Washington State Football Coach Bans Team From Twitter

Washington State Univ. football coach Mike Leach on Tuesday made the decision "to ban his players" from Twitter "effective immediately," according to Christian Caple of the Spokane SPOKESMAN-REVIEW. Leach said, "Quite frankly, if after today you see anything on Twitter from our team, and I don’t care if it says, ‘I love life,’ I would like to see it because I will suspend them.” WSU AD Bill Moos on Tuesday said that "some 'vulgar' tweets written by WSU players had been brought to his attention earlier in the day, but that he didn’t address the matter with Leach." Moos: "I fully understand this is the youth of today and so forth, but we have to have our attention and focus on building a football program here, and our players need to have that as their priority." He added that WSU student-athletes "were required to attend a social media presentation last week." Moos: "(Some tweets) do not portray the image of what I want our athletes to portray." Caple noted Leach has a Twitter account "with 39,345 followers, but it’s mostly used for promotion purposes." Leach has said that he "doesn’t usually operate the account himself" (Spokane SPOKESMAN-REVIEW, 10/24).

NOT WORTH THE RISK: In Charlotte, Scott Fowler noted NFL Panthers QB Cam Newton is not on Twitter. Newton, speaking hypothetically, said, "The social media world has turned into ... they want to hear about [WR] Steve Smith or [RB] Jonathan Stewart drunk on North Tryon, rather than, 'He's on North Tryon giving away turkeys.' One wrong tweet to the wrong person could lead to so much." Newton added, "I think if you do 10 tweets -- you do nine amazing tweets they still don't outweigh the one bad tweet a person may send off. You may send an ex-girlfriend your real feelings on how you feel and she sends it to TMZ or sends it to the Charlotte Observer" (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 10/25).