Lantern file photo

Lantern file photo

This year, Aaron Craft was featured in Sports Illustrated, scored a game winning three-pointer with half a second left against Iowa State and vacuumed his apartment.

After all, explains Craft’s roommate Logan Jones, the cleaning load is delegated evenly upon the roommates.

To shed light on the happenings and everyday normalcy of the Ohio State basketball star, three of Craft’s four roommates, Jones, a fourth-year in marketing, Ryan Cypret, a graduate in sports management, and Michael Duffy, a graduate student in accounting, created the @CRAFTroomies Twitter account. The account is the only official Aaron Craft Twitter account and provides more than 4,200 followers an illustrated narrative of Craft’s life.

Jones, who is often introduced by his parents and friends as “Aaron Craft’s roommate,” explains that being Craft’s roommate is almost a part of his identity. With the amount of public fascination surrounding the life of the basketball star, people constantly inquire about the point guard’s life, which is something Cypret finds intriguing within itself.

“I think we find it fascinating how much people want to follow and hear and get into Aaron’s life,” Cypret said. “I mean, all of these people who are well-known these days have Twitter accounts, people have access to their lives. Aaron’s just a real humble guy, he never promotes himself.”

The idea for a Twitter account documenting Craft’s life off the court and in his off-campus apartment floated around for about two months, Cypret said.

“Aaron never had (a Twitter account)…so we would always tell him, ‘If you had a Twitter account, you’d probably get a ton of followers.’ It just never interested him…We finally just one day, we like to say YOLO a lot, so we were just like, ‘OK, YOLO, we are just going to do it and take advantage of this,’” Cypret said.

On April 8, the @CRAFTroomies Twitter account began broadcasting Craft’s activities as a student athlete from the roommates’ point of view, including Craft practicing a demonstration speech, enjoying “Taco Thursday,” attending a lacrosse game and shooting baskets into a kiddie basketball hoop.

Although Craft is the only roommate who does not have the password to the account, Jones says that everything on the page is Aaron approved and an accurate reflection of what it is like to live with Craft.

“We usually run (the tweets) by him, see if the picture is OK, if he partakes in it,” Jones said. “It’s not like he’s annoyed by it. I think he thinks it’s fun for us, so it’s fun for him.”

Craft thinks @CRAFTroomies is “fun and entertaining,” and he believes his roommates do a good job of keeping the content of the account under control. Duffy was surprised when Craft told one of his coaches to follow @CRAFTroomies on Twitter.

“I enjoy seeing the excitement it generates in the apartment. It sort of allows me to have a ‘Twitter life’ because I don’t have (a Twitter account),” Craft said in an email.

As for the general public, Cypret says the reactions have been “nothing but positive.”

“We have had lots of people tweet at us, ‘Our favorite Twitter account,’ ‘You guys are hilarious.’ And that’s what we love,” Cypret said. “We never put any strong, opinionated things out there about sports or other teams or anything, but we are just going to have some fun and joke around.”

In addition to their tradition of “Taco Thursday,” the roommates have also tweeted out pictures of Aaron’s sock, shoes and shirt and designated the day as “Random Article of Aaron’s Clothing Friday.” Jones says that these are his favorite tweets so far because it’s “really stupid” and simply displays things that a normal human would wear.

Cypret, Duffy and Jones also tweet back at fans and answer questions about Craft. However, if a fan is constantly asking questions about Craft’s life, Cypret explains that they “don’t want to feed (the person’s) addiction of Aaron Craft.”

“We try to be nice and tweet at some people if they really want to. We want to be a good account, too,” Cypret said.

Nathan Cotton, a second-year in public affairs and a follower of @CRAFTroomies, thinks the account is a “cool idea.”

“I honestly think it’s just really cool and neat, like the pictures of him, and (it’s) kind of just like a little profile…Obviously he is a national celebrity, and if you don’t see him on campus, you don’t know what he does,” Cotton said.

If the vibes on @CRAFTroomies ever take a turn for the negative, Cypret says none of the roommates are attached to the account, and they do not need to keep it.

In the meantime, while some of the roommates may not be living in the apartment next year, the hope remains to maintain the account and tweet more once Fall Semester and Craft’s final basketball season at OSU begins.

“I’m worried about what’s going to happen once Aaron graduates after next year,” Jones said. “So hopefully, (@CRAFTroomies) will get big, and I don’t know. We’ll see. Maybe if Aaron is married by that time, we’ll give it to his wife or something.”