BOURBONNAIS, Ill. -- Faced with the prospect of living in the player's training camp dorm for three weeks without a television, Chicago Bears starting nickel back D.J. Moore got creative.
Moore posted a message on his Twitter account on Tuesday asking if any of his nearly 22,000 followers were 'willing to let me borrow their small tv for camp.' Sure enough, a fan eventually loaned Moore a television, although the two did not meet via Twitter. Instead, it happened during a chance encounter on the main street outside the Bears training camp home of Olivet Nazarene University.
"I did Tweet it out but it happened when I got out of my car the other day on the main road right out here to sign some autographs," Moore said. "I was like, 'Do any of you have a TV I can borrow and I'll just give it back to you at the end of camp?' A guy was like, 'I got one in my basement,' so he went and got it. All he wanted was a pair of my cleats, so I just went and got a pair of my cleats and gave it to him.
"It was a small TV, like a 19-inch flatscreen; that's all I was looking for was a small TV, something you could just carry and watch TV on so I don't drive myself crazy looking at the walls."
A 2009 fourth-round draft choice out of Vanderbilt, Moore has become something of a fan favorite the past couple seasons. He routinely interacts with Bears fans on Twitter and often re-tweets messages from fans to his followers, actions that aren't all that common for NFL players.
"A lot of players ain't me, though" Moore said. "A lot of players aren't even that nice. You see a lot of players just walk out and coach has to tell you to sign autographs. Coach got to tell you to do stuff. You got to realize that the fans are the ones who pay your salary. If they didn't come to the games, we'd just be out here for recreation."