Adam Tamburin

atamburin@tennessean.com

Popular sports talk show host Clay Travis said Wednesday that Jack Daniel's nixed a promotion deal with him because of two tweets criticizing Vanderbilt University's decision to remove the word "Confederate" from the face of a residence hall.

Travis wrote a blog post blasting the decision to officially rename Confederate Memorial Hall, which the university announced Monday. In tweetspromoting the post, he called the decision "unbelievable" and said "PC Bromanis & Middle Eastern terrorists have same response to history that upsets them, erase it all."

Vanderbilt to remove 'Confederate' from building name

In a post published Wednesday, Travis said Jack Daniel's had terminated a $3,000 deal to promote the Tennessee whiskey maker's new Jack Fire brand on Travis' Twitter and Facebook accounts because of his Tweets about the Vanderbilt decision. In an email Travis posted to his site, an unnamed Jack Daniel's representative said Travis' Twitter commentary "brings (the company) into public disrepute" and "offends the general community."

The representative also asked him not to attend an event at a Midtown bar where he was supposed to promote Jack Fire.

A spokesman for Jack Daniel's said the company had declined to comment on the matter.

Travis mocked the company's decision in his Wednesday post, noting that its founder Jack Daniel's family members fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

Confederate Memorial Hall, which Vanderbilt now calls Memorial Hall, was bankrolled by a donation from the Tennessee chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who wanted the building's name to honor Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War. Vanderbilt is spending $1.2 million to repay that donation and earn the right to remove the word "Confederate" from stonework on the building's facade.

Clay Travis: couch crasher to sports media celebrity

Reach Adam Tamburin at 615-726-5986 and on Twitter @tamburintweets.