Boise State coach Chris Petersen has done it. So did former Miami coach Randy Shannon.
Coaches banning their players from using Twitter is slowly becoming enough of a trend on the popular social networking site that it deserves its own hash mark (#notweetsforyou). Now, you can add Kansas’ Turner Gill and South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier to the fraternity of coaches who have banned their players from using Twitter.
The Kansas City Star reports today that the Jayhawk players have been banned from Twitter only during the football season, effective immediately. During SEC Media Days, Spurrier mentioned that he wanted to ban his players from using the site because of the poor image it projects on the players and program.
“Well, we have some dumb, immature players that put crap on their Twitter, and we don’t need that. So the best thing to do is just ban it,” Spurrier said at the time. “When I get back and talk to the team tomorrow, we’re going to make that announcement.”
Not to mention there’s some team information coaches don’t want made public. Case in point, cornerback Victor Hampton, who tweeted that he had been abruptly kicked off the team back in June. Hampton was later reinstated to the team, but it was certainly an undesirable situation for Spurrier.
I’m not for keeping things under wraps just for the sake of it -- CFT is part of the instant media world, after all -- but there really isn’t a lot of upside to athletes using Twitter. Coaches already have a lot to worry about, and what their players say (which is often stupid) to the entire world shouldn’t have to be one of those things.