Antonio Cromartie Deletes His Twitter Account

Outspoken CB on Twitter, Antonio Cromartie, has left the Twitter medium.  Last night with his final tweet, Cro announced that he was taking down his page and to have fun, and just like that pooof, he was gone.

e_man RT @ACromartie: this is last post on twitter taking my page down have fun >> well that just sucks 5/8/12 9:11 PM

I’m starting to see a trend where NFL players with large followers are leaving twitter.  Now you have to ask yourself WHY?  In the past two months I have seen former Jets Twitter King Kerry Rhodes @KerryRhodes delete his account as well as Plaxico Burress (@Plax), Matt Slauson and now Cromartie.

Te be fair, Matt was on twitter about two weeks, tried it and then quit.

One thing that is common amogst the list above.  All have been very outspoken on twitter.  All have taken major heat on twitter.  All have had a long list of haters spewing garbage at them and I’m wondering if this played into each player quitting.

Cromartie has a nice history of controversial tweets:

• He was going to smash QB’s Matt Hasselbacks Face in
• He tweeted he didn’t want Tim Tebow on the Jets and then back tracked when he was traded
• Cromartie wanted Jets fans on twitter to calm down about Free Agent Reggie Nelson
• If you had a problem with Mark Sanchez, he told fans to suck on a Lemon
• Cromartie at one point was deemed a selfish player and he jumped to twitter saying he was a team player
• Cro wanted the Jets to go after Peyton Manning
• Cromartie used Twitter to call out opponents the week of the game

There are many articles about how great twitter can be, but I’m sure that I’ve seen some ugliness from fans, and just other people who can turn on a dime and be really nasty to celebrities and each other.

I don’t blame anyone for quitting as having this account draws attention on you especially if you are a celebrity, and I’m sure most fans and media have the notifications turned on waiting for every single tweet from the accounts.  One little slip, and you can end up on Sports Center with your tweet front and center.

The one that really surprised me was Kerry Rhodes.  He was approaching 1 million followers and a follower-ship like that is a marketer’s dream.

Tim Tebow who has 1.4 million followers has much value to his follower-ship.  Using a tool, I was able to calculate his account is worth $675,781  (rank #435 out of 398294).  To give it perspective, Lady Gaga who has the most followers on twitter (23 Million!) is worth $11,965,331.

To simply delete your account and that value might be ill advised, but maybe the downside out weighed the upside.  You would have to ask each player why they did it.

I personally will miss Cro’s tweets.  You may have to follow his wife @iluvTERRICKA to get the scoop on Cro.

TheSheikh @iluvTERRICKA Hey everything ok with Cro? 5/8/12 5:36 PM

iluvTERRICKA @TheSheikh yea he is fine 5/8/12 5:36 PM