Twitter brings to light

Americans are known to be crazy about sports, especially football. Therefore, it  should come as no surprise that on January 7th, 2013, most Americans were gathered around their flat-screen TVs watching Alabama destroy Notre Dame at the BCS National Championship football game. It's also no surprise that Twitter was blown up that night by millions tweeting about the game, and for weeks following, about the game's outcome, and scandals of the game. 

One such scandal, was Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend. During the game, the sad story of the linebacker from Notre Dame was told:  Manti Te'o had lost both his grandmother and girlfriend within 24 hours of each other. It turned out that the girlfriend in the sad story was nothing more than a hoax! My Twitter feed skyrocketed with tweeters giving their opinions and taking their stabs at Manti Te'o, and quickly filled with stories from ESPN and USA Today on the scandal. 

But I noticed a different "scandal" that arose on twitter that night and over the next few days between Alabama's quarterback, AJ McCarron, and UGA's quarterback, Aaron Murray. During the game, AJ McCarron's girlfriend was shown several times, and the commentators made many comments on her good looks. Brent Musberger, one of the commentators, took more than enough time gaulking over her and recommended that "little boys in Alabama start throwing a football with pop" so that they can get a pretty girl like her.  His girlfriend, Katherine Webb, just happens to be Miss Alabama, and actually isn't even an Alabama fan, but an Auburn fan! In the middle of the game, UGA's quarterback tweets:

This one tweet got 10,499 retweets and 4,264 favorites, as well as many replies.

Just moments after that tweet, this pops up on twitter :

One of the many replies to Aaron's tweet was by AJ McCarron himself  shortly after he won his second title and Alabama's 15th title overall.

Ouch. But, hey, he had it coming. As you can see, AJ McCarron's tweet had 8,239 retweets and 5,348 favorites.

In the end, ESPN's commentator, Brent Musberger received so much criticism for his comments on Katherine that he was forced to issue a public apology.  AJ McCarron was followed by Donald Trump, and Katherine Webb now has almost twice as many followers as her superstar boyfriend, and more than three times as many as Aaron Murray.

Twitter brings to light the news, scandals, and controversy in a matter of seconds for the whole world to follow.  Not much gets thrown over the rug with Twitter and even the smallest of things can be blown out of proportion. For some its great publicity, but others are not so fortunate; just ask Manti Te'o