Social media makes coaches Twitter

LAWRENCE -- In Lubbock, Texas, the head Red Raider, Mike Leach, told his players to cancel their Twitter accounts or walk the plank.

In Manhattan, Bill Snyder referred to it as the "electronic cyberspace world."

In Columbia, Mo., Gary Pinkel did what he always does and adopted the NFL's model.

And in Lawrence, professor Lisa Wolf-Wendel, Ph.D., had pictures of her high school prom posted on her Facebook wall for all, including her students, to see.

"Nice dress," they teased.

Wolf-Wendel wasn't ashamed. There was nothing inappropriate in the photos. But still.

"It's embarrassing," she said. "I was naive."

Welcome to the intersection of social media, higher education and major-college athletics. It's the wild west, and everybody is charging in, asking questions later.

"We just don't know what the rules are," Wolf-Wendel said.

For the most part, there are no rules. A survey of Big 12 football coaches revealed Texas Tech and Missouri are the only conference football programs with rules governing their players' use of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Tech simply does not allow its players to use Twitter. Missouri coach Pinkel took a more nuanced approach that resembles the NFL's policy.

"We've spent a lot of time with it," he said. "We understand that that's what exists now in our society. Our players have kind of a rule when they stop using any kind of a social networking at a particular time before a game, before a weekend and afterwards.

"Anything you put on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, all those social networking avenues are press releases. We expect them to handle that in an appropriate way with the guidelines and standards we have at Missouri in dealing with the media."

Most of the other conference schools have taken a more hands-off stance that the 70-year-old Snyder explained best.

"We share with them the significance of making sure there is appropriate interaction in the electronic cyberspace world," he said. "It's one of those things that, it's what young people do, and I certainly don't want to have a cat-and-mouse game created, and don't want to restrict their ability to communicate the way all young teenagers do."

But it's an issue colleges have only recently begun to reconsider. Following the football-basketball fights at Kansas, the athletic department asked its athletes to temporarily take down their Facebook profiles after basketball player Tyshawn Taylor posted song lyrics containing racial slurs on his Facebook page and revealed his involvement in a fight. Leach banned Twitter after two players criticized him via Twitter two weeks ago. Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops on Monday said he didn't have a social networking policy but added, "It sounds like I'm gonna need to get one."

But what kind of one? That's the tricky part. On the one hand, coaches -- in particular the notoriously paranoid football variety -- have public relations concerns. On the other, as Snyder expressed, they want their athletes to be able to have a normal college experience.

That part is difficult enough as it is. Football programs are allowed 20 hours of mandatory team activities per week. Kansas coach Mark Mangino says his team typically uses 19 or 19½ of those 20 hours, but that the best players usually spend extra time on their own.

"Twenty hours a week is a good base for weekly football preparation," Mangino said. "We're finding our kids, now, hungering to do more.

"It's not unusual at nine, 10 o'clock at night to see one of our players come in and ask an assistant coach, 'Hey, I was watching tape of Iowa State and they were doing this on third down and I hadn't seen much of that, can you tell me why that is?' It's not unusual for kids to come in and out of the building, between classes, at night."

Wolf-Wendel, who has devoted much of her career to student development theory, said studies have shown college athletes don't tend to feel as connected to their schools as the general student body.

"If you're talking about a football or basketball player, the revenue-generating sports at a Division I institution, there has been some research that has shown faculty hold some negative stereotypes about them, that they feel like they spend so much time doing athletics that they don't have time to be involved on campus in the same ways that other students can be involved," Wolf-Wendel said.

"And also, people know who they are. They're instant celebrities. People watch what they do. There's a certain sense that in some ways they're a star and in some ways too much of a spotlight is put on them. The average student could do something stupid and nobody could really know about it. An athlete does something stupid and we would read about it in The Topeka Capital-Journal.

"There's some research that shows student-athletes feel that pressure. And they're 18- and 19-year-old students, so that pressure can be handled well or not handled well."

So what does this have to do with Facebook?

Wolf-Wendel said there are competing ideas in academia as to whether social networking helps students feel more connected to their campus, or allows them to remain removed from it. But there is no doubt it's a way of life. Reading from a study of college students in Kansas, Wolf-Wendel said students spend an average of 17½ hours per week on social networking sites alone, compared to just 6.8 hours per week studying.

"It's significant," she said. "It's important."

Students' uses of social networking runs the gamut, of course, but the perception that it's all sugar is outdated. Used properly, there are nutrients available.

"The reason I'm on Facebook is that I want people to know that I am available," said KU safety Darrell Stuckey, who has no privacy blocks on his page.

"I don't want people to think, 'He's unreachable. He's this great social, community person, but he's not even on Facebook.' The different places I go, the organizations I'm in, the traveling with the NCAA I did a couple years ago on behalf of the athletic department, I met probably 350 student-athletes from different schools. If I wasn't on Facebook, there would be no way I could keep in contact with them.

"It is necessary this day and age to stay connected with things and make sure you don't burn any bridges. I'm a firm believer in keeping connections with people, because you never know when you might need them."

Used poorly, though, there's trouble, and it's complex, ethical trouble.

Wolf-Wendel said college faculty are wrestling with the use of social networking tools. Connecting with students seems harmless, but she wonders whether knowing what a student did on Saturday night could introduce unintentional biases on Monday morning.

"It's hard to read what the one student-athlete who posted something on Facebook wrote and not say, 'Egh, yuck,'" said Wolf-Wendel, who does not have Taylor in class. "If they're gonna use it in a way that's uninhibited and show them doing things that are inappropriate, are faculty better off not knowing that? I think that's an important question."

One of many. Many of which nobody can answer.

"It's pretty new," Wolf-Wendel said. "People don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. If you say it's a bad thing, it doesn't matter. It exists. You're not gonna stop it, it's part of what college students of this generation do. My suggestion is you harness it for good rather than evil."