In another step to lure top talent and to let blue-chippers know that USC is the place to showcase your football talent, head coach Lane Kiffin and the Trojans are now including twitter handles on player bio’s. This risky move is an apparent attempt to keep prospective players virtually connected to current players without breaking any recruiting violations.
Twitter is certainly a wonderful tool that allows for instant communication without filter to a worldwide audience. With that said, college football coaches such as Boise State’s Chris Petersen and Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher banned their players from tweeting because it’s not in their program’s best interest to arm players with a virtual megaphone that can be heard around the world. This ban is not done to punish the players, but rather to protect them. There have been too many instances where questionable tweeting has gotten players, and to some extent, entire programs in serious trouble. You don’t have to look any further than North Carolina’s Marvin Austin. In 2010, his tweets about a luxurious vacation to South Beach raised red-flags regarding how it was financed. Unfortunately, his seemingly innocuous tweets led to the unfolding of a scandal for North Carolina football. This is just one of several examples of players getting into trouble for tweeting.
So the question remains, why would USC’s Lane Kiffin allow his players to tweet and to include twitter handles on player profile pages? Tweeting may be a useful tool for recruiting, but at the end of the day, nothing good will come out of arming a 19-year old with the ability to voice, albeit unfiltered, random thoughts as an ambassador of the program.
