Socially unacceptable

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By Rachel Orland

The NCAA has a message for its college coaches - think before you tweet.

It's a lesson some coaches, such as Tennessee football coach Lane Kiffin, have learned the hard way.

In May, a personal assistant created a post on Kiffin's Twitter account that referred to a recruit. That, according to the NCAA, is a no-no. The NCAA doesn't permit college coaches to discuss unsigned recruits in any medium. So when Tennessee officials heard about Kiffin's tweet, the school reported it to the NCAA as a secondary violation.

But if Kiffin searched the NCAA rule book for the bylaw dealing with Twitter - or Facebook or MySpace, for that matter - he wouldn't find it.

The NCAA, rather than deal specifically with social networking Web sites, has tucked them into existing rules. Sites are regulated under Bylaw 13.4.1.2, which bans all forms of electronic transmission between coaches and recruits, aside from e-mails and faxes.

"We don't have a specific bylaw that says what [coaches] can and can't do on Twitter, but we have recruiting bylaws that say what they can and can't do in general terms," said Cameron Schuh, an NCAA associate director of public and media relations. "We use the new social networking medium in relation to them."

Coaches and their staffs can make mistakes on Twitter. The NCAA bylaws exist to keep them from making a mess.

However, the clutter sometimes is difficult to clean up.

Twitter is tricky because it constantly changes. Founded in 2006, the site lets anyone with an account post updates -tweets - of 140 characters or less. By "following" other users, anyone can read and reply to posts. There also is a direct messaging feature. As the technology has changed, more people tweet from iPhones and Blackberrys instead of their personal computers, making the NCAA's policy more difficult to enforce.

Despite the innovations to Twitter and other sites, Schuh is confident the NCAA and its member institutions can keep up.