Thanks to the Stet Sports blog, I got a chance to kill some time and brain cells by reading Twitter messages from Ravens backup quarterback Troy Smith (warning: coarse language). As Stet points out: “From profanity to drug references to vulgar thanks extended to Cleveland party goers, here’s one instance of when keeping it Twitterrific goes horribly wrong.”

(I suppose, to be fair, we could acknowledge the possibility this isn’t really Smith.)

A few examples (my editing of the obscenities):

• “I’d buy every different type of bud in the World…lol” (in response to teammate Fabian Washington)
• “Twiggaz, I f—- wit Cle. ya’ll came out and rocked wit us las night, without ya’ll it wouldn’t have been that way, ya’ll the f—– best…”
• “We gone try to get you in Cleveland for that gansta s—, all that other s— weak…”
• “Party, Party, Party, let’s all get wasted…” (again to Washington)

When is that first random drug test?

Those examples don’t even show Smith’s liberal dropping of the “N,” which perhaps is all well and good for hip-hop and when hanging in the locker room or back in the ‘hood but comes across quite differently in a social media application accessible to anyone with just a few mouse clicks.

And that really is the point. Smith has to realize he really is broadcasting with each tweet. Most athletes seem to get that. Take a quick scroll through the roster at Twitter-athletes.com and you’ll see the majority of messages keep it clean and relatively tasteful, though they can be heavy on the self-promotion.

Contrast Smith’s tweets with some from new Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth, who has been walking the halls of Congress:

• “Pelosi loves bmore”
• “Watching the supreme court hearing. Live! Sitting in the back. Go Sotomayor”
• “Chillin with Arlin Spector”
• “Had a good day today 2 tough workouts and a good meeting with the ppl at serve.gov staying in dc more meetings tomorrow”

But that doesn’t sound very gangsta, does it?