As of 2:30pm ET on Tuesday, Randy Shannon ordered his players to disable their Twitter accounts, citing too much social networking interaction on game day and too much personal information being released.
For those who missed it, Jacory Harris dropped one final game day tweet before kickoff, stating, “Middle fingers everywhere. This is why you play college football”, about an hour before Miami took on Ohio State and the junior quarterback hurled four interceptions on a 36-24 loss.
Other Canes chimed in online today, giving their farewell speeches before signing off. Lee Chambers mentioned that it was “nothing personal” and just “business”, Jordan Futch let it be known he’d be back in spring and Damien Berry joked that it was “soo hard to say good to Twitter, mane” … seemingly playing off the Boyz II Men classic.
Brandon McGee and Ryan Hill also bid adieu, though mentioned an obvious loophole that Shannon might want to also address, inviting fans and friends to follow them on Facebook.
When you really break it down, Twitter is filler but Facebook is the main dish regarding social networking. As easy as a player can bang out 140 characters via Twitter, the same can essentially be done with one’s Facebook status and more players have Facebook pages than they do Twitter accounts.
At last count, Harris had 8.671 followers in Twitter, while his personal Facebook page has 4,877 followers (5,000 is the max number of friends allowed) and his Facebook fan page is at 12,752 and counting.
Harris’ pre-game Twitter quip could’ve just as easily have been accomplished via Facebook so truth be told, banning Twitter only solves half the problem. If Shannon is anti-Twitter, he needs to go the full mile and ban all social networking.
Whether they’re high-level athletes or just average, ordinary college kids, seems teens and twentysomethings fail to realize that social networking is a public forum and their words can come back to haunt them.
A few weeks back a 20-year old juror was kicked off a case for updating her status to state that it was “gonna be fun to tell the defendant they’re GUILTY” before the trial had ended.
Google the term “fired facebook post” and you’ll see a slew of articles over idiots who ran their mouths about their bosses or co-workers, eventually earning a pink slip.
Shannon has oft stated to his players that “nothing good happens after 2am”. In the world of social networking, nothing good comes from celebrity amateur athletes spilling their guts, unfiltered for the world to see.
Two games into the season – and three days after a heartbreaking loss – this is a good move by Shannon, but he needs to go all the way. Twitter is just the tip of the iceberg and shutting down one avenue will just force kids to go down another.
From September through December, all players need to stay off social networking sites. Put your nose in a textbook or playbook, gentlemen. You’re 1-1 and if the mantra is still “no excuses” then remove all obvious distractions.