Immediately following the death of Osama Bin Laden, The World's Public Enemy #1, in the middle of all the celebrating on TV in the news, Rashard Mendenhall made some odd comments on his twitter account. They were so controversial that the Pittsburgh Steelers had to "distance" themselves from him and Champion, a sports apparel company whom Mendenhall endorsed, fired him.
Other athletes have had some hard lessons learned due to what they have said on Twitter as well. We could talk all day about the dumb things that people say, athletes or not.
The fact of the matter is, high profile athletes should be VERY careful what they say on a all access, public forum. Anyone can read the tweets from anywhere in the world. Journalists quote athletes and politicians from their twitter accounts more and more these days.
Imagine if there was a twitter when Babe Ruth played... IMAGINE the things he would say! I am sure the Yankees would be "distancing" themselves all day long... The Tigers would surely have to fire Ty Cobb for his Twitter comments if he played today and had a Twitter account.
People feel like they are "closer" to the athletes the watch on TV because the get to read the micro-blogs of these people. Honestly... That's exactly why I started a twitter account. I followed everyone from Reggie Bush to many of the Owners and General Managers of teams because I thought I was going to get the "inside scoop" on things. Well, Owners and GMs are smart enough to not tweet insider info and many athletes are too dumb to know when to stop typing. Sometimes 140 characters is more than enough for people to realize just how dumb you are.
An interesting note... Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.. no twitter accounts! Surprised? I'm not! They are smarter than that!
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