The College Athlete and the Twitter Machine
I know we're all here for the college football fun but yesterday on the basketball side something interesting happened involving CJ Leslie, the North Carolina State Wolfpack and yes, of course, the twitter machine. His comments on gay athletes in the locker room and as teammates then spurred long time NBA player John Amaechi, who is openly gay, to serve up a quite scathing retort.
Oh and of course shortly after posting them Leslie went back to try to delete the tweets because, well you know, that always works...Never.
So what does this basketball player have to do with the college football world? Well, in just the last calendar year, in our own sport, we've seen multiple instances where twitter has caused a firestorm of sorts from multiple angles. We had the Marvin Austin bringing down UNC football and getting Bama and Sakerlina involved as well twitter fiasco. During the season we saw what was personally my favorite tweet quite possibly of all time because I definitely felt his pain, I am of course referring to the Randall Cobb incident after the 'Cates beat Sakerlina.
And of course we cannot forget the over all greatest tweetfest we've seen. Will Hill Action.
Athletes across the board have had their issues with twitter and as we can see through these incidents college athletes are definitely not immune to the "bad decision" guillotine.
What is the answer?
Well several schools, including my own Gridiron Tar Heels, have seen the infamous "twitter ban" handed down. Mike Leach did the same during his time at Texas Tech and others have followed suit after controversies or inappropriate comments surfaced.
To a lot of folks this is the plain and clear answer.
It isn't. It is the simple answer. A cop out. The easy way out. A band aid put on a problem. A quick fix.
As friend of the program Adam Gold from ESPN 99.9 in Raleigh points out it this ultimately harms the bulk of kids for the mistakes and immaturity of others. Most athletes handle twitter fine and/or do not have enough of following for their comments to matter. Let's be honest here, you don't follow the back up tight end or the goalie from the women's field hockey team. You've got no clue what that third string QB is saying to the girl he's sort of hollering at from Econ 101 on twitter on Saturday night.
More importantly you don't care.
This massive rush to say "I would ban twitter from my athletes if I was a coach" is a rush to the easy way out. Isn't college about the maturation process? Aren't we supposed to be enriching the kids' lives as they grow from children to adults? Or is this just about protecting the brand and making sure the coach and program stay out of the media?
The biggest crime perpetrated is not kids making ginormous snafus on twitter, the biggest crime is coaches, SIDs, player personnel managers and athletic department associates not stepping up to the plate to use the snafus as teaching tools.
Sorry to go anecdotal on you hear but in 2004 I was going into my sophomore year when, through AOL Instant Messenger, I got a message to check my email because I had been invited to join facebook. I joined it the summer of '04, back when it was an "exclusive" club, you had to have a .edu email address to be in on the fun and only a select schools had it. As the popularity exploded pictures of underage drinking, dangerous and or absolutely unwise activities started to pop up on my own and teammates pages.
By 2005 our "life skills" classes that we had during every spring and fall for both the football team and the UNC athletic community as a whole included facebook discussion as a standard. How to lock up your account, what you should and should not post, who could and could not see your account as well as who you should and should not accept friend requests from.
You either get that message through your skull or, as we've seen in the past, you don't and what happens next is a controversial facebook post or photo that ultimately damages you and the program. That said, folks learn lessons and with proper teaching points these kids learn a valuable lesson in self accountability and making wise decisions.
Twitter is no different. To remove the form of social media is to do two things; absolve them of any sort of thought process or decision making responsibility AND push them into making private or underground accounts. Guerilla accounts can't be monitored the same was open and public knowledge accounts (be they set to private or public) can be by the support staff.
Fill the kids' toolbox with materials they can use to make intelligent decisions. Don't strip them of the ability to make mistakes. Use mistakes as teaching tools because ultimately, at least we're told, that this is about more than just wins and losses. It is about building better people, helping folks grow and become adults. Removing the thinking because it is easier for coaches only leads to adults that get fired because of stupid things they post on twitter.
