Twitter, Instagram used by student athletes to communicate with fans
Accepting thousands of friend requests on Facebook was Michael Roth’s first mistake following his first College World Series.
When the former South Carolina pitcher’s fame kept growing, the social media missteps didn’t stop; he admitted he occasionally expressed feelings on Twitter before addressing them with others.
Roth experienced the highs and lows of online interaction with a passionate fan base, receiving both praise and scrutiny on Twitter, but he always appreciated having the freedom to use it. Roth even had his Twitter handle, @mtroth29, stitched into his glove before his senior season.
“There’s a lot of things that student-athletes don’t get to be involved in, so if you take another thing away like Twitter or Instagram or whatever, you take out an interaction,” Roth said.
With social media gaining steam within athletic departments, USC is faced with the challenge of how to promote and protect its brand and the brand of its athletes.
Education about social media and creating a positive online identity is one solution and prohibiting student-athletes from using Twitter during the regular season is another.
But when society is becoming increasingly digitally interactive, how realistic and constructive is a ban from any social media?
No Twitter, no problem
After South Carolina’s game against Alabama-Birmingham, senior free safety D.J. Swearinger tweeted out several videos of plays he’d made during the game, including one of his helmet-to-helmet hit on a UAB player.
Swearinger deleted the videos shortly after he posted them, but not before local media had seen and publicized his posts. Within a few hours, Swearinger was suspended for that very hit by the Southeastern Conference.
Before the 2011 season, USC coach Steve Spurrier made tweeting during the regular season prohibited for the team, but after deleting his tweets regarding the UAB game, Swearinger found a way around the policy, taking to Instagram instead.
His post on the photo-sharing site after the suspension was announced: “So we playin 2 hand touch des days!?!? Football a neva b da same no mo!!! I guess dis game is a tru passing league now......”
“It just got to me for a little bit, but that was last week,” Swearinger said Tuesday after practice.
Kevin DeShazo, founder of Fieldhouse Media, a company that works with athletic departments on the collegiate level to educate athletes, coaches and administrators on how to use social media well, said banning just one site shows a lack of understanding or education because what athletes post on Twitter can just as easily be posted elsewhere.
Spurrier said there wasn’t any particular reason for why he just banned Twitter and not all social media. And he’s not the only one. Along with South Carolina, other notable football programs with Twitter restrictions include Clemson, Boise State and Florida State.
“I guess because I’m not smart enough to ban anything else,” Spurrier said. “But that’s a good point, maybe we should ban the other parts, too. We get a report usually on what it is. If it gets to be a problem, we’ll start banning that also.”
DeShazo said media members typically quote Twitter because it’s more easily accessed, while some “probably feel a little bit creepy” garnering information from an athlete’s Facebook, which is often perceived as more private.
“There’s no real benefit to banning it because they can put that stuff anywhere and they will put those messages anywhere if they don’t understand how to use it appropriately,” DeShazo said.
While the football players can’t tweet during the regular season, many of the assistant coaches and support staff do.
“In my opinion, that’s extremely hypocritical because you’re saying this group can use it and the other can’t,” DeShazo said. “You’re trusting one group to use it, when adults make just as many mistakes as student-athletes.”
When Spurrier first told the team Twitter would be banned during the season, defensive tackle Byron Jerideau instantly thought of Instagram as an alternate way to communicate.
“I had one before he even said that, but once he said, ‘No Twitter,’ I was just like, well, I guess I’ll just stick to Instagram,” Jerideau said. “I don’t think Coach knows about that. It’s just a way to communicate. I mean, it’s just fun when we can’t tweet.”
Swearinger and Jerideau aren’t alone. At least 20 other players listed on the team’s updated depth chart have a public Instagram account and post on it regularly — several post multiple times a day.
Roth said he thinks Twitter gets the most attention because it’s five times as large as Instagram, with 500 million registered users to Instagram’s 100 million.
“Good for them,” Roth said of the football team’s use of Instagram. “They found a way around [the Twitter ban].”
The other side
A couple of weeks ago, Roth was reading a story about Penn State kicker Sam Ficken, who missed four of five field goals in a loss to Virginia, and felt like he could relate.
Ficken received attacks on Twitter from fans after his performance, just like former USC outfielder Adam Matthews, Roth’s college roommate, when he struggled in USC’s last CWS appearance.
