15 best college football players we wish played in the Twitter era

7. Best college football players before Twitter: Barry Sanders, RB, Oklahoma State

The man was so fluid and silky. He was like the Bruce Lee of running backs. Barry Sanders’s highlight reel is a series of effortless jukes, making defenders look ridiculous. The man was excellence distilled into a 5-foot-8 frame.

His Heisman winning 1988 season (how great would Twitter have been in 1988?) is the stuff of legend. He rushed for 2,628 yards for 37 touchdowns while averaging 7.6 yards per carry.  So on top of the absurd skills, you get ridiculous production. With his year going on at the same time as Thomas breaking the sack record, you know there would be some small but loud part of Twitter going at it about whether Thomas could stop Sanders, and we are all the way here for it.

Right now, Sanders’s Twitter, fittingly, is a mixture of ads and congratulations with a bit of fond reminiscing sprinkled in. It matches the man whose personality seems almost aggressively private.

But let’s imagine he was on Twitter in college. The first thing that would happen is that everyone on earth would know that his nickname was “Little Water Bug”. That is something that should be common knowledge about one of the greatest running backs of all time.

There’s no way that Sanders would jump into the fray. He’s a quiet man of faith and he really seems to enjoy his peace. So the fans would need to pick up the slack for him. Nothing but jaw-dropping appreciations of his glory would suffice. In his final year, he scored 37 touchdowns. That doesn’t seem possible (and, unless you are Navy, probably isn’t possible running the ball today).

Sanders earned all of the accolades for his prowess, but there is nothing like seeing it as it happens. Twitter is perfect for fans to appreciate someone like Sanders.