Iowa basketball coach Fran McCaffery told his players to stop using Twitter after fans got nasty with one of the team’s players via the social network.
One player even deleted his account with more than 8,000 followers (or hopefully just changed the username).
That’s McCaffery’s choice. He’s the coach. But as a professor who teaches social media to college students, I thought this was a bad choice. Here’s why:
It was a teaching moment: When you’re a high profile athlete at a major university, there are going to be trolls who criticize you. They will do it on Twitter, on Facebook, on message boards and even scream it at your team bus. This is an opportunity to teach student-athletes how to deal with and rise above these situations. This a chance to show high school students (and younger) who will face the same thing how to deal with these situations.
You’re not addressing the problem: The problem was not athletes on Twitter. The problem was assholes on Twitter. If you remove the athletes, you’ve still go the assholes. And you just let the assholes win.
Social media is completely mainstream for college students: In the past year, I’ve taught social media to more than 100 students, and I’ve run into maybe 2-3 who are not on Twitter. You’re unfairly punishing your athletes by taking away one of their main forms of communication.
It’s not just Twitter: Banning Twitter doesn’t address Facebook or Instagram or Shapchat or Google+ or Vine or whatever social network is launching today. Where do you draw the line?
You’re hurting their future: Twitter is a great personal branding and networking tool. Most of these players are not going to the NBA. But they can be building connections and followers now that will help them be successful in their future career – whatever that career may be.
You’re making the wrong headlines: The Iowa basketball team is ranked and headed to the NCAA tournament for the first time in years. And we’re talking about Twitter accounts instead of basketball.
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Great thoughts Chris. I saw a segment with the head coach of Kentucky where he said he tells his athletes to us social media to post their thoughts, but not to read others reactions. He said his players have to be ready to read the negative reactions and the positive if they read the @ mentions. Of course he is in a slightly different perspective since his athletes are only there for the months of the college basketball season, before they go pro. But, that is certainly a different message than Fran. It is a tough beast to manage, but I agree with you making them take their accounts down is the wrong way to go, it is giving the haters the win.
You criticize McCaffery’s action of banning Twitter, but don’t say what else he should do. He is trying to protect his players from the idiots out there who want criticize the players. He is trying to focus their minds. He can’t change the idiots but he can say something about how his players access the idiots’ ideas. I know that it will be impossible to protect them from social media but twitter seems to be the most common connection for sport idiots connecting with athletes.
Please note that he is just suggesting that they stop twitter for the short period of time till after they make it to the playoffs.
Thanks for the comment Leigh. I guess my main point – which I might not have made very well – was to education them about using Twitter as opposed to banning them from using it.
There is definitely a fine line here . While wanting to protect your players, I think educating them on how to use social media properly while being a person who is in a spotlight, under a microscope would be very valuable, even mandatory. I also agree and definitely understand coach mcaffreys decision. He wants his players completely focused on what they are trying to accomplish without having his players being trolled by idiots and people looking for a quote. Cause we have to remember these are just kids and if you give them enough rope they will hang themselves. Just my two cents
While I don’t disagree with your view, I understand why Fran made this choice. As you said, Iowa is a good team and the headlines should not be about twitter, but Fran did not make a preemptive move here. He did this in response to the “assholes” you mentioned. Hopefully this teaches the fans to be respectful on twitter and keep their armchair quarterbacking to themselves. Fran made the right move because the players need to focus on basketball, and not on what’s being said by some idiot who’s hiding behind a screen name. He didn’t take it away permanently. Just until the season ends.
Your point was clear, Chris. This was a fantastic teaching opportunity. You work with student-athletes yourself so you know exactly how this should have been approached. I work with 10-12 yr olds in Little League and every second I am with them there is a teaching moment. As the old adage states, “If I knew now what I knew then.” A cool down period would be a sufficient solution to this problem. Maybe add some sarcasm to the mix. For all the assholes that hit up McCabe, perhaps the appropriate response would have been, “Please show me your personal stats from when you played D-I basketball and if I find it appropriate, I’ll personally apologize to you for my performance tonight.” Love Zach
These players are adults with better understanding of social media than their coach. It’s ludicrous to pretend “the players need protecting.” This is like the straw man of “Think of the children!” They also don’t need educated. Again, most of them have more experience than the people proposed as being the educators.
Here’s a better idea: Butt out of student speech and let them figure it out on their own. No one is teaching them how to brush their teeth or use a phone.
Someone should contact the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: http://www.thefire.org
Generally we are supposed to value free speech and engender debate at out educational institutions. Shutting down speech isn’t the answer. The answer to bad speech is more speech.
The players are not employees. They are not paid. They play a game in exchange for paltry considerations. Dictating what they do when off the court is idiotic.
I don’t know who this McCaffrey is. But with regards to the person who wrote that “social media is essential for job searching” — BAH. Social media is only essential if you’re working at some dipsh* company like the Kardashian Kollection and your job is to make Kim et. al. look like less of an A**. If I was a recruiter, I wouldn’t hire anyone idiotic enough to bother with these pointless websites. Social media is for grade-Z A-holes and McCaffrey is right in trying to protect his TEAM from out-of-control narcissistic egotists like the players who use this site. Whoever came up with this idea that everyone’s daily minutiae is worthy of announcing to the whole world is just as much of a moron as the banal “twits” who use it. Who cares if the point guard is eating pizza, or the center taking a poo? Maybe that’s why it’s so popular with teenagers and college students. Their brains aren’t yet developed fully, and when they are, they’ll look back and see how much of a vapid dimwit they made themselves out to be. I wish this country would ban Twitter like they did in Turkey. Probably save us from a lot of meaningless crap from those socialite “dodos.”