The 21st Century Athlete

I'm a few days late on this, but something hit me on Monday night, several hours after Blaine Gabbert had declared his intentions to enter into the 2011 NFL Draft. No, not the fact that Gabbert had decided to forego his senior year at the University of Missouri, or the fact that he was more than likely going to be the first Missouri QB since the late 60's to be a first round draft pick. It was something that happened just a day earlier in the Twitter world. Gabbert was berated endlessly by, what can only be concluded from his comments, a low-life Mizzou fan who not only criticized his play, but his personal life as well.

Gabbert probably gave the anonymous tweeter exactly what his low-self esteemed ego was yearning for by linking his profile in one of his tweets. Tweeting sarcastically, "Classy tweet of the week. Everyone look at (the aforementioned person's) tweets." (I refuse to give the actual profile name of the person, because he doesn't deserve the recognition and is merely a small, pathetic portion of my bigger overall point.)

Predictably, many of Gabbert's more than 8,000 followers tried to give the poster a bit of his own medicine, to which he gladly welcomed and threw an insult back, seemingly all referring to race or assumed sexuality. (He called guys fags and told them they like anal sex and called girls whores, etc.) I was not at all surprised by this and my own personal sexuality came into question by this "dude" when I retweeted Gabbert's post and called it "utterly pathetic," to which he responded to by insinuating that I liked anal sex. (I think due to the fact that I am wearing a pink Ralph Lauren button-down shirt that my girlfriend, excuse me, "boyfriend" bought me.)

Anyway, this whole situation got me thinking, not about my sexuality, (not that there's anything wrong with that) but rather,  the "21st century athlete" that has become much more accessible to fans through the power of social networking. Even as recent as the early 2000's athletes personal lives were much more hidden and their only accessibility to fans was three-dimensionally. Nowadays nearly every athlete, college or pro, has a Twitter page to which fans can tell these athletes exactly what they think of them. This opens up the type of comments that were directed toward Gabbert, because they are much easier to make when hiding behind a computer screen, instead of in person.

In my personal opinion, Gabbert went about this the wrong way and should have just ignored the ass-hole. But then again, he's a 21-year-old college kid and some "dude" was saying some disturbing and derogatory things about his girlfriend. It's not easy for any guy, especially at that age, to ignore that kind of thing. Some people and many coaches frown upon college athletes, such as Gabbert, having a Twitter account, for exactly the situation discussed above. But guess what? They're in college and all of their friends and peers have one and like them, they probably started their Facebook or Twitter account in high school, before they became the highlight of other people's lives, sadly.

Technology and innovation has brought about a change in the way people communicate and how they are able to interact with the athletes they follow. Unfortunately, I don't think this has been a good thing, because for every 100 decent people that tweet Gabbert a compliment, there are 10 others that attack him and his personal life. I think all of us, if put in the same situation, could tell you which one effects them more.