Kentucky, Louisville athletes have to watch what they tweet

By Chuck Schilken

Aug. 22, 2012 12 AM PT

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube ... they’re all great, aren’t they? Anything that just happens to be on your mind, you can just put it out there for all to see.

Unless you happen to be, say, a female tennis player at the University of Louisville who wants to profess her love for Track 5 ofGuns N’ Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction” on Facebook.

Or a Cardinals golfer who wants tweet about the goings-on with the Gambia National Olympic Committee but needed to use the acronym to save character space.

Or a Kentucky student-athlete with a great story to post about several friends who all happen to share the name Benjamin.

Or a fellow Wildcat looking to use YouTube to show a clip of a certain ‘70s rock band’s appearance on “What’s Happening!!”

All those people might be out of luck. According to an interesting article in the Louisville Courier-Journal, “Mr. Brownstone” and “GNOC” are among the 406 words or phrases that trigger an alert sent to coaches of certain sports (football and men’s basketball programs are not among them) if a Louisville student-athlete attempts to use them on their social media accounts.

(“Mr. Brownstone” is both a GNR song and a drug reference; GNOC, it turns out, is also slang for an inappropriate online activity).

The words “Benjamins” and “Doobie” are among words that are flagged for all student-athletes at the University of Kentucky. A lot of the outlawed were are no-brainers, such as names of sports agents or references to drugs, alcohol and other behaviors the schools don’t want their athletes associated with.

There’s also a lot of slang, including the seemingly innocent word “pony,” which is another drug reference in addition to a cute little horsey.

Kentucky had flagged the words “Muslim” and “Arab,” but said they would no longer do so after being questioned by the Courier-Journal. Another curious word on the list is “gay.”

But as a general rule, student-athletes at those schools will be fine on social media as long as they choose to discuss nice, wholesome topics. Unless those athletes’ names happen to be Jeremiah Weed or Samuel Adams — those guys might have trouble getting anything posted.

ALSO:

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