Looking For Young Athletes' Old Tweets for Outrage Needs to Stop

Kyler Murray did not have too long to celebrate his Heisman trophy as homophobic tweets of his surfaced from six years ago. Murray has since apologized for the tweets that took place when he was 14 and 15 years old. However, the story is larger than just Murray’s situation. The media and people need to stop looking for old tweets, and trying to ruin these athletes’ names.

We live in a world now where we expect everyone to be perfect, and chastised forever for anything they have ever done. And that is the problem here as well.

Murray, like Josh Allen, Donte DiVincenzo, Josh Hader have all had their moments ruined for old tweets that were dug up. Now, nobody is making excuses for the tweets they have made. They were all awful, but the issue is people are going out of their way searching for these tweets sent by players who have now achieved fame, when they were not public figures and were under age and had not matured yet. Why?

Let’s just be real, people change and grow. These investigations on athletes’ Twitter history are weak exercises done by people who want something to be mad at. Let me ask you this, who really gained for bringing up old tweets of Murray’s last night? Did anyone really benefit by taking his moment away from him and feel justice because of something he wrote six years ago? No.

Here’s what our Jason Lisk wrote when the DiVincenzo tweets came to light shortly after his championship game performance:

"I can tell you that as a parent, handling and navigating a 14-year-old has been one of the most challenging years when it comes to kids. (Between 9 and 11 is pretty much the sweet spot where they can do things for themselves but are still kids). Middle school is this giant petri dish of drama, puberty, and figuring out boundaries and how to act. I’ve had to have plenty of discussions with my son about what you put out there on social media, in texts, and how you interact with others. But who amongst us would want people going back and unearthing something we said or did as an 8th grader? I am not the same person I was then, at all."

People today want to be mad, and this is just another way from them to be mad. To reiterate, they are looking for these tweets. Imagine spending your Saturday night looking through old tweets of a stranger.

What really gets me is that the ones that are finding these tweets are not owners, teams, or coaches. It would make some sense if those subjects wanted to take a deeper dive into one’s history, but that is not the case. It is being done by random people on Twitter and the media choosing to blow it up. They are doing it to hurt these athletes, and that is that. Luckily the people doing these searches have never said anything they regret.

There is also little to no context in these social media history investigations either. Again, I am not saying these tweets are okay, but what people say at 14 and 15 needs context around it. At that age, it is safe to say not everyone who uses these terms are doing it with malicious intent or even know the real meaning of these words. Not to mention, you don’t thank anyone of these people has grown out of using this slang? Sure, some at that age are doing so with malicious intent, but to rush to judge that all these athletes that have an ugly twitter history are racist or homophobic is irresponsible and wrong.

When I was in high school, I would hear these terms in the hallways daily. They were awful, but some of the same people that were using them would never use them today.  I bet some of them do not even remember using them.

Anyone that has been found with these types of tweets should, in fact, apologize. But simultaneously those who have found and are looking for these tweets need to look in the mirror.