I'm sure most of you out there hang on every word I write and, as such, will remember a couple of jokes I've slipped in here or there about the worlds newest form of communication, Twitter. It's how we followed the turbulent saga between Jeremy Shockey and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus. Rosenhaus also used Twitter to tell the world that Dan Morgan would be retiring...again. It even made headlines as recently as yesterday when Ocho Cinco announced he would be tweeting from the sidelines next season. But I can't really knock it. It's was pretty darn cool to be able to give you all live updates from minicamp just by using my crappy cell phone and CSC's Twitter account (and MtnExile).
Whether we like it or not, more and more athletes are using Twitter to express themselves and it's changing the way fans get their information. Personally, I like it. It's a way for them to communicate with the outside world in a more personal manner and more importantly, in their own words. No reporter needed. And because of the inherent nature of Twitter and its system of "following", athletes can feel safe knowing no personal information is provided beyond what they tweet. In fact, it's sometimes difficult to tell whether a Twitter account really belongs to a certain person or not.
Judging by the results of a poll I posted in May, I'm thinking many of you guys out there are not very active in the Twitter community but if you really want to make sure you know everything that's going on in Who Dat Nation, you really should be following the players who have Twitter accounts. If that isn't enough to convince you, don't worry. You know I'm still on it. That's why I was pretty surprised when Shockey tweeted this the other day:
thx chad houser our long snapper for losing my coaches ,teamates, and me around 2mill$.. what a dumb ---...you think your buying LA film tac creits. but the --- snapper didnt... wow this is a --- up world we live in
But I wasn't the only one surprised by Shockey's statements. Even Jeff Duncan seemed to take an interest in Shockey's off-the-cuff remarks by tweeting this from his personal Twitter account:
Going to weigh-in on the Houser case in tomorrow's Times-Pic, hopefully with a little more tact than Shockey did yesterday via Twitter.
Duncan did weigh-in later last night and even used Shockey's tweets to support his argument that the Kevin Houser release most certainly was in connection with the tax credit fiasco and may very well have been in the teams best interest from a locker room chemistry stand point. That's cool. I can accept that. Payton, and perhaps the other players, shouldn't have mixed other business with business but because they did the organization just lost a pretty darn good long snapper. It sucks but there ain't nothing anyone can do about it now.
So we've supposedly got a bit clearer picture about what really happened behind the release of Kevin Houser last week and it's all thanks to Shockey's big mouth. We didn't need a Times-Pic article. All we really needed was some common sense, a little intuition and a loud-mouthed tight end who is unaffraid to speak his mind and knows his way around a keyboard...sort of. In fact, Shockey's tweets seemed to be the only real truth ever revealed regarding the Houser situation and they were made public for everyone to read, fans and reporters alike. Truth-seekers such as myself must love what Twitter hath wraught.
So buckle up because the times they are a-changin'. And the timing couldn't be better. With Payton running such an incredibly tight ship and the media affraid to get the real dirt, there is still one frontier still not settled and it gives Saints fans an inside source as good as any other while cutting out the middle man. Thy name is Twitter and it will be fun while it lasts. Keep 'em coming JShock!