A tweet from the account of football coach Pat Fitzgerald sent the Twitter world into a frenzy Friday. The tweet about New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin, who is Asian-American, was seemingly complimentary, but critics said the tweet was racist and disrespected the NBA.
“Officially on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon. There’s finally an NBA player who plays hard and says the right things off the court,” the tweet read. The media firestorm following ESPN’s post about the tweet did not slow when the message was deleted.
Doug Meffley, the director of social media for the Northwestern athletic department, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the tweet was actually sent by Cody Cejda. The director of football operations accidentally logged into Fitzgerald’s account instead of his own account and posted the tweet. Meffley wrote in a statement to the daily that “Cody’s tweet was meant as a compliment to Lin and not in disrespect to anyone.”
The account belongs to Fitzgerald, but Cejda has access to the account for compliance and recruiting purposes. Cejda does occasionally tweet from the account, but Meffley said Fitzgerald does the majority of the tweeting.
“He’s pretty open about it,” Meffley told the Sun-Times. “And he’s pretty proud of it.”
The ramifications of the ordeal will be discussed in the coming weeks in addition to a reformation of the department’s social media policy. Meffley also wrote, “We currently are working on making our social media policy all-encompassing to cover staff, coaches and student-athletes in one document. I am sure we will take a look at this during the process.”
