UK Player Twitter Accounts: Should we be making a big deal about what the players tweet?

A couple of days ago, Josh Harrellson became the latest victim of what is rapidly becoming known around sports as “Twittergate”. Harrellson had a monster 26 rebound game in the Blue/White game on Monday Night and was not pleased by coach John Calipari’s comments after the game. As we know, Calipari downplays everything so he made a comment that UK must be one of the worst rebounding teams and jokingly attributed Harrellson’s performance to that. Harrellson, upset about the comments, fired off a couple of twitter comments expressing his frustration and then realizing that was not a good idea, took the posts off his page.

But that was not the end of the story. Seeing that this is the electronic age, a lot of people had these comments sent to their cell phone or on other devices where it was not removed by Harrellson deleting it, and a story was born. Some sites had the screen grabs of Harrellson’s comments and they posted it. Other sites merely transcribed the posts and voila! Instant controversy. Coach Cal could not allow these negative stories and he suspended Harrellson from his Twitter account.

A couple of weeks prior to this, Randall Cobb created a similar maelstrom when he blasted some of UK fan’s following UK’s loss to Auburn.   As with Harrellson, Cobb retracted the tweets, had the mandatory meeting with the coach, but Joker Phillips allowed Cob to keep tweeting, but probably with a stern reminder to watch what he tweets. Cobb also issued a formal apology via an interview.  I found it interesting that the Cat’s Pause brought the Cobb Twittergate matter from the computer and published a story about it in the paper edition of TCP.

And lest we forget, there was a mini controversy a few months ago about the colorful verbiage used by Darius Miller.

Now, that is making something out of nothing.

Folks, I follow the Twitter accounts as much as anyone and yes, I have posted articles on what certain players have tweeted.  It’s a fascinating way to get insight on what the players are thinking without the filter of the UKAA editing what is said.  And yes, on more than a few occasions I have arched my eyebrows at some of the tweets that have been sent and muttered “Well, I would not have released that”, but did no really think about hopping on the computer and firing off a missive bashing the player for it (unless your name is Tony Wroten).

Let’s get real.  The players that we follow so fervently are 18-22 kids already under a huge microscope.  Should we add the sunlight to to that microscope to burn the players for what they say?  For one, I think that in 90% of the cases, the players twitter accounts are much adieu about nothing.  Sure, it’s a way to get into your favorite players worlds and see what they are thinking … but most of a players twitter accounts now consist of shout outs to their friends or answering questions that other people have asked them on twitter.  So I can see how these slip ups happen.  They players are talking to their friends, get frustrated about something and wham! … they send out the message and are unable to retract it.

I have hit “Reply to all” on a work email and know that feeling when you can not retract a message.

I’m not making apologies for the players, but in all reality, when we follow a player on Twitter, we are just spectators in his world.  Once we hop in, and take some comments and make them a story, we belong intruders.

I know, I know.  These players know that thousands of people are following them and they should be more responsible.  They should know that they are representing the University of Kentucky.  I get it.  Once again, 18-22 year olds don’t think before they act.  Hell, I still don’t.

Is that a reason to take statements made on a website (and later retracted), and publish them in a newspaper, making it (in the eyes of some people) a legitimate news story?  Sorry, I don’t think so.  These kids were not conducting an interview.  There was no camera or microphone in front of them.  So I don’t necessarily thing that they should be castigated for what they say on twitter, especially when a Twitter text can be sent as easily as a text.  It takes no effort to seen a tweet, which is why it is more the current thought process.  Players get frustrated like anyone else.  But somehow I think we should regard twitter as something different than calling up a reporter and giving them a quote.

I don’t know.  That’s just me.  What are your thoughts on UK players and their Twitter accounts?  There’s a poll on the right hand side of the site to weigh in.

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