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September 9, 2009Posted in: Off Track, Off the Hoof
Several weeks ago I sat at O’Charley’s in Louisville sharing appetizers and jokes with two sports anchors, who happen to be friends. We were talking football, and both men had stories about their news directors pushing for live updates of scores. With just one solution: Twitter, there’s now a Friday night race between them to post the scores first.
Good thing they’re covering high school football, where there’s no strangling social media policy (yet).
Last I checked, the good varsity players make their way onto college rosters. And no NCAA league is tougher than the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Tough teams, tougher policies: fans are now clear to update Facebook and Twitter and even snap a camera phone picture or two, but nothing “for commercial use” means media cannot do the blogging that’s become so popular in recent months. That’s a tough break for alumni who rely on those blogs for timely updates when the game isn’t televised in their area.
But what’s the media to do – boycott all SEC game coverage in protest? That works if your goal is to alienate your entire readership. But a protest precedent is about to be set in the NFL, whose new policy mandates no social media messages posted by athletes or their representatives within a 90 minute window before and after games.
Golf is the only sport where the social media rules work to everyone’s advantage: no cell phones or cameras allowed on the course for anyone except credentialed media means quiet for the players and a controlled media message. Yet live blogging from the media allows those following at work or on the road to stay fully informed, and players Tweeting from the clubhouse in between rounds (such as @IanJamesPoulter) engages fans in a whole new way.
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad (formerly Johnson) Ochocinco has always pushed the boundaries of the league. Yet last Friday, even though he earlier said he would find a way to Tweet through games regardless of whatever policy was doled out, Ochocinco took the extraordinary step of deleting his entire account, saying “due to the many rules the NFL has made I’ve found it difficult to enjoy Twitter.”
Who hasn’t been following @OGOchocinco? He was as informative about football as he was entertaining about life in general. Combined with the HBO series “Hard Knocks” that has featured the Bengals this season, Chad’s accessibility turned casual fans into hardcore fanatics.
We live in a world where even the President has a PDA. If the White House can negotiate a deal with the security powers that be, why can’t the SEC or NFL find a balance with the players? There is no harm except free marketing in Shaq and Ochocinco interacting with their fans. What’s next, banning autograph signings outside the locker rooms? Because that’s about the same level of “team security” secrets these guys are going to give out online.
No one can blame these leagues – from the NCAA to the SEC to the NFL – for protecting lucrative television deals. But professional sports teams rely on drafting from college rosters which are filled with former high school players. And the latter group likes to keep their social media pages updated: so leagues need to keep in mind that these suffocating social media policies are souring fans, media, and now even players.
