For athletes, Twitter is a powerful tool to communicate unfiltered to their fans, build a following and reinforce their brand 140 characters (or less) at a time. That means it's also a way for them to draw public scorn for controversial tweets they send in the seconds it takes for a thought to form in their brains and make its way to the fingertips on their phone.
Now we could have the first instance in which Twitter directly costs an athlete millions of dollars—and not for any actual tweets posted to his account.
The Saints and star tight end Jimmy Graham are in arbitration regarding his contract. The team wants to pay him the franchise tag for a tight end, which is worth about $7 million for a year. Graham contends he is used more like a wide receiver and so should be paid that franchise tag, which is about $12.3 million.
To make Graham's case, the players' union presented statistics to the arbitrator showing that he lined up wide in Saints' formation (traditionally a wide receiver spot) on two-thirds of snaps. To counter that, the Saints say he was drafted as a tight end, has always been listed as a tight end and—here's their smoking gun--calls himself a tight end.
This could be interesting as a philosophical study in self-identity vs. the social construction of identity. As an actual argument against paying Graham $5 million more in salary it is, of course, ludicrous.
But, just in case, I’m changing my Twitter bio to read: “Former bestselling author of biographies about supermodels. Retired.” Maybe then that will actually be true.
(Actually, come to think of it, someone actually did make a movie and sell a lot of books based on the idea that to get what you want all you have to do is think believe it will happen. Meta.)
Clearly the problem here isn’t what position the Saints or Graham consider him to play. The problem is a reward system that’s focused more on position labels (which have become more fluid than ever) than on players' actual values.
No matter what position Graham is considered to play, he’s worth $12.3 million. That's the point of the Saints placing the franchise tag on him: they knew he’d get a big deal on the free-agent market and wanted to keep him at a relative bargain. That’s their right within the collective bargaining agreement negotiated between owners and the NFLPA, which is toothless as ever.
But if the Saints actually get somewhere with the Twitter bio defense then expect a lot of players to start calling themselves All-Pro quarterbacks. George Costanza said it best: "It's not a lie if you believe it."
