Almost two weeks deep in training camp, the Steelers don't yet have an official policy regarding their players' use of Twitter, which sounds painfully trivial because it certainly ought to be, except that Twitter is a red flare issue in NFL training camps from coast to coast.

When defensive back Antonio Cromartie got gob-smacked with a $2,500 fine from the San Diego Chargers for tweeting that training camp food was "nasty" and that it might have something to do with his club's early elimination from the AFC playoffs in recent years, it signaled the kickoff of a real slippery slide onto a new technological landscape.

It's not Cromartie's fault. There are no standards and in most places, including Latrobe, generally there aren't even guidelines. Some guys obviously need a list.

OK to tweet: The Chargers R ready 4 a Super Bowl run!!!

Not OK to tweet: Our D-line coach smells like a goat!!!

In the backdrop are two pivotal moments in the history of communication, and even if you're uncomfortable putting the second in classification with the first, I'm providing the historical dates and texts anyway.

March 10, 1876: "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you."

And ...

March 15, 2009: "In da locker room snuck to post my tweet. We're playing the Celtics, tie ballgame at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up."

The first is obviously Alexander Graham Bell's message to Thomas Watson and generally regarded as the first sentence ever spoken over the wired communication that would become known as the telephone; the second is what power forward Charlie Villanueva tweeted his followers from the locker room of the Milwaukee Bucks at the momentous occasion of a 41-41 partial NBA score.

Having been eyewitness to neither event, I can only hope that someone nearby in each case said something like, "... and nothing will ever be the same."

There may be no documentation that casts Charlie Villanueva as the Alexander Graham Bell of Twitter, since he neither invented it nor sent the first tweet, but he was the first person I'd heard of who tweeted from a major team sporting event in which he was participating.

It seems like the rough cultural equivalent of answering a cell phone call between free throws. Oh, that has already happened?

No?

Don't worry, it will.

Villanueva's coach, Scott Skiles, said in strong terms that he disapproved, but didn't really know why. Something about it indicating a lack of focus. That argument wasn't helped when Villanueva scored 11 of his 19 points in the fourth quarter to lead Milwaukee past Boston.

Five months later, Twitter talk and how to deal with it has virtually dominated NFL camps, where coaches and team officials are near apoplexy at the prospect of the athletes communicating God knows what directly with audiences who sign up for their musings rather than gain them through traditional channels, preferably their own public relations offices, preferably even the stinking media.

No sooner had Terrell Owens tweeted with no evidence that Cromartie was probably right and that the quality of training camp food generally deteriorated as the summer wears on, no sooner had Cromartie mentioned that he likely had been denied part of his first amendment rights, that Chad Ochocinco immediately went on record as saying that he planned to tweet during a game this fall.

I hope he means from the huddle, or perhaps on one of the decoy routes his flagging skills seem to have him running more and more of.

Do you see where this is going?

With the intensity and flavor of the trash talk that goes on across the scrimmage line on a typical Sunday, what kind of sentiments and observations are about to be offered to thousands of Twitter followers once the season is rolling in earnest?

Teams have tried, in a kind of sad inevitable futility, to get ahead of this in predictably ham-fisted ways.

The Miami Dolphins have instituted no-tweeting, no-blogging, and no-texting rules, and that includes the media. The Steelers will try to prevent media from doing any of those things from what a spokesman yesterday called "private practices," but not those that are open to the public at Saint Vincent. Seven teams have media policies, and some have encouraged players not to tweet. The Green Bay Packers have established a $1,701 fine for anyone caught tweeting during team activities.

Meanwhile, the league and the individual clubs are embracing the very same technology for other purposes. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell tweeted from the draft, and the Chargers, the first team to issue a substantial fine, scooped the league and the media by tweeting the identity of the No. 1 draft pick.

Thus a season like no other lies dead ahead. Those who prefer to take their football news in generally decorous and measured installments might want to head for higher ground. As Joe Paterno asked this summer, "What do you guys call those things, Tweedle-doo, Tweedle-dee?"

And remember, that's from a guy who might have actually witnessed the historic Bell-to-Watson completion.