Twitter Freedom Shows Different Sides Of Hawkeyes

Keith Duncan admitted he has too much fun with Twitter.

Now that he has freedom to post while he's still playing football at Iowa?

"Super-annoying on Twitter already," said Duncan, the Hawkeyes' kicker who was a consensus All-American last season.

Head coach Kirk Ferentz lifted his ban on his players posting on the social media site, a response to numerous team meetings in which players wanted said they wanted their voices to be heard during the national protests in the last few weeks in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

It's a policy Ferentz says now he shouldn't have had.

"It was a stupid policy," Ferentz said during a press conference on Friday. "It was (a) designed intent to help protect our players. That’s a parental instinct, you know, a coach’s instinct. You want to protect your players. Certain things just tell you, they show you, that you need to embody players to have more freedom, more movement, more expression. And really the issue is, do you trust them?

"One thing that has come across to me loud and clear — we trust these players. This is an outstanding group, and we’ve got a group of young players, new players, first-year players, joining us on Monday. That’s another tier, and we’ve got a lot of education to do. But especially after this week, we have a team that deserves to be trusted, deserves a little bit of latitude."

Many, like safety Kaevon Merriweather, spoke out about racial injustice.

If you think you could possibly call yourself an Iowa Football fan and you can not agree with what I said and what this team is standing on. Then stop calling yourself a fan, IMMEDIATELY‼️ BECAUSE I CAN PROMISE YOU THAT WE DO NOT CARE‼️👎🏾 pic.twitter.com/DgYFY56ojv
— Kaevon Merriweather (@Kaevon02) June 8, 2020

On Saturday, cornerback Matt Hankins added his voice to those who have said that strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle made racial and other negative comments to them.

Silence speaks volume. ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/jhqYI5fkPS
— Hachiiiiiiii (@Matt_Hankins1) June 13, 2020

Duncan has tweeted his support of his teammates as well.

pic.twitter.com/wTuEqn3qxm
— Keith Duncan (@keithdunc3) June 8, 2020

But he's also posted such tweets as "Would you rather live in your ideal lake house or ideal beach house?" or "It’s not pop, it’s soda (or coke)."

His tweet "Pineapple does NOT belong in pizza" had more than 190 responses and 2,100 "likes".

"If you have something cold on a pizza, something juicy on a warm pizza, it’s just not good," Duncan said on Friday.

Duncan has more than 4,800 followers now.

"It’s fun to interact with people we don’t see every day," he said. "It’s great to have our personalities out there. It’s a strange world, but it’s a lot of fun."

"I really don’t understand Twitter," Ferentz said. "I know it’s popular. But (the ban) was stupid on my part."