A sophomore on the University of Texas football team was dismissed from the squad last week after posting a racially charged comment about President-elect Barack Obama on his Facebook page, The Houston Chronicle reports.
Buck Burnette, a center for the Longhorns, posted the comment on Election Night and was released from the team on November 5. Mr. Burnette said the comment was sent to him from a friend via text message and that he made a poor decision in posting the remark to his Web page.
It appeared under the “update status” on his Facebook page and read, “All the hunters gather up, we have a [racial slur] in the White House,” referring to Mr. Obama, the nation’s first black president. Mr. Burnette has since apologized and, in a written statement, called his action a “terrible decision.”
Longhorn coach Mack Brown said he had warned his players about the dangers of posting personal information on the Internet and called Facebook and other social networking websites “really dangerous.”
During a Big 12 coaches’ conference call Monday, a survey found many other coaches share Mr. Brown’s concerns. Some universities go as far as to monitor their athletes’ pages, the newspaper reported. At the University of Oklahoma, for instance, the college’s compliance office routinely checks their athlete’s personal profiles.—David DeBolt
