Post Season: Student-athletes balance personal social media accounts with intrusiveness of the digital age


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Through social media, sports fans can follow and interact with athletes and teams anywhere in the world. And they can add their opinions to the conversation.

Athletes, who used to only directly interact with the public during autograph sessions, are now some of the most accessible people on the planet.

But when it comes to college athletics, social media can further complicate the student-athlete balance. While their classmates can tweet and post with few consequences, 18 to 23-year-old athletes have to balance using accounts for personal use while representing the Central Michigan University brand.

Death threats and arguments

In the second quarter of the Sept. 19 CMU-Syracuse game, sophomore defensive end Mitch Stanitzek was ejected on a targeting call. Syracuse quarterback Eric Dungey was sidelined with an injury for the rest of the game as a result of the play.

While sitting in the locker room while the game was still being played, Stanitzek received death threats and other vulgar messages via Twitter before the game was even over. An account called @FMitchStanitzek was also created including tweets calling him “a clown,” among other things.

Stanitzek said he’s “not a big tweeter,” but does use his account. He made his account private after the incident.

“It can just be blown out of proportion,” Stanitzek said. “People like to say a lot of things when they’re behind closed doors. Ultimately, social media you just have to ignore sometimes.”

Assistant Athletics Director for Communications Rob Wyman told Stanitzek not to get dragged down to the level of the angry Syracuse fans.

“I think Mitch handled that very professionally,” Wyman said. “We did report some of the issues to Twitter, to Facebook, just so those messages were removed and that those accounts were disciplined. That’s the one thing you can do.”

With the anonymity social media provides, people often say outrageous, vulgar or threatening comments without any consequences. College athletes are held to a different standard.

“Being representatives of the university, they don’t have, technically, that same freedom,” Wyman said. “They’re held to a standard. I think our players get that.”

Stanitzek’s case — similar to Michigan punter Blake O’Neill, who received death threats after not being able to handle a punt to beat Michigan State on Oct. 17 — exemplifies the inherent dangers that can come with social media use.

“It’s sad that you need people to have to say ‘Stop, this is ridiculous. Why are you threatening to kill a kid because he dropped a punt and lost the game?’ That’s what happens,” Wyman said. “The Michigan athletic director has to put out a message telling people to stop. Because you’re hurting the brand, you’re hurting the reputation.”

CMU sets its own rules

Scott Hirko, a professor who teaches PES 297B: Sport Communication and Media at CMU, said social media is changing faster than legislature can keep up with. He said universities are responsible for monitoring how their athletes are using social media.

“The NCAA doesn’t really have any formal regulation about how current college athletes are to use social media,” he said. “They leave that up to the institutions to do that. And a significant reason why is free speech.”

To keep CMU athletes informed about social media guidelines, the CMU Sports Information Department meets with each team before the season. Wyman tells athletes they should treat social media postings the same way they would treat other public interactions.

“It’s easy to snap out 120 characters about something and not think about it,” Wyman said. “If you say something inappropriate to someone in person or to someone in the media, there’s consequences to that. It’s the same thing with social media.”

Head Men’s Basketball Coach Keno Davis said he believes players and recruits alike don’t always realize the reach they have with a simple tweet or post.

“We continue to work with our guys to understand what message they are sending on social media, not only with people that look up to them, but their future employers that they might or might not have because of what they put there,” Davis said. “We’re learning as a staff and we’re trying to share that knowledge with the student-athletes.”

While Davis’ point guard, senior Chris Fowler, doesn’t use social media any more, the Southfield native said it is a way for athletes to build personal brands.

He credits his parents and his brother — Denver Broncos wide receiver Bennie Fowler — for teaching him how to carry himself professionally.

“Even the student that is least known on campus is a role model to somebody,” Fowler said. “If we wake up and we consider ourselves superstars and we carry ourselves like superstars, when a spotlight does hit, we never have to change how we carry ourselves.”

CMU’s most followed athlete

Of the top seven most followed Central Michigan student-athletes on Twitter, six are freshmen with limited playing time on the football team.

