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Is the world of Twitter getting out of hand? The big news this week seems to be the tweets of Randall Cobb about his Red Lobster experience (posted here first, by the way, by our own Scott Anderson). When I read the tweet, I honestly didn’t see anything inflammatory about it, more sarcasm that seriousness (there was never any real danger of the team boycotting Red Lobster). The whole thing has kind of blown up, but is this the first time an athlete’s tweet has gotten them in hot water? Certainly Cobb’s faux pas is lightweight compared to other athlete’s ‘indiscretions’.
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Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice had to apologize for an ‘anti-homosexual’ post that was, well, aggressive to say the least. Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Dan Ellis had to shut down his twitter account due to backlash from some tweets about an NHL paycut and a specific tweet to Reggie Bush about the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement. Even the recent Ines Sainz tweet from the NY Jets locker room caused a stir in the entire NFL community and among groups for women in sports journalism.

What’s the answer? Some athletes are taking it upon themselves to cover their butts. I was going to check on Derrick Locke’s twitter account this afternoon and I got a message that read “This person has protected their tweets.” Good for you Derrick. Some teams have taken the initiative to protect their players from themselves. Twitter was officially banned from Football players at Texas Tech last year after a series of tweets from the players including this gem “Wondering why I’m still in this meeting room when the head coach can’t even be on time to his on [sic] meeting.”

See, it could be a lot worse, I think we should cut Cobb some slack and get back to the business at hand: Gator Hatin’. Go Cats!