But Brandon McDonald Meant It As A Happy Train!

Were there an NFL symposium on Twitter tact, the Cleveland Browns would likely shove cornerback Brandon McDonald through the doors. Last year, he caught grief for Tweeting in Week 10 that the countdown to the end of that miserable season had begun.

That drama, of course, has nothing on the current flap he's produced by airing graphic smack talk toward Terrell Owens on the microblogging site. Days after T.O. signed with division rival Cincinnati, McDonald fired this salvo into the Twitterverse:

"TO to da Bengals huh??? Yessss, another piece of p**** fa da Browns secondary to (slang term referring to either group sex or gang rape) ... Let's Goooo!!!! ITS TRU"

Of course, now that the comments have become a matter of public concern, McDonald swears it was all merely a joke.

"It started out as a joke and it's escalated to what it is now," McDonald said after Browns practice. "I really didn't mean anything by it. It was a bad decision on my part."

And there's certainly truth to that. It's extremely unlikely McDonald and his colleagues in the Browns secondary are harboring any desire to actually "run a train" on T.O.

The controversial remarks are endemic in a macho football culture where emasculation and domination are the more base motivations fueling players going at one another. Of course, the players have to know that there's a difference between acceptable public discourse and what they can use as intimidation tactics on the field.

So far, the NFL has been a little inconsistent in how it handles such outbursts. Larry Johnson last year was suspended for using a homophobic slur on Twitter. Then again, Saints safety Darren Sharper and Vikings tight end Visanthe Shiancoe got very close to crossing the line in the protracted trash talking they did earlier in the offseason. Yet neither received any punishment from their team or the league. The obvious difference is the use of patently offensive language, which might be more similar to what McDonald has done here.

It doesn't seem at this point that any further discipline is coming for McDonald. His actions did prompt a talk to the team by Eric Mangini about the dangers of social media, so one has to assume that any more slip-ups won't be able to be explained away with glib excuses.