With nasty tweet, Argos’ player goes from “offensive lineman” to just plain “offensive”
When in transit, most celeb tweeters entertain their followers through cheeky comments on their surroundings or updates with lots of exclamation marks. But when Rob Murphy, offensive lineman linebacker for the Toronto Argonauts, was waiting for his train to take him to his game in Montreal last week, he joked about “smelling foreigners” at the station early in the morning, saying “They smell less offensive this way … little known fact” (fun fact: Murphy is actually an import himself—from the States). Later he complained about being tired of riding through “Frenchland.”
Coherence is obviously not required from the CFL’s tweeting policy (consider Hamilton Tiger-Cats running back Jesse Lumsden‘s recent tweet: “There R a few certain things n life. #Inception will be a trending topic 4ever. I like Ice cream cake, they need to stop the bachelor shows!”) but the league and the team has fined Murphy an undisclosed amount for his indiscretion. They just added the penalties onto the other fines Murphy got for playing too dirty.
Not surprisingly, Murphy—a.k.a. @BIGMURPH56—has now blocked his Twitter feed. Since the scandal broke last week, Jeff Keeping, another Argos offensive lineman, has admitted to feeling wary of tweeting. “Within 12 hours of having it, I was thinking about getting rid of it,” he told the Montreal Gazette.
• League, Argonauts fine Murphy for ‘inappropriate comments’ [Globe and Mail]
• Players on Twitter: ‘You never know who’s watching’ [Montreal Gazette]
UPDATED: August 4, 10:18 a.m.
in the future please get someone that knows football to write football stories……….there is no such position as “offensive linebacker”
And another football fact: Jesse Lumsden hasn’t played for the Ti-Cats since 2008. He was released from the Eskimos in the spring and is still shopping around for a team.