Hours after winning the Heisman Trophy, Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray apologized for anti-gay tweets he made as a teenager, saying they don’t “reflect who I am or what I believe.”
"I apologize for the tweets that have come to light tonight from when I was 14 and 15," he tweeted Sunday morning. "I used a poor choice of word that doesn't reflect who I am or what I believe. I did not intend to single out any individual or group."
The offensive tweets were deleted from his account late Saturday night, but screenshots of the tweets show Murray repeatedly using the word "queer" in conversations.
Murray, who passed for more than 4,000 yards and 40 touchdowns, followed in the footsteps of Baker Mayfield, the Oklahoma quarterback who won the Heisman last December and now plays for the Cleveland Browns. Murray’s Sooners play Alabama in the College Football Playoff on Dec. 29.
Murray, a junior, is the Sooners' seventh Heisman winner, which ties Notre Dame and Ohio State for the most all-time. Oklahoma is the first team to win consecutive Heismans with different players since Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis of Army in 1945 and 1946. Southern California’s Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush won the award in 2004 and 2005, but Bush later had to forfeit the award due to NCAA violations.