“I wouldn’t say it’s hard to deal with. It’s expected,” Matthews said. “At a big-time university, if you don’t do well, you’re scrutinized. People pay big money to see athletic events. At a big school like USC, you’re going to get harsh feedback.”
Matthews said the biggest difference with the rise of social media is that the criticism can be directed specifically at him, whereas in the past, it stayed on forums or in the comments of news articles.
Like Roth, Matthews understands the negatives of social media, but said that if you’re careful and think before you post anything, it’s a useful tool both as a student-athlete and a professional out of college.
With both Roth and Matthews playing minor league baseball, Twitter gives them a vehicle to be able to interact with their fans when they’re across the country. Roth said it offers a “break from the monotonous reality” and it’s how he gets his news now.
“That’s how I found out Osama bin Laden been killed,” Roth said.
Teaching better tweeting
Matthews said he remembers wondering if then-baseball coach Ray Tanner would restrict the team’s Twitter privileges after hearing about Spurrier’s new policy.
“It brings attention to the coaches’ eyes when coach Spurrier doesn’t let them have Twitter,” Matthews said. “Of course, we were like, ‘Hopefully, we get to keep it.’”
Tanner, now the athletics director, said he believes in discretion on social media and would occasionally cringe at some of the things his players tweeted. But he never restricted it. Instead, he told the squad not to tweet anything they wouldn’t want their mom to read. He said he sympathizes with some coaches, like Spurrier, who choose to ban it during the season.
“If a coach makes a decision he’d rather his team not tweet, that’s understandable, because you’re in a season where there’s a lot going on and you’re busy,” Tanner said. “With competition, sometimes you say things that you shouldn’t say during those times of year.”
Roth is a big proponent of educating, rather than restricting. For the last two years, Roth served on a panel for incoming USC freshman athletes, discussing the student-athlete experience and proper conduct on social media. It’s also a focus of his new company, Michael T. Roth Enterprises.
Tanner said outside of it being discussed at the orientation for the freshman athletes, he’s confident each coach addressed it at their respective team orientations.
“One of the things is that you need to write out your tweet, read it and just think for a second if you want to send it out,” Roth said. “Sometimes you start tweeting and you get emotional about certain things, so you just need to be careful about what you put out there because it’s going to be out there for good.”
When Fieldhouse Media works with athletic departments, DeShazo said it shifts the focus from the negative impacts and risks to how to create a positive online identity.
“We’ll have them come up with identity words and what you want to be known for, so maybe that’s faith, maybe that’s hard work or maybe you’re the funny guy on the team,” DeShazo said. “Be who you are online. If you’re a funny person, then be funny online.”
Roth’s a prime example. Known by his teammates as a jokester, he once tweeted a photo of himself and Matthews taking a bubble bath together in a Kentucky hotel.
DeShazo will then have the athletes text their identity words to an athletics spokesman, position coach or someone else who can hold them accountable. The purpose is to make every social media post reflect their identity words.
Fieldhouse Media is currently working with 25 programs this fall, including Columbus State, Arkansas, Wichita State and San Jose State.
DeShazo said he’s spoken with people in South Carolina’s administration about having Fieldhouse Media work with the athletic department, but Tanner said he hadn’t been approached about it.
“I know some different people in the administration,” DeShazo said. “We’re working on that. Some are receptive in the administration and some aren’t. Eventually, I think we’ll get South Carolina.”
When Tanner became the athletics director, the marketing team told him he needed to start tweeting, despite being self-described as “minimally tech-savvy.”
“They quickly turned the conversation into ‘It’s about the University of South Carolina and the opportunities to reach a lot of different people,’ and the fact that a lot of athletic directors are strong proponents of tweeting,” Tanner said. “Then I became intrigued with the whole idea, and I quickly made the decision that I should be very much involved.”
Tanner enjoys being able to interact with the fan base quicker. He said he often finds out about issues that could concern the athletic department on Twitter. It also allows him to promote other sports when they have a game, like the men’s soccer or volleyball teams.
Tanner added that he’s become less guarded and cautious about it than he was as a baseball coach. He accepted that it’s “part of the world we live in now.” In a sense, it became unavoidable.
“Everyone uses Twitter,” Matthews said. “It’s only going to get bigger, or maybe it’ll die out one day when something new comes out. For the time that we live in, you can’t get rid of Twitter, so education on how to use social media in general is perfect.”