Little Privacy For Athletes From Social Media

Little privacy these days for football stars
Social media networks bring new and sometimes unwanted attention to players

Written by JOSEPH PERSON
jperson@thestate.com

Posted on 07.25.10

HOOVER, Ala. — When Patrick DiMarco checked out the Facebook page of a man who sent him a recent friend request, he noticed the man was a reporter.

The South Carolina Screw assumed he was someone looking to “find dirt” on DiMarco and turned down the request. A day or two later, DiMarco received an e-mail from the man, explaining he was a Gamecock fan from California who wanted to follow DiMarco from the West Coast.

“You’ve got to be careful because that’s what people have been getting into trouble for, posting stuff,” DiMarco said last week at SEC media days. “I’m not a big guy on writing what I’m doing. What I’m doing is my own business, so I’m not big on sharing what I’m doing with other people.”

Some of DiMarco’s peers have not been as careful.

NCAA officials have said athletes’ posts and pictures on the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter have aided the investigation into whether a Miami party attended by football players at numerous schools was paid for by agents. South Carolina tight end Weslye Saunders was interviewed by the NCAA as part of the probe.

North Carolina defensive tackle Marvin Austin provided NCAA investigators a potentially incriminating piece of evidence with a Twitter message he sent in the early morning hours of May 29. “I live In Club LIV so I get the tenant rate … bottles comin like its a giveaway,” Austin wrote.

LIV is a nightclub in the upscale Fontainebleau hotel on South Beach in Miami.

The investigation and its link to the popular social networking sites have put players on heightened awareness about what they “tweet” on their Twitter feeds or the types of updates they post on their Facebook pages.

Many of the players who attended SEC media days talked about using caution not only with what they posted, but also in deciding what “friends” to give access to view their pages.

Gamecocks linebacker Shaq Wilson follows a simple guideline when posting: “Don’t put anything on there you wouldn’t want your mom to see.”

Or your coach.

Half of the SEC’s coaches maintain active Twitter feeds as a way of communicating with fans and recruits. But coaches also use the sites to monitor what players and recruits are doing.

Arkansas requires all of its players with Facebook pages to be “friends” with director of football operations Mark Robinson. The “friend” status allows Robinson to view players’ pages that may not be accessible to the public.

So when Arkansas receiver Cobi Hamilton wrote about his thumb surgery on Facebook last year, his coaches saw it – and were not happy about Hamilton sharing information they did not want out.

“We’ve had times where we’ve had to bring young men in and say, ‘You need to take this off your Facebook,’” Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino said. “It’s the new part of the world. I think it’s up to us as a staff to do everything we can to educate our players about what’s right, what’s wrong, (and) continue to work at that.”

Schools warn players about the potential consequences of posting incriminating pictures or comments online. At Kentucky, defensive end DeQuin Evans said players were told about a college athlete who lost his scholarship because of a picture on his Facebook page of him posing next to a line of beer cans.

Mississippi coach Houston Nutt said he reminds players the things they post on Facebook are a reflection of them, their families and their school.

Still, not everybody gets the message. Nutt said he called two players into his office last season because of vulgarity on their Facebook pages.

They explained the posts were a reference to a song title.

“Well, I don’t like the name of the song,” Nutt recalled telling them.

Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said he has stopped recruiting certain prospects because of things on Facebook.

“You can learn a lot about a person when you get on their Facebook page,” Mullen said. “We certainly have crossed a recruit off our board because of the different things I’ve seen them post on Facebook. Maybe that’s not the type of character player, the type of person, we’re looking for (based on) what they’re doing in their social life.”

Facebook and Twitter also provide another avenue for agents, or their runners, to contact players. Kentucky senior tailback Derrick Locke said when he gets a message from an agent on Facebook, he tells them to send him literature about their agency but makes it clear he is not going to choose a representative until season’s end.

Kentucky receiver Randall Cobb deleted his Facebook page two months ago, although he said an impostor created a page claiming to be him. Cobb was not concerned about agent contact or getting in trouble on Facebook; he just got bored with it.

“Now I’m Twitter all the time,” he said.

He is mindful that fans or media members might form an opinion about him based on what he tweets about in 140 characters or fewer.

“It’s crazy because what you say is what represents you as a person and what represents your brand,” Cobb said. “Like, my brand is I play for Kentucky. I came from Alcoa (Tennessee) High School. I have a brand, and I’m representing that brand and my community everywhere I go. I have to make sure that I keep that in mind.”

Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett is not taking any chances. While many players will approve friend requests from fans of their schools, Mallett’s Facebook community is restricted to people he knows.

“A lot of people get mad at me” for that exclusivity, Mallett said. “But I’m going to keep my life personal.”

But as the ongoing investigation has shown, not all players are so discriminating.

“There’s always people that will do some stuff and you’re like, ‘What were they thinking?’?” Mallett said. “It’s up to them to decide what they want to show to the public and what they don’t.”