My, what a day for college football-media relations. Earlier this afternoon, Brooks told us about a TCU official who was able to get a student reporter yanked from the Mountain West TV network just because he had an opinion about a Horned Frogs player. And if such hard-handed tactics can work with the big boys of college ball, it surely can work with the smaller schools, too.

(”Please, no questions from the student media - EVER AGAIN!!!”)

Lance Leipold is the head football honcho for the Division III University of Wisconsin-Whitewater squad. Since his arrival in 2007, Lance has led the Warhawks to a 27-3 record and finished as 2007 national champion & 2008 national runner-up, while grabbing himself a couple of national coach of the year awards in the process.

Such success can sometimes get to a person’s head, making them feel like they’re invincible and beyond mere mortal criticism. Leopold apparently reached this point, as a critical column in the school’s newspaper led the coach to ban the paper from covering his team.

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To paraphrase Dan Patrick, you can’t stop Twitter’s popularity in the sports world, you can only hope to contain it. Whether it’s Shaq inviting diner customers to say hello, Stephen Jackson showing his sketches of nude ladies packing heat, or the NBA finding a new way to fine Mark Cuban, the social technology seems here to stay.

And with such an explosion of popularity, it would only be a matter of time before some sports figure would use the easy updating tool to type up something he or she might regret. (Mark Cuban doesn’t count because he regrets nothing!) And that figure might turn out to be Minnesota football coach Tim Brewster.

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