Hacked McCloud twitter account causes stir
In late July, Ray-Ray McCloud III shocked a lot of college football fans when he committed to Clemson. For a few moments yesterday, it appeared he was looking to shock them again with an even more sensational decision - to de-commit from Clemson and flip to USF.
At around 9:30 p.m. last night, someone with access to McCloud's twitter account sent the update: "I am officially decommitting from the university of Clemson to take my talents to USF gotta stay with the 813."
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McCloud, the nation's No. 2-ranked athlete out of Tampa (Fla.) Sickles, just had his twitter account effectively hacked.
"My phone blew up," the five-star McCloud said. "A couple of players called me. (Byron Cowart) called me - it was a big deal."
McCloud also got a call from USF assistant David Reaves, who was presumably hoping for some real good news.
"Coach Reaves was like, 'What's going on, man?,'" McCloud said. "I didn't know what he was talking about until about two seconds after because I didn't know what was going on. I just told him I had to see what was on my twitter and try to figure out who did it. I was kind of mad."
McCloud said he still has no idea who hacked into his twitter account and didn't want to guess who did so. Whomever did continued to tweet out profanity-laced updates inconsistent with those the real McCloud would post.
Luckily, both his parents also have access to his account and were able to delete the hacked tweets.
"I gave them my password awhile ago in case I tweet something stupid," he said.
McCloud still has access to the hacked account as long as he stays logged into it, but said his password was changed so if he ever logs out he can't get back in. In either event, McCloud has created a new twitter handle of @RMIII_34.
"I was going to make a new (twitter account) anyway by the time I went to college," he said. "So I went ahead and did it now."
As for his commitment, the Tigers were never in Jeopardy of losing it.
"Of course I'm still 100-percent committed to Clemson," McCloud said. "Of course."
Adam Krohn is a Southeast Region football recruiting analyst for Rivals.com. You can click here to follow him on Twitter.