Keep It Clean, Kids, Software's Watching

It was the kind of incident that makes college athletic directors cringe.

In November, shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, a second-string University of Texas football player posted a racist comment about Obama on his Facebook page.

It was quickly followed by an apology: “Clearly I have made a mistake and apologized for it and will pay for it,” the student wrote on Facebook. “I received it as a text message from an acquaintance and immaturely put it up on Facebook in the light of the election.”

But the damage was done, and the athlete lost his place on the team.

These days, with sports-oriented gossip Web sites like Badjocks.com and Thedirty.com trolling athletes’ Facebook pages and MySpace profiles for comments like the one made by the Texas athlete, a few mouse clicks can end a student athlete’s career and damage a school’s reputation.

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