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A couple of weeks ago The National Football League started fining players for tweeting negative things about training camp. Then they made it clear that players were not allowed to tweet during games. Now the NFL has a new set of guidelines restricting the fans permissions to tweet (or Facebook, or YouTube or MySpace) before, during or after professional football games.
What? The NFL thinks they have control over what I put on Twitter? Since when?
What are they going to do? Fine me $2500? I'd like to see them try to collect that. I don't have $2500 in my bank account. Roger Goodell is neither my father nor my boss and he doesn't get to tell me what to do with my twitter account.
Actually, now that I think about it my father can't tell me what I can post either.
The NFL says fans are encouraged to post updates about teams and
players, but cannot post play-by-play accounts of actual games.
Really how would the NFL even monitor this? Do you have a team of 750 people doing tweet searches for football related search terms or hash tags? I suppose they could ban smart phones from the stadiums (as if that would go over well) but how are they going to stop people who are watching the games live from home? And how would they know the difference? And how would they find me?
And would something like this be a play-by-play or an update about a player or just good old fashioned trash talk?
goonsquadsarah: With :21 left Leftwich throws a 43 yard pass to Michael Clayton to beat the Lions. IN YOUR FACE @queenofspain
See? It could go either way.
Elana Cantor said it perfectly:
Unfortunately for the NFL, they are trying to solve their problem in a
pre-social media business paradigm and it probably won't work. What
newspapers and now The NFL don't seem to understand and appreciate is
that in this new social media business environment the rules of
engagement have changed. Businesses are no longer able to dictate to
consumers they way they used to. In this social media era, businesses
would be smart to pay more attention to what consumers want.
Exactly.
St. Louis based Punching Kitty has a more irreverant, but also valid viewpoint:
Its such an odd thing to mandate. Sure this is something that makes
the more fame-whoring of players to concentrate on the game, but why
would the league make this rule? Wouldn’t you think if you missed
something because you were tweeting, the locker room justice would be
far worse than a nasty email from the Commish?... takes a particular hit to the Rams who generally have lots of free time after being down 30 points at the half.
Now I'm giving the NFL a hard time because this came out big in the news today, the season starts in about a week and well, I am a huge football fan and I love to tweet during games, especially when I am actually at a live game and I can taunt my friends who didn't get tickets, but this isn't limited to the NFL in the sports arena. The NCAA has been trying to establish their power over bloggers since 2007. The NBA will be releasing their own guidelines (and remember the NBA owns the WNBA) and the US Open has issued warnings to their players.
The message... “Many of you will have Twitter accounts
in order for your fans to follow you and to become more engaged in you
and the sport — and this is great. However popular it is, it is
important to warn you of some of the dangers posted by Twittering as it
relates to the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program Rules.”
Players are already reacting to the warning with Andy Roddick tweeting: “lame the US Open is trying to regulate our tweeting.. I
understand the on-court issue but not sure they can tell us if we can’t
do it on our own time … we’ll see.” He then added: “I definitely respect the rule about inside info and
on the court, but you would seriously have to be a moron to send
‘inside info’ through a tweet.”
Roddick has a point. Listen, I understand that these leagues don't want to give away any secrets or lose any money, but why would a player intentionally jeopardize winning? Most people who make it into professional sports are highly competitive, and in my opinion a social media buzz is a good thing. Maybe The NFL, NBA and US Open should try to think of social media as
