In my life Twitter is a necessary evil. It’s a place where news is broken, rumors are speculated on, and content is created in boatloads by the minute.
For some, its significant to get a blue check mark by their handle because that means they’re verified as the real person. It brings some form of authenticy to know you’re following the actual President of the United States or head football coach at your favorite university.
Twitter however won’t verify one of the greatest football players the game has ever seen because he “lacks notability”.
That player is Alan Page who was an All-American on Notre Dame’s 1966 national championship team before playing 15 years in the NFL where he was a six-time All-Pro with the Minnesota Vikings.
Not notable! Hmmm.! #notnotable @Twitter pic.twitter.com/NcfdzUglEN
— Alan Page (@ACPage_77) August 26, 2021
Page also won the NFL MVP in 1971, the NFL Championship in 1969, played in four Super Bowls, and registered 148.5 sacks in his Hall of Fame career.
As impressive as Page’s football career was his life after football has been arguably even more impressive.
From our colleagues at TouchdownWire:
Somehow, Page’s post-football life has been even more extraordinary. Page entered law school at the University of Minnesota during his NFL career and acquired a law degree in 1978, entering private practice in 1979. Page joined the Minnesota Attorney General’s office in 1985, and became an associate justice in the Minnesota Supreme Court, a position he held until 2015, when he reached the court’s mandatory retirement age of 70. Page has run marathons, authored two children’s books with his daughter Kamie (Alan and His Perfectly Pointy Impossibly Perpendicular Pinky in 2013, and The Invisible You in 2014), and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.
Meanwhile, seemingly every Tom, Dick, and Harry to ever write a newspaper article, speak on the radio, or be an influencer (whatever the hell that means) gets the blue checkmark.
Well done, Twitter, well done.
Related:
Notre Dame well represented on ESPN’s top-100 players list for 2021
Four Notre Dame players named preseason All-Americans