does his documentary endorse any of those claims.
This was a one-person show to conduct all the interviews, produce the video and release it to the public. Most of the work making the documentary was done on Premiere — which is why some of the audio might have seemed wonky, according to BDD.
“This is all me,” BDD said, “except for the narrator where I found online and he knocked it out of the park. I mean, I had to pay him a little bit, but he absolutely killed it, and that upped the production value so much that it could mask that this isn’t one guy coming home after work and doing this thing on his laptop,”
Each interview for the film took approximately 45 minutes, according to BDD. He reached out to journalists, prominent college basketball media members and fans from both Providence and Georgetown.
“I didn’t start the Premiere project until two weeks before it came out on the 22nd,” they said. “That Monday, two weeks before that Monday, was when I started actually editing in Premiere, and I just kind of did it every single day. That weekend before it came out, I was up at four in the morning — lots of coffee, lots of energy.”
Goodman told BDD privately that he has a good source that he will be getting sued for making the “Divine Providence” documentary. Last week, Goodman’s Field of 68 partner — Rob Dauster — replied to a tweet from BDD with an unrelated message of, “You should be more focused on hiring an attorney tbh.”
BDD revealed both on X and in the interview that they think they know who Goodman's source is, but declined to name that source.
“I’ve had a lot of lawyers reach out and be like, ‘f*** that man, yeah, if you ever need anything, reach out,”’ BDD said.
It’s been a whirlwind of a day for BDD. Initially when Goodman messaged BDD about them potentially getting sued or having to go to prison, he was worried.
“Then I thought about it for maybe two seconds and I’m like, ‘well I don’t think he has any grounds. Why is Jeff Goodman DMing me? Is his legal team pissed off?’ I didn’t understand that connection. After I told some people, they are like, ‘he’s got nothing.”’
There has been a ton of support coming out for BDD following his X thread and showcasing Goodman’s messages. Most of the people supporting BDD have also come out criticizing Goodman and Dauster.
“Rob and Jeff, they kind of have this gatekeeping mentality about content on Twitter where it’s like a drug cartel kind of thing,” BDD said. “That’s like their territory, and if you step on their turf, they will take you down or whatever.”
Although the “Big East Films” X account has been taken down, the YouTube video still remains up and has nearly 60,000 views. According to BDD, if the Big East conference had an issue with the documentary, they could have already DMCA’d the video and had it removed from YouTube.
EDITORS' NOTE: As of Tuesday Morning (January 30th), "Divine Providence" is no longer available on YouTube.
BDD initially hoped to release 11 of these videos for all the programs in the Big East. But now with the X account being removed and scrutiny coming from several prominent college basketball media members, they aren’t sure about the future of these documentaries.
“Doing 10 [documentaries], plus fighting the conference and a couple of journalists — and other people — is not very appealing to me,” they said. “I didn’t make this to piss people off or stir the pot. I just made them because it was a good story. So, if I have to fight people and make the docs, I’m probably out. I would love to make 10 more documentaries.”