Lawyer CLAY TRAVIS posted an important topic on Fanhouse.
He asks whether NCAA College athletes should be required to set their Facebook accounts to “private”. Or ban them outright as Kent State tried to do before reversing the decision after public outcry.
Virtually every college athlete in the country is on Facebook now. This makes sense, it’s hard not to be on Facebook if you’re under 35, impossible if you’re under 25. But Facebook has become a public relations minefield for major athletic programs across the country. Whether it’s players being kicked out of school for making a threat in their status message (Wake Forest), posting racist comments about the newly elected President (Texas), setting off an internet firestorm over whether or not you actually posted messages on another person’s wall (Georgia) or just having your idiotic responses to quizzes posted all over for others to enjoy (Michigan). This is just the tip of the Facebook iceberg, every program is in danger at every moment of every day. All of this attention and all of this danger raises an intriguing question: Is it time for athletic departments to ban their athletes from having social media profiles on Facebook, MySpace, and the like?
This week the University of Arizona took action to combat the dangers of Facebook, announcing that all of their athletes in every sport must set their profiles to private. Setting the profile to private means that only those people you select as friends can see your profile. Otherwise the profile remains visible to the entire network (generally your college). How serious is Arizona about the new policy? Athletes who don’t comply risk losing their scholarships if their online conduct fails to “reflect the high standards of honor and dignity” expected by the school. …
read the entire article – Time for Colleges to Ban Facebook?
As a blogger, I believe in free speach online.
But as a coach, Facebook worries me tremendously. It’s going to cause a lot of grief for a lot of kids for many years into the future.
I’d support any athletic program that requires privacy. Here’s Kristina Baskett’s private Facebook account, for example.
An outright ban of Facebook is going too far, IMHO.
Leave a comment if you have an opinion. There are some GREAT comments posted already.
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