Pete Carroll keeps cool on Twitter.
Being from Alabama, it's easy to think being a successful football coach means being as hard-nosed and singularly-focused as Nick Saban. After all, love him or hate him, he is probably the most recognizable person in the state.
Thankfully, the Internet and Pete Carroll have reminded me that it can be done differently. While Saban is busy verbally abusing anyone within a 10-foot radius, Carroll is on a different kind of mission: to get Will Ferrell to join Twitter.
The USC football coach has been tweeting since Inauguration Day, using his social media prowess to welcome our new President, show some love for the Trojans' other athletic programs, and now to entice fellow celebs to embrace social media. It started with this tweet:
"Had dinner with Will Ferrell last night... he's not on Twitter... that must change... Join the campaign to turn him into a tweeter!"
Amusing on its face, but Carroll wouldn't leave a good idea unexplored. He was determined to use his new-found tweeple (Twitter people) to convince Will that the Tweeting bandwagon had room for one more big, hairy, American winning machine.
That's right. Carroll, who not only has a national championship ring in college football but is also cool enough to have dinner with Will Ferrell, created a Gmail account just to give his 4,077 Twitter followers an avenue to lobby Ferrell to join in their fun.
With that in mind, I give you my favorite five celebrities to follow on Twitter:
iJustine loves Twitter. That's reason enough for me.
- @Jon_Favreau - He's so money, and well, he's probably figured it out by now. Still, Jon Favreau takes the top spot in my list of celeb twitters. Favreau earns bonus points for his use of TwitPic to share photos and for updates on Iron Man 2, which he's directing.
- @RainnWilson - Sometimes it's hard to tell whether Wilson is posting as Dwight Shrute - his character in The Office - or as himself. I kindof like that it's hard to tell the difference, and that he responds to non-famous Tweeters like me.
- @the_real_shaq -The Diesel never disappoints... well, unless you were expecting Kazaam to be a good movie. As a bonus, Shaq frequently gives away tickets to his Tweeple. I approve even though I'm unlikely to catch a game in Phoenix anytime soon.
- @michaelianblack -OK, Michael Ian Black may not be a celebrity in the way that Ashton Kutcher and John Mayer (both avid Tweeters) are celebrities, but you'd probably recognize him if you saw him. And his updates are way more funny than either of the two listed above. His LeWar feud with Levar Burton was hilarious and fascinating in a way I can't fully explain. It's a shame they declared a truce.
- @PeteCarroll - I had to include him, since he was the inspiration for this post. Even though he's not the only major football coach on Twitter (Michigan's Rich Rodriguez and Georgia's Mark Richt tweet too), Carroll is the only college football coach I can imagine surfing with. In my world, that counts for something.