"At a breakfast during the NFL owners' meeting in March, someone asked New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin about players using Twitter and other social media. He looked as though he had bitten into a rotten grapefruit.

"I don't know what the hell that is," Coughlin said. "I'm from a different era."

Coughlin is likely in the minority. Most coaches seem to be aware of the problems and pitfalls caused by the often combustible mixture of athletes and social media.

The latest brush fire broke out last week when Rashard Mendenhall's controversial Twitter posts about Osama bin Laden and 9/11 produced national headlines and considerable outrage. Roundly criticized for his fumble during the Super Bowl, the Steelers running back once again became a target of fans' antipathy. He also lost an endorsement deal with the Champion sports apparel company.

The backlash underscored the appeal and downside of social media: Athletes can bypass traditional media filters, but they are on their own, a potentially dangerous situation. There is no editing process or anyone with a cooler head to stop them from posting something they might (and often do) later regret.

"I think we're gonna look back on this period as kind of the Wild West of social media," said Syracuse professor of television and pop culture Robert Thompson.

Once a post is out there, as Mendenhall found out, it cannot be reeled back. In today's wired world, useful information and ill-advised tweets alike are a click away from reaching the world.

"It's a bad mix for you. It's a bad mix for me. It's a bad mix (for anybody) if we don't edit ourselves," Gene Grabowski, a senior vice president for Levick Strategic Communications in Washington D.C., said about Twitter.

A young or less-experienced athlete "increases the chances for misunderstanding or misspeaking," Grabowski said, although he added, "I think most of the time it's quite harmless."

Not in Mendenhall's case.

He tried to clarify his position, a difficult task in a forum that allows 140 characters per entry, and then apologized in a 500-word blog post to anyone that he had "unintentionally" offended. But he still lost his Champion endorsement deal.

"The thing about Twitter is, it comes right from the id," Thompson said. "It doesn't go through any editing process. You could be in your pajamas, you could be drunk. ... What makes this period of social media so amusing is that people have not yet learned their lessons."

Longtime Pittsburgh sports agent Ralph Cindrich has mostly a veteran clientele (including Steelers linebacker James Farrior) "who you hope by this time has enough sense to not go out and say things that are controversial."

Cindrich's recommendation to younger players: "Look to the leaders of your team. If you're a quarterback, what would Peyton Manning do? What would Tom Brady do? The bottom line is, look to the guys who are solid."

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