"Schools Attempting to Control Athletes’ Use of Social Media"

From Athletic Business

Review by Christine Steiner in KIN 332
The Athletic Business article titled “Schools Attempting to Control Athletes’ Use of Social Media” By Paul Steinbach published in November 2012 investigates the social media use of collegiate student athletes and whether or not their use of these websites should be monitored or regulated to protect the reputations of the individual players as well as their teams and schools. For example, Ohio State University third-string quarterback Cardale Jones recently tweeted “why should we have to go to class if we came here to play football, we ain't come to play school, classes are pointless." This statement caused an issue for the entire team when Jones’ name was Googled mere hours later and his statement turned up right on the first page of search results. His words not only display his individual ignorance, but also reflect on the intelligence of his fellow teammates and school as a whole. Because of this issue, more and more coaches are beginning to ban their players from using twitter, including Boise State's Chris Petersen, South Carolina's Steve Spurrier and Florida State's Jimbo Fisher. Some athletic departments are even employing the services of software by companies like Udiligence and Varsity Monitor. These programs allow coaches to flag specific words or phrases that could be embarrassing or detrimental to the reputation of their teams and send both the coach and the player and alert that their tweets are inappropriate and must be removed. The problems that arise with these social media restrictions include the possible violation of free speech of the players, as well as the issue of whether the standards of conduct for participation on a team should be able to include off-season actions of the players. In terms of the sports marketing implications of this issue, if no bans are implemented in this area, then a mere Google search of a school’s athletic teams may return results of student athletes’ inappropriate or disrespectful tweets, giving the searcher an immediate negative opinion of the school as a whole and potentially causing the school to have to drastically improve their marketing techniques to make up for these statements that are destructive to their reputation. It appears that more collegiate athletic departments are choosing to implement these restrictions for the purpose of protecting their reputations and preserving their current marketing campaigns.