NCAA to Tighten Twitter Rules

theodp writes "Facebook and Twitter have made student athletes more accessible than ever, but Tweets that catch the watchful eye of the NCAA could be all that's needed to bring down a successful college athletic program. Among the allegations leveled against the Univ. of North Carolina by the NCAA is a failure to 'adequately and consistently monitor social networking activity,' which the NCAA argues would have caused the school to detect other violations sooner than they did. To cope with the daunting task of monitoring hundreds of accounts on a daily basis, some sports programs are turning to software like UDiligence, while others are opting for a simpler approach, such as having a coach frequently check on posts from the team's players."

Comments

well

[Osgeld]

that is what happens when you post every detail of your life on a billboard, anyone can see it

What gives them the right?

[nebaz]

Why should students in the NCAA be any more monitored than regular students? (As in, why at all?). As is, the NCAA athletes often bring in major revenue to schools (for football programs at least) and are not allowed to benefit from it at all, does the NCAA consider them their slaves?

Re:What gives them the right?

[DaMattster]

Why should students in the NCAA be any more monitored than regular students? (As in, why at all?). As is, the NCAA athletes often bring in major revenue to schools (for football programs at least) and are not allowed to benefit from it at all, does the NCAA consider them their slaves?

Simple, we are moving more and more towards a police state.and away from freedom of the press. The NCAA does not want to be publicly criticized when it is anyone's legal right to criticize them. Heaven forefend should a player criticize the holy NCAA!

Re:What gives them the right?

[Frosty Piss]

Why should students in the NCAA be any more monitored than regular students? (As in, why at all?). As is, the NCAA athletes often bring in major revenue to schools (for football programs at least) and are not allowed to benefit from it at all, does the NCAA consider them their slaves?

Because there is some myth that star college athletes are not in it for the money, but the pure joy of clean, gentlemanly competition and the excitement of the game.

It's the same myth that has made the idea that pro athletes don't / should not use enhancing drugs and therapies.

It's the myth that competition isn't about winning.

Re:What gives them the right?

[the_raptor]

Exactly. If the NCAA had of alleged the Univ. of North Carolina had failed to 'adequately and consistently monitor student athletes via phone taps and private investigators' they would be regarded as insane. Sure what the athletes do could embarrass the university or the NCAA, but that is only cause to kick offenders off teams, not have them tracked and monitored.

Sports teams and universities have no duty to ACTIVELY monitor athletes (or other students) to prevent violations. They only have a moral (and sometimes legal) duty to deal openly and fairly when violations come to their attention.

If they can't trust a particular athlete to not do illegal drugs and have sex with under-age teens or something that person should just not be on the team.

Re:What gives them the right?

[stinerman]

I don't particularly know why the NCAA would need to be able to do stuff like this. I do know that if the NFL and NBA had developmental leagues (like MLB and the NHL), there would be no reason for it. If you're a good high school football player, you have to play college football for 3 years until you can be drafted (well technically you just have to be 3 years removed from high school). There'd be no reason for players to violate NCAA policy if they didn't have to go through the NCAA. They could just go to the AA football team and play for money until they were ready for the NFL.

Re:What gives them the right?

[mysidia]

had failed to 'adequately and consistently monitor student athletes via phone taps and private investigators' they would be regarded as insane.

There's a difference: telephone conversations are private. Twitter posts are public.

Sports teams and universities have no duty to ACTIVELY monitor athletes (or other students) to prevent violations. They only have a moral (and sometimes legal) duty to deal openly and fairly when violations come to their attention.

Yes... "when violations come to their attention". They have a duty to be paying attention though, which includes consuming major publications, such as local newspapers, major news networks, and (yes) Twitter, for possibly inappropriate statements students have provided for public consumption using their name that is associated with the University and the Football program.

This is not about 'monitoring' students; it's about monitoring public venues to protect the image of their brand, and their football team members are part of their brand -- whatever publicity their football team members create has an effect on the University and Football associations' images in the public eye.

Re:What gives them the right?

[Anonymous Coward]

What gives them the right?

