Jonathan Bullard is a senior defensive tackle for Florida. He passed on the NFL draft to return for his senior season, and is having a great year as a defensive leader for the Gators.

But for the right now, he is noteworthy for the following statement he made about how to defend LSU running back Leonard Fournette:

It might seem like careless trash talk, but that was not happening here.

The Bullard tweet was taken from a longer quote (via @CodyWorsham): “He’s the best back in the league. We’re just going to have to rally to the ball to tackle him. I don’t think it’s … he’s nothing we can’t stop, but we all have to rally to the ball, because he’s an excellent athlete.”

Confident, but not exactly bulletin board trash talk. But as tweeted by Mark Long of the Associated Press, the snippet was featured in articles by Bleacher Report and FOXSports.com (and a few LSU fan sites, I’d guess0.

In fairness, others presented the quote in its largest context, like Jerry Hinnen of CBSSports.com, Chase Goodbread of NFL.com, and Des Bieler of the Washington Post.

Fournette had been the subject of similar talk in recent weeks. When asked about stopping Fournette before the Auburn-LSU game, Rudy Ford of Auburn said, “That shouldn’t be difficult, that much, of a challenge.”

To their credit, Auburn beat writers like Tom Green (@AUblog at @oanow) included quotes from elsewhere in Ford’s presser, but it was not the complete thought that Bullard provided.

College football fans remember how well that turned out — Auburn fans with particular pain. And Ford’s disinterested attempt at tackling Ford on a long run (more a version of “one-hand touch”) didn’t make his life any easier after Fournette’s 228 yards on 19 carries.

The question is, did Long do right by Bullard? Obviously not. The quote was tweeted out of context, and I would predict that a small percentage of college football fans sought out the longer quote.

Long did provide the longer quote more than an hour later, and acknowledged what happened to Bullard in a Twitter exchange. But the damage had been done.

Anyone who knows media knows that the Associated Press is not a hot take machine. I did a temporary assignment for them way back in 1978, right out of college, and have always had a “gold-standard” level of respect for them.

I am not as familiar with Long as I am with the Alabama AP crew, but I would guess (and hope) that he does not gotcha-tweet too much.

That said (“hot take” pushers can stop reading here), anyone who considers himself or herself a journalist should understand the need to avoid out-of-context quotes, particularly on Twitter.

The SPJ Code of Ethics puts it this way: “Provide context. Take special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story.” To the extent that Twitter does all three, it’s a relevant caution.

There seems to be extra caution, perhaps additional care, in working with college student-athletes, who sometimes lack media savvy.

Bullard, as a senior, could be expected to know better, and he did better, as his complete quote showed. Ford should simply be smarter, period. But sometimes a young athlete speaks unwisely. It is up to the individual journalist to know when to take the ball and run with it, or when to the hand the ball back and say, “Did you mean to give me this?”

Regardless of the age or media experience of the source, it is also up to journalists to treat all sources fairly, especially on Twitter. To paraphrase, a tweet makes its way around the world while a complete, contextual report is still putting on its boots.

Let’s make sure the tweets that we send into orbit are grounded in fairness and context.

John Carvalho, associate professor of journalism at Auburn, blogs about the sports media atJohnCarvalhoSports.com. Find him on Twitter at @John_P_Carvalho. Read his previous columns here.