Socially unacceptable

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.

“To be perfectly honest, we don’t feel that it is hard to keep up with the times,” Schuh said. “We strongly emphasize that the individual institutions are up to speed. They are the ones that oversee their own properties on a daily basis more than we do.”

A lot of that responsibility rests with coaches to think wisely before they post.

George Mason men’s basketball coach Jim Larranaga spends most of his time on Twitter writing about friends, basketball, family and, recently, his hip replacement surgery.

“I try to keep things on a professional level, for instance, about the things I’m doing in relationship to coaching and preparation for next season,” Larranaga said. “On my Twitter, I stay away from talking about anything specifically. I don’t talk about the specifics of recruits or anything like that.”

An avid Twitter user, Maryland women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese said the site hasn’t quite caught on with recruits. But she still finds value in using it.

Story Continues →