Talk about a viral story.

A Penn State football player took to Twitter on Monday to post a letter received by one of his teammates, a meandering bit of nonsense about hair length, dress code, and modern day celebratory trends.

This was the image shared on Twitter  by Antonio Shelton (@_groovy55) –

This is one of those “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry” types of letters, but I know it’s real. Probably originated in Berks County or Upper Montco, where I grew up, and most suburban kids have seen and heard language like this plenty of times before. There are older folks, usually white, who complain about appearance, about hair length, tattoos, and piercings. They grew up in a different era when everybody was clean cut and dress codes existed and blah blah blah, the halcyon days of everybody looking like a carbon copy of one another.

That said, I don’t think this explicitly makes “Dave Petersen” a racist, since he’s talking about dreads and not skin color in the letter. Of course you can probably put two and two together, since there are not a lot of dreadlocked white football players out there, but I guarantee he’d similarly complain about a dreadlocked Carson Wentz.

But in general he’s just an old cornball, this guy. And his wife is, too, but there are a lot of people out there with similar opinions. Having grown up in an area where the suburbs meet the sticks, I know these are the same folks who would also have complained about Clay Matthews’ hair and Richie Incognito’s tattoos. It’s a generational issue with image and appearance that certainly often extends to people of color, but it also manifests itself as an “older white folks having a problem with younger white folks” kind of way.

PSU responded on Twitter by saying:

“While we don’t know the source of this letter or the authenticity, obviously its content does not align with our values. We strongly condemn this message or any message of intolerance.”

I guess that’s what they had to say. The responses to the original tweet are a mess, of course, with pervasive Sandusky and Paterno comments sprinkled in, but it seems like the vast majority of sensible PSU fans are rightfully labeling “Dave Petersen” as a jabroni.