When Curt Schilling launched his epic blog 38 pitches depicting his view of baseball and the media, it seemed like a turning of the tide. The Fifth Estate had arisen in sports holding journalists accountable. 38 Pitches turned Schilling from a media goat into a newsmaker and source, and after retirement he has become an ESPN analyst. However, his legacy has not carried over to his professional brethren. Instead, professional athlete social media has become the laughing of the interwebs.
There is no better example than former White Sox and incoming Marlins Coach Ozzie Guillen, who seems to set himself up for national lampooning every month. Just this week he mistakenly posted a blog that he had been hired by the Marlins BEFORE he had been officially released by the White Sox. His Twitter rants are legendary.
But make no bones about it, this kind of amateurish buffoonery extends beyond baseball. Whether its Lebron James whining about criticism on The Decision or Pittsburgh Steelers Rashard Mendenhall defending Bin Laden, we’ve seen many questionable public statements from the men and women children our society pays millions of dollars to play games.
Twitter seems to be the preferred choice for professional athletes, likely because of its brevity, which can empower even the least literary of minds. it’s so bad that ESPN runs a weekly #Follow Friday mobile column depicting the week’s worst 10 professional athlete tweets. Here are some examples:
- Lolo Jones @followlolo, Followers: 30,946, Sample tweet: “you got your talent from me not your mom because I used to outrun the cops and hurdle fences #dadquotes”
- Jesse Holley @Mr4thAndLong, Followers: 13,065, Sample tweet: ” Leavin Ihop: Guy walks up 2 me & says “You Ever Wonder What If u Dropped that ball” (in my Swaggdaddy-ish voice I reply) Nawww & walk off!”
- Metta World Peace (The Athlete Formerly Known As Ron Artest) @ronartest, Followers: 154,671, Sample tweet: “I like metta World Peace Ron Artest is a jerk for planking in the middle of the street on a toilet!!”
Granted, what we are seeing is very authentic, and really provides a glimpse into the trash-talking world of professional sports. It also shows us how poorly prepared athletes are to function off the court/ice/playing field.
Much has been said about how athletes get a free ride in college with little to no focus on education. Certainly, we are seeing some truth to that. But we are seeing a big failure on the part of professional sports leagues and teams. They would do both their brands and players a service by providing social media training in addition to whatever coaching is provided on interacting with the media. Perhaps this will change as more and more athletes show how disconnected they are from reality.
In the interim, enjoy the laughs!
What do you think of athletes and their use of social media?
I agree with you that there is a huge failure in terms of the lack of education athletes and coaches have on the ramifications of social media. I think college athletic departments, especially, need to educate athletes on how to properly use these new tools and give clear guidelines on what is acceptable. Instead of blocking access to social media (as some teams are doing), we need to teach student athletes what to do. At the pro level, I would think most agents need to do more to educate their clients as well. As we’ve seen, one bad tweet can negatively impact an athlete or coach’s earning power. Sadly, I think we’ll see a lot more screw-ups before people start to take this stuff as seriously as they should.
Personally I like it. Like you say, it’s authentic. You get to see what they’re really thinking – or not thinking? :)
I don’t think it’s necessarily a lack of education, but rather a lack of common sense. I didn’t have to be taught not to publicize naked pictures of myself online (and I’m not famous!)…somehow these guys missed the point.
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I never thought I would see the big windbag’s blog logo again, so thanks for reminding about how great it was. Kind of reminds me of a social media blogger who has never heard of an editor with 5K word posts :) In my opinion the real issue with these mediums is that there is no education from the leagues on what to do and what not to do. While the NFL has fines for Tweeting during or 90 min before or after game, they don’t levy fines that could be put in the don’t be a dumb ass column.
Education, and not the ones they were supposed to receive in college, is truly key here. Hopefully the leagues take these awful Tweets into consideration and add it to the media training that they receive.
Rick Reilly has pointed out some errant tweets, always good for a laugh.. and kinda sad. From a personal side, I wish athletes would do better by their followers apologies to Mr. Barkley, to some they are role models whether they like it or not. From a business side, social media training just makes sense. You don’t have to cut out the ‘authentic’ but as some players, teams, sports struggle for audience, reconnecting to their fans socially may go a long way, if it’s done well. FWIW.
With college athletics having been turned into an utter joke, and kids who have no real business on a college campus being trotted in for a year or two of pretending to go to class while starring for the home team until it’s time to go pro… is it any wonder that the social media feeds of many of today’s athletes reflect a stunning lack of at least one of the following: intelligence, education, judgement, or class?
Sorry to be all curmudgeonly, but this is a pet sore spot for me: the joke that is the NCAA and its all-but-dismissal of the “student” part of student-athletics. I’m not surprised that athletes routinely embarrass themselves via social media, but they don’t shoulder the most blame; we do as a society, for tolerating mediocrity as long as it can hit a three pointer or run a 4.4 40.