NU's Fitzgerald Latest Victim Of Twitter Foot-In Mouth Disease [UPDATE]

By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 13, 2012 11:00PM

Northwestern University football coach Pat Fitzgerald has a little controversy brewing over a seeming innocuous tweet complimenting the NBA's latest sensation.

Fitzgerald tweeted about New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin, after Lin torched the Lakers for 38 points Saturday night:

"There's finally a NBA player who plays hard and says the right things off the court."

The tweet has since been deleted but, thanks to the power and elephant-like memory of the internet, was retweeted enough times it became a national story. Yahoo! Sports' Graham Watson wrote:

"What may have seemed like an innocuous compliment to Lin, the Asian-American player who has certainly become the toast of New York, drew the ire of many NBA fans, who proclaimed Fitzgerald to be a racist among other things. Fans also took issue with the perceived diss of Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose, who is widely considered one of the hardest working players in the NBA and one of the overall good guys in the league."

Chicago Now's Paul M. Banks wrote the issue was "extremely embarrassing "when you’re the college football coach for 'Chicago’s Big Ten team' as the marketing slogan says, and Chicago is the home to the current NBA MVP."

While many on Twitter have taken the opposite and equally wrong instant reaction that Fitzgerald's tweet was racist, Banks wrote (and we agree) that "such a sweeping generalization is gross negligence/ignorant at best." Regardless, the whole incident will likely have Fitgerald thinking before he takes to Twitter in the future.

[Update]: Now Banks is reporting the tweet was made on Fitzgerald's feed by Cody Cejda, NU Director of Football Operations.