Only hours after Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray won the Heisman Trophy, he was dogged by rediscovered homophobic tweets he posted when he was a 15-year-old kid.
Murray, now 21, accepted the trophy on Saturday night after beating out Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa for the honor. But only hours later, Murray’s teenaged tweets resurfaced forcing him to apologize for the six-year-old social media posts, USA Today reported.
Four tweets containing anti-gay slurs were found on a Twitter account he used as a teenager, according to reports. The tweets were quickly deleted, and the player apologized for them.
In the re-discovered tweets, Murray made liberal use of the word “queer” to smear several others on Twitter.
In a Sunday morning statement, Murray said the “poor choice of word” as a 15-year-old kid doesn’t “reflect who I am or what I believe. I did not intend to single out any individual or group.”
The Oklahoma athletics department has not issued any statement on the tweets.
Murray is not the first player to have off-color tweets made as a teen mar a recent accomplishment. During this year’s All-Star Game, Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Josh Hader was confronted withracist tweets he made when he was a teen.
A similar incident befell Villanova guard Donte DiVincenzo this year on the night of the NCAA championship game when the player’s teenaged social media posts containing the n-word came back to haunt him.
In yet another incident, just ahead of the 2018 NFL Draft, quarterback Josh Allen was bedeviled by racist tweets he made as a teenager. Allen was still with the University of Wyoming when the tweets resurfaced and the notoriety complicated his bid to launch a pro football career.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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