Social Media Buzz: January 2014

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Social Media Recruiting

This past week I read a particularly interesting and slightly disturbing article on ESPN about how fans are now able to interact with recruits more than ever because of social media. It is currently against NCAA rules for fans to interact with any possible recruits because they want people to offer them any unfair incentives to attend a particular school. After all it is the coaches who are paid to do all the recruiting for us fans right? If the schools wanted our help they would pay us too. I love following all the recruiting news regarding UGA football as much as anybody but when I heard what some fans were doing to try and entice players to come to their school I was shocked. Twitter and all the other social media sites now allow fans to interact with recruits on a daily, and even minute by minute, basis. The article I read talked about a fan that saw on twitter that a recruit was getting ice cream some where and showed up wearing his team colors and talked to the recruit about attending his university. The recruit said that it was very uncomfortable and really creeped out his girlfriend at the time. Understandably. Other equally disturbing incidences have occurred to other recruits. One of the most popular things that I have come across is deranged fans wanting to name their next child after the recruit if he chooses to attend their school. Umm thanks, but no thanks. Do they really think that offering to do that will make that recruit any more like to attend choose their school? One fan even tried to get a player to go to USC by saying that he would kill himself if the player did not commit. He later went on to say that he was kidding and that he has kids at home and would never do that. To that fan I say THEN WHY DID YOU SAY IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. What a messed up thing to kid about. Most fans out there know the lines that they should not cross, but clearly there are some that are willing to do WHATEVER it takes.

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/recruiting/football/story/_/id/10304532/football-recruiting-age-social-media

Here is a little snip-it of a USC fan trying to get the #9 high school player in the country to commit to USC. There were many many more tweets by this fan, but I figured this would get the point across.

Darryl Revels ‏@DarrylRebs508h

@AdoreeKnows Adoree,you don't need to be, " The next Anybody!". Just be, Adoree Jackson of USC & the 2016 U. S. Olympic team!
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Darryl Revels ‏@DarrylRebs508h

@AdoreeKnows the next Percy Harvin! How about being better than, Percy Harvin! How about just being, the Great Adoree Jackson of USC!
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Darryl Revels ‏@DarrylRebs508h

@AdoreeKnows C'Mon SWEET PEA,stay home & do, USC. The city of L. A., will forever love you & you will be a, " USC Great & an Olympian!" Cmon
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Darryl Revels ‏@DarrylRebs5010h

@AdoreeKnows Team Up, Come Up! Fight On!
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Darryl Revels ‏@DarrylRebs50Jan 21

@AdoreeKnows Fight On, Eat On! Go USC! Trojans never die!
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Darryl Revels ‏@DarrylRebs50Jan 17

@AdoreeKnows I can't wait until,you're on Madden, one day! It's going to happen, Brodie! You're phenomenal, Ajax! Fight On!

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Monday, January 20, 2014

Social in Sports: Richard Sherman

Social media has affected the world of sports about as much as anything else in the past five years. Fans are now able to interact with their favorite players and teams as well as receive live updates on any game imaginable. The ESPN show SportsCenter now allows fans to tweet their favorite plays of the day to be on the top ten plays each night by tweeting #SCtopten along with the play that they think deserves to be on top ten. It even alleviates some work that SportsCenter has to do when you have thousands of people sending in different plays every night.

Social media also gives fans a place to praise their favorite teams and players, as well as bash the ones they dislike. Last night the NFC Championship game took place between the Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco 49ers with the Seahawks winning off of a tipped pass interception in the final seconds. The corner back that made the play and tipped the pass was Richard Sherman. If you are a football fan and do not know who he is, you will soon. He is one of the best corners of the league and appears to be headed for a great future in professional football. However, he could use a bit of a lesson in hunility. He has never been one to shy away from trash talk and has used twitter to trash talk many times. After he made the play to win the game for the Seahawks he doing a post game interview with ESPN sideline reporter Erin Andrews and this is how it went...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFYuwWCqmeU

As you might have guessed this interview caused quite the stir in social media. That video alone has 447,433 views on youtube as well as many other that have hundreds of thousands of views as well. The twitter world was buzzing with all sorts of reactions to the interview. Most people were bashing him for his actions, but there were still a good number defending him for being a model citizen off the field and that he just got a little emotional in the heat of the moment. Or maybe a lot emotional... This one action by an NFL player shows how wide of a reach social media has and the potential with which marketers could use to reach their audiences.

Here are a few of the many tweets from last nights game...

‏@StanfordRivals

The guy is a model citizen off the field, great in the community, intelligent, teammates seem to like him. He got emotional. It happens.

Retweeted by Richard Sherman

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