Ronnie Ramos is the NCAA managing director of digital communications for the NCAA and writes a column for hte National Sports Journalism Center's online site,
sportsjournalism.org.
Prior to joining the NCAA, Ramos spent 25 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, splitting his time between news and sports at five newspapers, including
The Miami Herald and
Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
See Ramos' article below online at
sports journalism.org, site of the National Sports Journalism Center. You can follow him on
Twitter.
One of the major issues at the intersection of college sports and new media is how universities handle student-athletes’ use of social media platforms. Michigan, which has adopted a new social media policy, has found a unique way to tackle this tricky issue.
Until now, the college sports world has mostly adopted one of three approaches:
• Ban players from using social media
The ban is primarily for Twitter and, to some extent, Facebook. This usually happens after a player does something foolish or inappropriate. And usually, it’s a decision made by the head coach.
Washington State football coach Mike Leach is the latest one to ban Twitter use by his players. Leach would not say what prompted the ban. “Twitter’s banned and quite frankly, if after today you see anything on Twitter from our team - and I don’t care if it says, ‘I love life’ - I would like to see it, because I will suspend them,” he said in a statement to the
Spokesman-Review.
• Monitor players use on social media
At Kentucky and Louisville, the athletics departments mandate that all student-athletes provide the athletic department passwords to their social media accounts.
They also “require athletes to agree to monitoring software being placed on their social-media accounts. The software emails alerts to coaches whenever athletes use a word that could embarrass the students, the university or tarnish their images on services such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace,” according to a story in the
Louisville Courier-Journal.
• Use social media as a learning experience
Some schools see social media as a useful communication tool student-athletes need to learn to use effectively.
As I wrote a couple of months ago, Tennessee is one of the schools taking this approach. Here is what Tennessee associate media relations director Tom Satkowiak told Yahoo! Sports about social media: “I cringe every time I see a coach or program ban the use of social media. I think we should be educating guys on how to use it because it’s not going to go away. It’s a part of life now. We just need to educate them on how to use it right.”
The same week Leech banned Twitter at WSU, Oregon football coach Chip Kelly took the opposite approach: “If they can’t be responsible in social media, then we recruited the wrong kids,” Kelly said. “I think it’s very prominent this day in age … and we try to educate our kids like we educate them in everything they do. But if you can’t trust a kid on Twitter … can you trust them on third down?”
The Michigan way
Michigan has adopted a hybrid approach that may become the next popular way to handle student-athletes’ use of social media.
Seeking to balance the need to protect the student-athlete and the university’s brand with the desire to educate student-athletes on how to best use social media, the school has enacted a new formal social media policy.
Michigan requires student-athletes to provide the name of their social media accounts, but not their passwords or any access to their accounts. The student-athletes also must sign
the school’s Social Media Policy (PDF,
obtained and posted by annarbor.com).
David Ablauf, the University’s associate athletic director, told
The Michigan Daily he hopes the policy will educate students about the importance of building their own brand via social media.
“We try to use it more as an educational process. We want to educate them about what is good and what is poor in terms of how you handle yourself in social media,” Ablauf said. “Whether you believe it or not, the companies that will look to hire and employ you in the future are looking at your social media activity.”
The policy requires student-athletes to provide to the university’s compliance department the name of all social media accounts. Students are also provided with the school’s social media guidelines, which outline appropriate uses of social media and those uses which may violate the athletic department’s social media policy,” according to the form each student-athlete must sign.
Michigan’s social media guidelines are a collection of what students should and should not do.
As some states seek to introduce legislation to ban the monitoring of social media, Michigan’s approach may catch on as schools look for effective ways to make sure social media is being used responsibly and that student-athletes can learn how to best use these platforms.