GREEN BAY, Wis. — Move aside, Justin Bieber and Floyd Mayweather, there's a new Twitter champion: Green Bay Packers offensive lineman T.J. Lang.
Following the Monday night officiating debacle on the final play that gave the Seattle Seahawks a 14-12 victory over the visiting Packers, Lang sent out what would become the most retweeted unsponsored post in Twitter history.
"F*** it NFL.. Fine me and use the money to pay the regular refs," Lang tweeted, except without the aid of edited profanity.
By Wednesday afternoon, a little more than 36 hours after it was posted, Lang's tweet broke the Twitter record when it surpassed 92,314 retweets. According to the Twitsprout blog, that's when Lang became No. 1 on the all-time retweet list by overtaking Mayweather's post from Jan. 10, 2012, when he called out fellow boxer Manny Pacquiao.
Not far behind in second place was Bieber, the pop singer who had 87,882 followers retweet him in November 2011 when he posted, "I'M SEXY AND I KNOW IT."
As of 6:30 p.m. CT Wednesday, Lang's tweet had 96,340 retweets, 4,000 more than the previous record.
Despite Lang seemingly being willing to accept a fine for his vulgar tweet, the NFL is choosing not to levy any type of punishment. According to NFL spokesperson Greg Aiello, the league is "not looking at that."
Lang has also received 69,034 retweets for his original post after Monday's game, when he wrote: "Got f***ed by the refs.. Embarrassing. Thanks nfl"
Now that the regular refs and the league have agreed on a new deal to return for Week 4 games, Lang may have something new to tweet about.
Follow Paul Imig on Twitter
