Ohio State football’s Twitter account posted a tweet early on Thursday, with the message “Silence the white noise” ahead of Saturday night’s matchup at Penn State, where the Nittany Lion fans plan on doing a white-out.
The tweet showed wide receiver Austin Mack “shushing” and the word “silence” was above him.
You have to be living under a rock to not know just how tone-deaf that tweet was. It has since been deleted.
After the scandal surrounding Urban Meyer and his alleged cover-up of domestic abuse by former wide receivers coach Zach Smith, it is amazing to think no one stopped this tweet from going out, but it happened nonetheless, and had to be deleted after severe backlash.
Initially, the university defended the tweet, saying the message was “directed to our team to play really well to silence an incredible whiteout crowd at Penn State.”
While that is probably true, it still does not excuse the fact that nobody thought the tweet may be received poorly, given the media circus that was the investigation on Urban Meyer. Now that the tweet has been defended and removed, Ohio State University’s official Twitter account released a statement Thursday afternoon.
As we have done in the past and in preparation for Saturday’s game, we issued a message to our fans via the football social media outlets. The message has been interpreted in ways we absolutely did not intend, and we have removed it from our channels.
— Ohio State Buckeyes ? (@OhioStAthletics) September 27, 2018
“As we have done in the past and in preparation for Saturday’s game, we issued a message to our fans via the football social media outlets” read the tweet, “The message has been interpreted in ways we absolutely did not intend, and we have removed it from our channels.”
Between the committee that investigated Meyer, the university, and Meyer himself, Ohio State has issued more statements than anyone can count. College football fans outside of Columbus will certainly be pulling hard for James Franklin and Penn State on Saturday night.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Lucas is a digital reporter for 104.5 The Zone in Nashville, and a high school play-by-play broadcaster. Lucas has been covering SEC football for Saturday Down South since 2018.