The theory goes that participation in the NCAA-affiliated athletic programs is a *voluntary* choice for the student, and that as a condition of participation in that program, the student athlete voluntarily gives up certain right/privileges. It's also not a permanent renunciation of rights, as the student can get out from under the requirements at any time by quitting the athletic program. (Of course, that probably also means quitting college and/or repaying the school for loans, as they're probably on an athletic scholarship, but theoretically they're free to do so.)

It's also voluntary at the college's level too. As far as I know, there's nothing legislating that schools be members of the NCAA. It's just that NCAA-affiliated schools can't play games against non-NCAA schools. And all of the bowl games and championships are NCAA-affiliated. And there's a large chunk of change/advertising/bargaining clout that goes along with NCAA membership. So they're not required to do so (and can theoretically pull out any time they wanted to), but practically there's no way anything but purely intramural sports college is *not* going to be NCAA affiliated.

Theoretically, NCAA rules are supposed to keep the games fair and in keeping with the thought that the participants are amateur "student-athletes". There's a bunch of rules against drug use (steriods, etc.) for example. And minimum grade/academic progress requirements. There's also rules against accepting money/kickbacks/endorsement deals from companies, as well as rules about what's acceptable and not in recruiting (what you can and can't offer a prospective player) so that all colleges compete on a level playing field. (The article is a little thin on details, but I gather this last point is what's the biggest issue for Twitter: "improper contact" between coaches/players and recruits).

The philosophy behind it is sound (keep the games fair and "collegiate" ), but I have to admit there are some bone-headed rules. As an example, I know of track athlete who had to refuse the prize after winning her hometown's Thanksgiving Day fun-run because had she accepted it, she would risk losing her amateur status under NCAA rules. The prize she had to refuse? A frozen turkey.

Re:What gives them the right?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In practice, of course, NCAA rules are approximately as effective in ensuring that collegiate competition occurs among 'amateur student-athletes' as Olympic rules are in encouraging similar fantasies of 'amateur' competition.

Luckily, as long as we keep pretending, there is room for rampant hypocrisy and more or less continual rule breaking, so that's a win...

Re:What gives them the right?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the myth that competition isn't about winning.

Actually it is. Competition, in the classic sense, is about performing at ones best and pitting oneself against another is a great way to do it.

The NCAA and college sports are about winning - by any means possible. You see, there's a lot of stupid people with way too much money who give it to schools that win but may not necessarily compete well.

Here's an example from my own past of what I mean in terms of the difference between "winning" and "competing".

*wavy line* wavy lines*wavy lines*

I was competing at a swim meet. And the way it worked out, I was the only one swimming in this particular event in my age group. I swam my heart out to get the best time I could because I was competing with myself. I swam better times when I was racing someone else - when you see someone next to you in the next lane, you swim faster.

I "won". BUT, I could have "won" even if I doggy paddled the 100 and did it in 10 minutes because of the way the age groups worked.

Coming home with my ribbon for "First Place" my Mom was soooooo proud. I explained why I didn't give a shit. She said, "But you still won!" and loved to show my "First Place" ribbon to family. When she did that, I wanted to die of embarrassment because it wasn't a "win" to me - I got it on a technicality and BFD!

I guess I can see how people get the win at any cost mentality, but I don't understand how it can be satisfying.

Re:What gives them the right?

[timeOday]

It's the same myth that has made the idea that pro athletes don't / should not use enhancing drugs and therapies.

This is to prevent a race to the bottom, where the only way to win is by completely destroying your health. It's also because pro sports are a commercial enterprise, and most fans aren't interested in being a party to death sports. It's the same reason the NFL issued new rules to reduce brain injuries last year, even though such hits are exciting to watch, and have nothing to do with a taboo such as drugs. (Granted, whether these new rules will be initially successful, or will - more likely - require further tweaking, is another matter).

Re:What gives them the right?

[errhuman]

[Citation needed] AFAIK injury rates are much much higher for NFL or Rugby than they are for just about every other sport.

Re:What gives them the right?

