Athletes Tweeting Isn’t The Problem, The Media Is

We’ve seen it before: Someone you know logs onto Twitter and uses the social media platform to tell you about their day. This may include people that they saw, things that bother them, or their opinion on a subject that happened to them. Simply put, Twitter becomes their diary.

When your average John Doe rants on Twitter, it seems “normal” and you typically will keep scrolling through your timeline, but what happens when people in the public eye do it? Then do we keep scrolling? Or pay attention and take notes?

We take notes, definitely. In fact, many of us love it and try to find other tweets from the user having to do with whatever they’re complaining about. With the growth of American “celebritism” over the last decade or so, many people are categorized as being famous. We have singers and actors and YouTubers and stylists and people that are famous for being famous. But then we have the unspoken celebrities, with perhaps some of the hardest jobs. I’m talking about professional athletes.

Professional athletes have a certain etiquette to maintain on and off the field or court. While on the field, it is important to maintain sportsmanship, and remember that people either all over the world or country are watching you play the game you love.

Over the years we have seen some physical and verbal altercations on the NFL field,  either between two players, a coach and a referee, or a coach and a player. But disputes in person last a matter of minutes, and then the game goes on and the commentators return to reporting the game.

But now we have social media, and these once petty fights continue behind a phone, tablet or computer screen. Most recently, former NFL player Derrick Ward, friend to recent release from the Philadelphia Eagles DeSean Jackson, went on a 20 tweet rant about how poorly ESPN reported on the release, as the network included that there was speculation Jackson had ties to gangs. Though I have never personally met Ward, it is safe to say he took the “gang” comments about Jackson to heart, emphasizing that the analysts don’t really know him, and should not be talking about “crap they have no idea about”.

Many fans were upset about Jackson’s release, as it even became a trending topic on Twitter. But it was Ward’s “rant” that caught the attention of sports sites like Bleacher Report. So what will happen now that his thoughts are out on Twitter forever? Though Ward is a retired player, will his diss to ESPN’s analysis cause a retaliation from the network?

Sometimes I do wonder how athletes handled their disagreements with news organizations and other aspects of being in the public eye before social media. I know that they did something, but I was too young to be interested. And now I sit here, and I go onto ESPN.com and I wonder how accurate the reporting is – simply because the athletes that they write about have a chance to voice their own opinions elsewhere.

I think that one of the reasons we are so involved in the lives of actors and athletes alike is because the reporting  of the sports industry is no longer just about sports. Granted, throughout the history of sports there have been scandals of affair, substance abuse and sometimes a tap into the athletes’ personal lives, but never have we gotten so close, so personal, to our heroes. For the first time, we do not have just ESPN of FOX Sports telling us “Iman Shumpert’s rep is telling us that he will be okay after his knee injury tonight”, but we have the Knick himself turning to Twitter to let his fans know that he is going to be alright. It’s truly a mind-blowing aspect of the digital age.

But recently, over the last year or so, we are truly seeing athletes get burned for remarks on social media – especially linking to the public coming out of some professional and NCAA athletes. I understand that publicly announcing that you don’t agree with football players being gay is not the most polite thing, as we saw when Mississippi State’s Rufus Warren tweeted: “I don’t have a problem with gay people – be happy! But I look down on gay football players. This is a MAN sport. And being gay is not a man”, but I do think that he is entitled to his opinion, regardless of his profession.

He later apologized for the tweet, saying that it was not a representation of his school or teammates, but he did not apologize for his beliefs. But then again, why should he? I believe in the freedom to believe whatever you want, be whoever you want to be, and say whatever you want to say. But being in the public eye as a professional athlete can definitely be stressful, and remove that right for many people.

So while I don’t have a set argument for whether or not athletes should be able to say how they feel on Twitter without the entire world judging them as athletes for it, I do believe that they are people first and athletes second. They should be allowed to freely express themselves on social media in the same sense that Kim Kardashian is allowed to expose her body on Instagram as a mother and say that she is proud of who she is. Athletes should be proud too, and should not be penalized for the words that they write on social media, even if we don’t agree with them.