I love the smell of burnt football player in the morning. Smells like… suspension and a really large fine.

Cyd Zeigler has the rundown, copies of the tweets and all, but in a nutshell..

1. On November 21, presumably-hetero NFL player with hunky gay porn name, Tank Carder, tweets the word “f*ggot” at someone he’s upset with (he used the entire word, I’m just using asterisks because it risks shutting down the ads when I use such words on the blog).

2. Yesterday, November 26, Tank then responds to people who are clearly offended by his use of the anti-gay slur by tweeting “yeah they all gettin butt hurt.” Get it? Butt hurt. Gay people. He’s now making a homophobic joke about gay people “taking it up the a–.” Real winner, this one.

3. Then Tank tweets: “I don’t agree with being gay or lesbian at all, but saying f*ggot doesn’t make me a homophobe. It’s just a word.”

Uh huh.

4. Then Tank issues a non-apology apology in which he says the use of the word was justified because he thought the other person was “bashing team sports” – because we’re all familiar with the “bashing team sports” exemption to the ban on using racial, ethnic, and homophobic slurs in polite society.

5. Then, suddenly, Tank is all honey and goodness:

“I want to sincerely apologize for the word I used! I did not in anyway mean to offend anyone! That tweet doesn’t define me as a person!”

Then how about the tweet where you appear to make a butt-f’g joke about gay people? Does that define you as a person? Or the tweet where you said you don’t “agree” with being gay — sic, as it’s not entirely clear how you can “agree” or “disagree” with someone “being gay”:

GAY GUY: Hi, I’m gay.

TANK CARDER: Sorry, I disagree.

Or how about the tweet where you suggested that it’s okay to call someone a “f*ggot” if they’re “bashing team sports.”

I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling the love here, from good ole Tank. I’m wondering if someone at the NFL threatened Tank privately, and told him he’d better STFU or they were going to suspend him and/or fine him, and that’s why Tank suddenly found Jesus and apologized. Because five whole days passed since that first tweet, and Tank wasn’t exactly in an apology kind of mood until last night.

As Cyd noted in the column:

Major League Soccer puts the penalty at a three-game suspension for this kind of language. The NBA puts the cost at $50k.

We’ll all be watching how the NFL handles this repeatedly bigoted outburst. Cyd ads:

Nothing short of a one-game suspension and that game check being donated to an LGBT sports organization will suffice as a punishment for this. It cannot be tolerated.

No it can’t. But will it, NFL?