Alabama Exposed! Hey Coach Saban, looks like your 2012 recruiting class let the Championship trophy go to their heads (and Twitter accounts)!
***Editors Note: Originally published on February 29, 2012***
Over the past 6 weeks, bad behavior on Twitter has become an incredibly hot topic. Chat Sports was the first publication to ask the question of whether Twitter behavior has far reaching consequences for high profile athletes. In January, we published an article on the racy tweets that caused star football player Yuri Wright a chance to earn a football scholarship at the University of Michigan. Since then, this topic has been covered by USA Today, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, AOL, ESPN and hundreds of other websites. The topic has become very controversial, with much debate on both ends of the spectrum.
Many say that "these are just kids" and the behavior is ok, while many think that the racial and sexual tweets have consequences. In a recent poll, 58% of voters said that the athletes should be held responsible for the content on their Twitter account. As we have said in the first 4 parts of this 7 part series, tweets have consequences.
In our article on LSU recruits on Twitter, we highlighted the multiple instances of recent Twitter activity landing folks in hot water. Clearly, bad behavior on Twitter is being watched and this article will hopefully serve as a learning experience for the young men featured and put next years Alabama recruits on alert to maintain an acceptable Twitter account.
When publishing the tweets below by members of the 2012 Alabama football recruiting class, we will point out the following facts.
* Each of these recruits, on average, gave 21 interviews in the last year with MAJOR media outlets such as ESPN, Yahoo Sports or Fox Sports.
* Several of these recruits announced their college destination on national TV. * Everyone of them held a press conference to announce their college choice.
* None of the high schools they attend have formal policies on proper social media use.
Below, we give you the racy tweets from the 2012 LSU football recruiting class. (warning, contains explicit language and context)
Ryan Anderson, 4-star, #98 player nationally by Rivals
Daphne, AL Daphne High
Geno Smith, 4-star, #88 payer nationally by Rivals
Atlanta, GA St. Pius X school
Dillon Lee, 4-star, #105 player nationally by Rivals
Bufford, GA
Cyrus Jones, 4-star, #97 player nationally by
Rivals Baltimore, MD Gilmore School
Brandon Greene, 4-star, #30 player nationally by ESPN
Ellenwood, GA Cedar Grove High
Denzel Devall, 4-star, #12 player nationally by Rivals
Bastrop, LA
Deion Belue, 3-star by Rivals
Booneville, MS, Northeast MS CC
Justin Taylor, 3-star RB by Rivals
Atlanta, GA North Atlanta High
Note: Taylor was a member of the 2012 Alabama Tide football recruiting class for over 10 months, but was asked to sit out a year from football and join the 2013 class by Tide coach Nick Saban. Saban drew considerable criticism for rescinding a committed offer so late in the recruiting process. Taylor eventually signed with Kentucky. Did his tweets have anything to do with the Tide moving on from him?
Casey Gladney, 3-star WR
Columbia, SC
Gladney was committed to Alabama for almost 8 months before deciding to switch his commitment to Texas Tech on national signing day on 2/1/2012
Follow the 2012 Tide recruiting class on Twitter:
Further reading: 2012 Top recruiting classes EXPOSED by Tweets
What other schools recruits are being exposed by Twitter?
Alex Jones, Rick Steele and Mack Ferguson contributed on this article. ***Note from the
Editor: This is obviously going to be a very controversial article. We decided to publish the middle ground of what we uncovered. For all 6 schools featured, we discovered evidence of gambling on football, drugs, alcohol on recruiting visits and mentions of improper recruiting benefits that we chose not to publish.
*** Any media requests regarding this article, please email media@chatsports.com ***
If you would like to discuss this article with out staff, please email writers@chatsports.com
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