[martin-boundary]

Because there is some myth that star college athletes are not in it for the money, but the pure joy of clean, gentlemanly competition and the excitement of the game.

The NCAA is free to set rules and regulations for their scholarships based on their values, and the students are free to not seek NCAA scholarships if they disagree or can't accept those rules.

There is no myth here, merely (some) students who pretend to accept those values but secretly don't. That's a character flaw in the students, not the NCAA's sportsmanship values, or some myth about reality.

It's the same myth that has made the idea that pro athletes don't / should not use enhancing drugs and therapies.

That's not a myth either, that's a rule. If pro athletes don't like the rules of the competitions they enter, then they are free to found their own sporting associations and compete in their own games, where they make up the rules so that they can use prohibited drugs and therapies and anything else they like. But if they want to compete in someone else's games, then they have to follow someone else's rules, duh.

Sources will leak.

[0100010001010011]

You could just get drunk and blab to TMZ.

Players will start having 2 twitter accounts, 1 for friends, 1 for 'fans'.

Or how about you actually punish schools? No more of this "aww, you did something illegal yesterday, we'll just mark all those Ws as Ls". If NCAA actually wanted to stop violations they'd cancel OSU's foot ball season. No vacating 2010 wins. No small fines. Cancel their season. You play 0 games. You get 0 revenue.

"It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal! You [violated the rules] so you get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir! "

Re:Sources will leak.

[stinerman]

Die-hard OSU football fan here.

It pays to note that OSU unilaterally decided to vacate their wins from last year. The NCAA had nothing to do with that.

It also pays to note that the players involved in the rule-breaking were simply selling their own possessions. Sure that's against the rules, but it's a pretty shitty rule. A friend of mine pointed out that they must have this rule or else schools could simply buy each player a $100,000 trophy that they could sell...which would get around the ban on paying the students. Fair enough, but this only lends more credence to the idea that college football (and to a lesser extent, basketball) programs should not be the de-facto minor league for the pros.

Athletics are more important than academics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck, is anyone really surprised? This is exactly the sort of shit that happens when you let people who are athletically talented, but often academically deficient, into universities solely for the purpose of playing some game. Of course they won't exhibit good judgment when using social media sites. They'll say and write really fucking stupid stuff, because many of them are just really fucking stupid people.

While there might be some marketing or brand recognition benefit to getting the institution's name blared all over the place during the various football bowls or March Madness, none of this truly helps the academic side of things. Any good academic-oriented school will be more than able to make itself widely known based on merit alone.

It'd be one thing if academically-gifted students who also enjoyed sport formed clubs and played games on the side. I enjoyed rugby as a youth, and participated in organized games even up into university, as relief from my studies. But it's a totally different situation when some of the stupidest athletes around are brought in to an academic setting just to play a sport. They are a drain in every way, from their negative presence on campus, to their costly scholarships, to the ill repute they bring to the academic institution.

Solution to piss off NCAA and monitors

[Cito]

Everyone register fake twitter names similar to NCAA players, If you are a college student sign up and create about 5 or 6 or more different twitter/facebook accounts. let them monitor a fake one while you twitter or facebook under pseudonyms. I personally have like 6 twitter accounts and 4 facebook accounts, at my college some professors wanted us to give them our facebook and/or twitter names so I always give the fake ones. it drives them mad when sometimes they realize it isn't a real account as it's not used or has random text tweeted from a perl script from a random freeshell account. And to help others I've made dozens of accounts using similar names to people that want to obfuscate the profile a little bit, not fool proof but does help make it more difficult when googling for a person's twitter or facebook as 9 times out of 10 you will get 10-20 fake profiles I or others have created as top results before you ever get to the real person. But I always advise people making multiple accounts, using free anon proxy websites, just to help spam up search engines with false profiles and for giving the fake profiles to military/school/employers

Re:Solution to piss off NCAA and monitors

[vlm]

Why would a professor ask for a Facebook profile? I certainly wouldn't give them one.

