Larry Johnson: A Football in the Mouth

Larry Johnson is used to having it all.

He was a star running back at his hometown school, Penn State, where he rushed for over 2,000 yards his senior year. He won the both the Maxwell and Walter Camp awards recognizing him as the best player in the nation.

Drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs, he became an All-Pro running back despite clashing with his head coach who told him to "lose the diapers." As of this season, Larry Johnson is the highest paid running back in the NFL.

Yet today, Larry Johnson faces an uncertain future, all over a couple of Tweets.

Larry Johnson and the Chiefs are struggling in 2009, with a 1-5 record and Johnson failing to live up to the 45 million dollar contract the Chiefs gave him in 2007. Once again, Johnson has clashed with his coach, only this time, instead of keeping in-house, he decided to make his feelings known to the world, on his Twitter account.

“my father got more creditentials than most of these pro coaches. … google my father!!!!!!!

My father played for the coach from “rememeber the titans”. Our coach played golf. My father played for redskins briefley. Our coach. Nuthn”

And as if that weren't enough, Johnson had to start insulting fans who replied to his tweets, including using gay slurs. Telling someone they had a "fag pic" and that they were a "Christopher Street boy," a reference to the gay pride event in New York held on Christopher St.

Obviously there is the concept of invisible audiences, that you never know who is viewing your profile. Larry Johnson did not keep this in mind when he made these statements. But there is a larger concept in play here, especially in the world of sports.

It used to be that conflicts between other players or players and coaches were handled in-house. Now, there is no way for a team to control what their players say. It can quickly turn into a PR nightmare for any team, as it did for the Chiefs in this case.

Now Johnson has been suspended pending an appeal, losing $600,000 a game. There's no way he can come back to the Chiefs at this point. He turns 30 next month, and despite his talent, running backs do fade away relatively quickly. He's in danger of an early end to his career and the loss of potentially millions of dollars, and it all happened in 140 characters or less.