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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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).

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! "

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: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.

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.