Friend of the site Patrick Stevens of the Washington Times has a very cool profile of Maryland wide receiver Torrey Smith as he prepares for the 2011 NFL Draft. There are a lot of serious observations in there, such as how he's feeling on this day, what the whole process was like and his rise in general from an unheralded recruit to an NFL-quality prospect. But forget all that. The part that intrigued me was the discussion about Smith's active social media presence.
Like many athletes, Smith is on Twitter (@TorreySmithWR). Unlike many athletes, he's actually interesting about it. As he told Stevens:
"It's just another way to interact," Smith said. "They get to see my personality, and they know I'm not like a stereotypical athlete."
It's true. Smith's Twitter account shows him messing around, but it also shows him being serious. As an example of the former, Stevens brings up his Twitter "war" of sorts with Maryland defensive tackle A.J. Francis. Smith says that's all a bunch of messing around.
"I was even at Comcast [SportsNet] yesterday and a bunch of people asked me about the Twitter jokes between me and A.J.," Smith said. "It's funny. It's all entertainment."
Case-in point: this message from Francis to Smith earlier Wednesday.
Im gonna call @TorreySmithWR 5 minutes before every single team picks tonight...lolless than a minute ago via TweetDeck 
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A.J. Francis
The_Franchyze
Also, for the record, Smith claims Francis never had more followers than him. I hope this continues.