Attractive member of the appropriate sex : obvious

Mostly its used after cheating is suspected. So, vlm and Anonymous Coward turned in rather similar "hello_world.c" programs last week... lets see if there is anything incriminating on their "walls"; perhaps vlm was dumb enough to write, "hey Anonymous, lets meet at the computer lab at 6pm tonight to work on the assignment together, OK?"

The other part is some profs actually have FB profiles and twitter profiles and they don't mind people asking them questions if they know who the heck they are. But they're not going to help their competitive coworker's students, or just some crazy random dude off the internet. Preemptively friending or whatevering all your students is a pretty easy way to work around this. On something more modern like google+ you just put them all in circles by class.

What?

[wisnoskij]

Since when is "failure to 'adequately and consistently monitor social networking activity,'" something that is required?
Sounds more like something that would be illegal then something that they are legally bound to do.

I wonder why?

[fermion]

I wonder how many of these violations have to do with kids complaining about doing work with no pay. When I was in school I worked in a lab and gained valuable skills like working with people from various backgrounds, writing assembly language programs to interface devices, playing with equipment that is available no where else but in a research lab, learning to disassemble and fix such equipment, learning to build novel equipment, learning to solve problems on the fly. Writing reports for NASA. You know what? Unlike the NCAA slaves, um, student athletes, I got paid a fair wage. There was never any question that I was there for the experience, that was priceless, but we are in America and in America people are generally paid for their work. And scholarships are not grants. Scholarships pay for education, not being an entertainer. I understand that we have to have rules to that the schools with the most money do not get the best players by giving them the best hookers and drugs. I understand that a free market pay structure would create animosity amongst the player who are too young to understand that even if you do the same work, you are not necessarily worth the same pay. But would mandating that each student who is part of the team for an official NCAA game shall receive, say, $20, really kill them? It is becoming clear that being an NCAA player is the antithesis to being a college student.

What is sad is that for most sports, only 3% of high school players will go to an NCAA school, and of those, only 1% will go to any pro venue. So in from high school, all these kids are told they are working for opportunity, but all they are working for is to have their lives controlled by the lords of the manor who get all the money. I suppose some people like that. And 99.7% of peasants are left with nothing.

Re:OH BOY SPAWTS

[stewbacca]

I think the slashdot angle is the crackdown on freedom of speech. Granted, the NCAA isn't the federal government, but that kind of makes it even worse, that a giant multi-million dollar "corporation" can tell the people it exploits what they can or can't say.

Violations

[funkatron]

The article mentions "violations" a lot. Does this mean something? Or more precisely, what is being violated?

For the benefit of the 90% of non-USian readers...

[Gordonjcp]

... what the hell is the NCAA?

I gather it's some sort of "sports" thing. Surely if you don't want your whole life dictated by them, you just don't need to play their game?

Find a different game to play. One that's fun, and doesn't require you to sign yourself up to a life of servitude.

Re:For the benefit of the 90% of non-USian readers

[king neckbeard]

The NCAA is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It's the organization that all serious college sports teams in the US belong to. If your sport or college is not part of the NCAA, you almost certainly aren't going to get a scholarship for it.

Re:For the benefit of the 90% of non-USian readers

[Gordonjcp]

Well, then that means that you'll have to get a scholarship for being, you know, a scholar. Maybe they should concentrate on studying, instead of playing catch with their friends.

Should have defined the abbreviation NCAA.

[grahammm]

Nowhere in the summary or article does it define the abbreviation NCAA. As I had not previously encountered the abbreviation and the articles talked about college athletes in North Carolina, I assumed that it meant "North Carolina Athletic Association".

Re:For the benefit of the 90% of non-USian readers

[vlm]

I gather it's some sort of "sports" thing. Surely if you don't want your whole life dictated by them, you just don't need to play their game?

Find a different game to play. One that's fun, and doesn't require you to sign yourself up to a life of servitude.

Sorry, but as a parent I can objectively say that even little league has become kind of "office-spaced" or "dilbert-ified". Check out some individual field/facility rules for compulsory volunteering, scheduling, etc.

Americans use their talents and skills to organize all the fun out of any group activity; Sport, business, hobby, anything.