Derrell Johnson-Koulianos has a twitter account, and since he'll never be a member of the Hawkeye football team again, he's free to post whatever he wants.
Rather than continually spouting the same well-worn platitudes about working hard and never giving up -- both topics he mentions, mind you, just not anywhere near exclusively -- DJK is tweeting from the heart, to the point that the news media unable to handle an athlete not endorsing his power structure doesn't really know what to do about it. WHO's response was clever in response, at least, handing the task off to it resident humorist for some creative readings of DJK's tweets:
While more media outlets should be encouraged to editorialize on issues like this--nothing's a better accelerant for comedy than competition, after all--it sort of seems like WHO completely misses the point in order to make an easy joke.
The main idea to take from DJK's twitter feed isn't that he's incoherent. He's not. The point is that DJK is undertaking the type of public self-exploration that athletes are basically never allowed to do on account of "distraction from the team" or whatever. Yeah, some of his tweets are unusual, but so are some of mine, and so are some of those of most of the people whose opinions I greatly respect. As long as DJK isn't taking cheap shots at Kirk Ferentz or Iowa--on the contrary, he still praises the program after his own dismissal, which is an incredibly mature response--whether his thoughts on topics unrelated to Iowa football are "normal" or "usual" is of little concern to us at BHGP, and we would like to encourage him to continue speaking as freely as possible. This man is liberated! That is a wonderful place to be, intellectually! Yes, he also still faces legal action after his arrest last month, but if that invalidates everything he says in your eyes then you have more hang-ups to get over than DJK does. Your fault, not his.
We understand why active players wouldn't follow DJK's lead, of course--this is still The Good Luddite Ferentz's team, after all--but past that, if you've got things to say, just say them.
UPDATE: DJK found out, and naturally is a good sport about it.
This tweet is for soundOFF NATION ; ) #SMILEYFACE