While Michigan State’s star quarterback Connor Cook has more than 25,000 Twitter followers and Michigan point guard Spike Albrecht’s number tops 56,000, CMU’s most prominent pair of athletes, Fowler and junior quarterback Cooper Rush, choose to lay low in the social media landscape.

“I got rid of (social media) my freshman year of college,” Fowler said. “I don’t want to necessarily call it a distraction, but I just didn’t want to have it. When I got rid of it, I started to see that you can really carry yourself over social media as a person that you’re not.”

Rush keeps his off-the-field social media presence reduced to Facebook.

“No Twitter. I just never got into it,” he said. “Haven’t felt a need for it.”

For redshirt freshman offensive lineman Shakir Carr (@TheeShakirCarr), social media brings attention to him he wouldn’t have had 10 years ago.

“We’re definitely in a fishbowl,” Carr said. “Everybody’s got their eyes on us and waiting for us to mess up, so we’ve got to stay positive on social media, make sure not to put anything inappropriate or anything that will harm the program.”

Carr, a business administration major is the most-followed CMU athlete on Twitter, with more than 10,000 followers. He said most of them are people from his hometown of South Bend, Indiana, but he said he does interact with people who still keep up with him today.

“I respond to people. It’s just wishing good luck on the game and stuff like that,” Carr said about his interactions on social media. “I just like to give insight throughout the day, you know? How I feel about certain things.”

Carr said his favorite Chippewa to follow is WNBA player Crystal Bradford (@get_em_cb), because of her humor.

The 6-foot-4, 316-pound lineman said he hasn’t had any major issues over social media, but now mostly just uses it leisurely as a mode of expression.

But for college coaches, social media use has turned from a niche pastime into a necessary component of the job.

The recruiting game

Social media accounts provide a direct line of communication to fans and students to promote a team, while direct messaging recruits on Twitter has become as commonplace as a campus visit.

“We’ve spent a lot of ways with our staff talking about creative ways in the future that we can come up with to improve where we are,” Davis said. “The things that made successful athletic programs in the past didn’t have anything to do with social media. We’ve got to figure out what we can do to be ahead of the curve.”

The best example of the value of social media is the viral video on YouTube showing the football team's reaction to being selected to the Popeyes Bahamas Bowl. The video has more than 560,000 views and was picked up by numerous media outlets, likely seen by fans and potential recruits alike.

While the NCAA doesn’t allow coaches to contact recruits publicly over social media, there are not restrictions on private conversations through social media.

“Kids that are in their junior year, we can’t call them right now,” said Head Football Coach John Bonamego. “We’re not allowed to text them. But we are allowed to direct message them on Twitter.”

Recruiting Coordinator and Running Backs Coach Gino Guidugli said each football coach contacts around 25 high school recruits every week.

“A lot of kids are more likely to respond through Facebook messaging or Twitter direct messaging (than more traditional methods),” Guidugli said. “So I think that’s our main avenue for social media, just to contact recruits. Especially when you’re only getting one phone call a week (under NCAA bylaws).”

Many high school athletes use social media as a public resume. They post links to highlight videos and build up their own personal brand for college recruiters to see.

But in addition to the videos and statistics, coaches also see the tweets high school athletes post. Both Guidugli and Davis said they’ve stopped looking at athletes because of what they posted.

“There have been circumstances where we’ve found (vulgar or inappropriate tweets) that kind of turned us off from a kid,” Guidugli said. “That’s why it’s important that the high school coaches, just like college coaches, tell our guys to watch what you’re putting out on social media.”

Davis said his program is committed to bringing in high-character student-athletes, even if that means turning down high-profile, talked-about players.

Besides talking to a player’s family or high school coach, Davis said social media is a way to help determine a recruit’s personality.

“When you see somebody posting things and you don’t feel like their focus is where it needs to be, we’re better off finding that guy who might be a step below in talent,” Davis said. “It’s our belief that they will surpass that other recruit because of their attitude.”

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About Taylor DesOrmeau

Taylor DesOrmeau is a senior at Central Michigan University, majoring in integrative public relations ...

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