Athletes and Social Media

Athletes and social media generally don't mix well together. More and more athletes are garnering negative attention when involving social media. The latest incident involves Tyshawn Taylor and his facebook status updates. Before and after the highly publicized feud between the KU football and men's basketball teams Taylor took it upon himself to post his feelings on his facebook for everyone to see. Some of the posts include: "I got a dislocated finger...from throwing a punch...so don't let the news paper gas yall up aite," earlier he wrote "real (racial slur)s do real things...point plankn," and finally before the actual fights, "keep my name out ya mouth for you get smacked in it."

Unfortunately for Taylor and KU Athletics these status updates from Taylor were blasted all over Fox News, Sportscenter, ESPN's website and numerous people have now blogged about it. I'm from California and shortly after the fight I received several calls and texts from family and friends back home asking what the hell was going on! Within hours people all the way from the West Coast knew about the incident between our football and basketball teams thanks in large part to Taylor's facebook status posts. Although the fight itself would have brought enough media attention, Taylor's statements on facebook were what Fox News, Sportscenter and other major media outlets focused on. When will athletes learn that what they post on their twitter and/or facebook accounts is not private!

It is one thing for a person to express how they feel through a social media site but unfortunately athletes do not have this privilege because what you say as an athlete not only affects you, but your team and what you do and say represents your team. In Taylor's case, he not only represented himself poorly but he embarrassed his team AND the entire University of Kansas. KU is a very respectable university and people think highly of Kansas, especially because it's in the heartland of America. Universities such as USC and Miami have a reputation of their athletes getting into trouble and not putting out a positive image, but KU does not want to fall into the same category as these other universities.

Having been an athlete myself here at KU I know for a fact that coaches and administrators beg us to be cautious about the type of information we put up on facebook and twitter. They understand how it can affect negatively on the university and the athletic department. I know both the football and basketball team as well as Taylor could not fathom how much national attention this incident would bring. It just goes to show you how viral something can be when involving social media, so many people now have access to sites such as twitter and facebook and they are paying attention!