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Joel AndersonESPN
Florida State‘s football recruiting department issued an apology Monday after tweeting and subsequently deleting an image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into a graphic containing the team’s slogan, “Do something,” to celebrate the civil rights icon’s holiday.
In the since-deleted tweet, King appeared to be doing the school’s popular tomahawk chop celebration with a Nike glove edited onto his hand. The tweet read: “Happy MLK day! #GoNoles #DoSomething #MLK2019.”
Within an hour — after a number of college football fans had mocked the image online — the tweet was gone, and the account later responded with a written statement.
For those who didn’t see this Florida State tweet before they took it down … How does this happen? pic.twitter.com/bWsVURkHX8
— Myron Medcalf (@MedcalfByESPN) January 21, 2019
“In a well-intentioned effort to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. on this special day, a member of our recruiting staff created a graphic using one of Dr. King’s quotes — ‘If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.’ The quote resonated with our program’s Do Something mantra,” the tweet read.
“However, in our attempt to more closely connect the message to FSU, we foolishly posted a graphic that was not in line with our intent. We are sorry for missing the mark in our attempt to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy.”
The @FSU_Recruiting twitter account, which has about 37,000 followers, is mostly dedicated to promoting the team’s incoming recruits, current players, and coaching staff members.