Agony of da tweet: Athletes off-kilter without media filter

Hate Mail: Plenty of Volunteers

Twitter doesn't scare me, although that's what some of you think. You think it scares me, and sports writers like me. I know, because I get your e-mails. They go something like this:

Tough luck, loser. Athletes have Twitter, so they don't need you any more.

Wrong.

Athletes have Twitter, that's true, but they need us more than ever. They need us because of Twitter. Because somebody has to clean up their Twittered mess, and who do you think that's going to be? It's going to be the traditional media, who have always given athletes a filter, even a self-filter, that athletes have come to take for granted.

Were the hearts of Packers fans atwitter after Nick Barnett told them to kiss his, um, posterior? (Getty Images)

Not taking it for granted now, Nick Barnett, are you?

Barnett is the linebacker for the Green Bay Packers who was booed at home on Sunday and then Twitter-ranted that they can "KISS MY ASS." Barnett also Twitter-pouted about having to be part of a linebacker rotation. One day later, Barnett said he was done with Twitter, saying he was "an emotional person ... and sometimes with this Twitter thing I forget that everything is public."

This is why athletes will always need the media.

Because they're not smart enough to not need the media.

Look, very few people are smart enough to go through life with a megaphone but not a filter, and that includes the media. A few weeks ago, a columnist in California thought it would be wacky-funny to use kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard's escape -- after 18 years as a child molester's hostage -- to update Dugard on the changes in sports since she had been snatched off the street on June 10, 1991. That's a columnist who needed a filter.

Hey, so am I. In six years at CBSSports.com, I've written a few columns that never hit the Internet. They weren't kidnap-humor -- but they were inappropriate, even for me, and my boss saved me by spiking them. I then deleted those columns from my computer, removed the hard drive and broke it into a bunch of pieces. You can never be too safe.

But Twitter is dangerous. It's the athlete, unfiltered. And if ever a class of people needed a filter, it's the U.S. athlete. He is pampered and butt-kissed into thinking he is beyond reproach, convinced by the pathetic groupies and the leeching yes-men around him that every joke he says is funny and every complaint he has is legitimate. And that's all well and good -- delusional, but harmless -- until he signs up for Twitter.

Because now, he's no longer surrounded by pathetic groupies and leeching yes-men. Now he's surrounded by the whole damn world, which is how Tennessee football coach Lane Kiffin got into trouble with the NCAA after illegally Tweeting the name of a recruit on an official visit. And it's why Wisconsin's Bret Bielema has said he scouts opposing teams by reading their Twitter accounts for clues. And it's why Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love was mortified to learn that his Tweet on June 17 -- "Sad day ... Coach Kevin McHale will NOT be back as head coach" -- was a breaking news story. See, the team hadn't announced McHale's firing yet.

As Nick Barnett noted, "Sometimes with this Twitter thing I forget that everything is public."

Won't be forgetting that now, Larry Fitzgerald, will you?

Fitzgerald is the Arizona receiver who sent his brother a text message at halftime of the Cardinals' 31-17 victory Sunday against Jacksonville -- a game Arizona already was winning 24-3 -- saying he was "pissed off" that quarterback Kurt Warner wasn't throwing him enough passes. How do we know about that text message? Because Fitzgerald's brother, Marcus, helpfully tweeted about it on his Twitter account: "My brother just texted me during halftime pissed off." Before he was finished, Marcus Fitzgerald had Tweeted that "Kurt Warner plays like a damn 80-year-old ... You old ass man, throw him the damn ball!"

Scary stuff. But afraid of Twitter? Me? Not me. Not ever. And now I'm actually starting to like the stupid thing. I used to dislike Twitter because it was the new narcissism, but the more I think about it, that's an illogical reason to dislike anything. Narcissism is interesting, and interesting is good. So Twitter, by the transitive property of sports writing, is good. It's hopelessly narcissistic, but that's not my problem. That's Robert Henson's problem.

Henson is the Washington Redskins linebacker who reacted to boos at home Sunday by Twitter-sniping at fans that they are "dim wits ... who work 9 to 5 at McDonald's" and mocked fans who pointed out that he didn't actually play in the game by classily noting, "No I didn't play but I still made more than you in a year."

By the time he was done Tweeting, he was done Tweeting. Henson announced he is finished with Twitter, and he did that through the traditional media, telling it to reporters. And for the smart athlete, that's the way to go -- telling things to reporters.

For one thing, reporters tend to protect the athletes they cover. That might not sound true, but it is. On a daily basis, the beat writers who cover teams are often protective of the athletes they write about. They do it out of kindness and also out of empathy. Athletes are human, and humans make mistakes, and so reporters often do an athlete the courtesy of cleaning up or even overlooking his verbal diarrhea.

More to the point, athletes talk much differently to the media than they type on Twitter. Assuming he ever does anything worth being interviewed about, Robert Henson would never stand before a reporter and mock Redskins fans as being McDonald's employees who earn less in a year than he earns for (not) playing one game. Henson wouldn't need the media's filter to protect him from saying that, because with a reporter in front of him he would employ his own filter.

Nick Barnett knows all about a player's self-imposed media filter. After Tweeting to fans to "kiss my ass," Barnett acknowledged that Twitter had caused him let down his guard. "Sometimes I feel I am talking to my friends, and just talk," he said of Twitter.

And that was his mistake. He mistook Twitter for a friend, and Twitter is no friend. It's a spotlight into the soul -- and whose soul can handle the glare?