College athletes are warned about Myspace.

[SU Jag]

I heard on local radio that certain schools want to ban their student-athletes from myspace. A representative from a schools was on the show and he talked about players posing with guns, under-age drinking, use of the "n" word, profanity, sexually suggestive pics, and ect. Also, players are taking pics in uniform so that you can identify the school in which they play for. He said that his school has advised student-athletes to stay off of Myspace, BlackPlanet, and other sites like those.xrolleyesx xrolleyesx

Your thoughts?

[appfan2008]

i dont think they should be able to keep them from those sites... it is a great way for them to reach out to fans... they should keep them from posting bad pictures but i dont think they should ban them...

[CoastalFan2005]

Poll coming?

I don't think they should keep the athletes off of social networking sites. I could see athletes (as well as the majority of MySpace/Facebook/whatever users) being required to take some sort of educational course pertaining to more responsible usage of those sites.

[Marcus Garvey]

He said that his school has advised student-athletes to stay off of Myspace, BlackPlanet, and other sites like those.xrolleyesx xrolleyesx

Your thoughts?

I actually understand completely. Look at what's happened to some athletic teams across the country recently. Northwestern's women's soccer team got in a *****load of trouble, and the coach fired because they posted pics on the net. Inapropriate photos on the internet have been embarrasing college athletic departments to one degree or another for sometime now. The actual behavior of the students is not new, but the method of rapid dissemination, the internet, is. That's the real problem.

If you're going to post inappropriate content on your myspace page, and make it clear you play football for "Whatsamatta U," well, the coach is going to be understandably pissed.

The bottom line is that this school representative is trying to head off a potentially embarrassing situation for the school. It's easier to say "stay off" of those sites than try to come up with some exhaustive list of what's "okay" and "not okay" to post. Frankly, I don't blame them for taking that path.

[SU Jag]

I actually understand completely. Look at what's happened to some athletic teams across the country recently. Northwestern's women's soccer team got in a *****load of trouble, and the coach fired because they posted pics on the net. Inapropriate photos on the internet have been embarrasing college athletic departments to one degree or another for sometime now. The actual behavior of the students is not new, but the method of rapid dissemination, the internet, is. That's the real problem.

If you're going to post inappropriate content on your myspace page, and make it clear you play football for "Whatsamatta U," well, the coach is going to be understandably pissed.

The bottom line is that this school representative is trying to head off a potentially embarrassing situation for the school. It's easier to say "stay off" of those sites than try to come up with some exhaustive list of what's "okay" and "not okay" to post. Frankly, I don't blame them for taking that path.

Great postxthumbsupx
Ihave a few questions though!
1.What counts as inappropriate content? Language, pics, what?
2.How couls it be enfoeced

Im not a myspace guy but I have younger cousins and a younger brother(all college football players) that are all about some myspace. I'm neither for it or against it. I had a blackplanet page but I deleted(in other words my fiance' made me delete itxwhistlex )about a year ago!

[Marcus Garvey]

Great postxthumbsupx
Ihave a few questions though!
1.What counts as inappropriate content? Language, pics, what?
2.How couls it be enfoeced


I have no idea what the answers to those questions are. Hence, just keep students off of those sites altogether. It's just easier that way! At least, that seems to be the rationale.

[PantherRob82]

I know our players have been told to stay off our boards before and at UNH in 05 they were on our boards while sitting at the lobby computer.

[SU Jag]

I know our players have been told to stay off our boards before and at UNH in 05 they were on our boards while sitting at the lobby computer.


The fan message boards?

[PantherRob82]

The fan message boards?

yes. our kicker lst year started posting last year. xrolleyesx

[smallcollegefbfan]

Players are going to do what they want. It is not like they are owned by the school, however, they do represent the school when they say they are a player for them or they have that school's colors or logos on their webpages so they need to act like adults. What is bad is that just about every player has a page on those sites I bet and only 5-10 incidents are hurting everyone else with this.

[PantherRob82]

Players are going to do what they want. It is not like they are owned by the school, however, they do represent the school when they say they are a player for them or they have that school's colors or logos on their webpages so they need to act like adults. What is bad is that just about every player has a page on those sites I bet and only 5-10 incidents are hurting everyone else with this.

exactly. Kids like the internet.

[smallcollegefbfan]

exactly. Kids like the internet.

The problem is that players just need to act responsibly. This is a free country and I think that banning them from websites is going too far. Telling them to act right and warning them that if they do anything to hurt the school's reputation or something illegal that they will be kicked off the team is okay, though.

[SU Jag]

yes. our kicker lst year started posting last year. xrolleyesx


WTF?!?!?!?!

[CoastalFan2005]

Ihave a few questions though!
1.What counts as inappropriate content? Language, pics, what?
2.How couls it be enfoeced

1) I would think that anything illegal would be "inappropriate" - underage drinking, drug use, and so on. Past that - anything that violates a specific team policy...ex., if the team has a policy against their athletes owning a gun (even though the laws of their state may allow them to do so), then if the athlete has a picture of them with a gun in their hand on their MySpace, that would be a violation.

2) IMHO, there's not a good way to consistently and constantly enforce page content. People my age (college-age) get more tech-savvy by the day - it's not that hard to hide your social networking site profiles from prying eyes.

[BigApp]

I'm afraid to ask what "Black Planet" is...

[SU Jag]

I'm afraid to ask what "Black Planet" is...

Its like myspace, but its been around since about 2000. Go chech it outxthumbsupx

[PantherRob82]

The problem is that players just need to act responsibly. This is a free country and I think that banning them from websites is going too far. Telling them to act right and warning them that if they do anything to hurt the school's reputation or something illegal that they will be kicked off the team is okay, though.

haha. act responsibly? on Myspace?

I've seen some of our basketball players Myspace pages. WOW! xrolleyesx

[PantherRob82]

WTF?!?!?!?!

yeah...that went over real well. You could tell it effected him. Great kicker. Had some mental breakdowns last year though.

[SU Jag]

yeah...that went over real well. You could tell it effected him. Great kicker. Had some mental breakdowns last year though.


xlolx xlolx xlolx xlolx What did he say? " Man that kicker we got is a stud, great athlete and the women cant get enough of him"xlolx xlolx xlolx

[SU Jag]

haha. act responsibly? on Myspace?

I've seen some of our basketball players Myspace pages. WOW! xrolleyesx


They werent that bad, were they?
PMxsmiley_wix

[patssle]

As I work in the athletic department, I'm friends with quite a few athletes on Facebook. Their profiles are pretty clean with nothing major that the college wouldn't like. I do remember one profile where she posted stuff she shouldn't of, but nothing was ever made of it.

And yes players (and their parents) do read fan message boards often. I'm sure some read this one. So think about it the next time you bash the team over something stupid.

[SU Jag]

As I work in the athletic department, I'm friends with quite a few athletes on Facebook. Their profiles are pretty clean with nothing major that the college wouldn't like. I do remember one profile where she posted stuff she shouldn't of, but nothing was ever made of it.

And yes players (and their parents) do read fan message boards often. I'm sure some read this one. So think about it the next time you bash the team over something stupid.


Yeah, but most player ever post or become members of message boards. I remember reading a few during my playing days at SU and they did nothing but make we want to go out and kick the arses of everyone who was talking isht about us. Exspecially after a hard loss!xnonono2x

[813Jag]

As a few people said you can't make kids not use myspace. But you should know if you putting incriminating pictures of yourself on your profile, then you're asking for any trouble you get yourself into. Myspace itself isn't bad, you get out of it what you put into it.

[CCU97]

Well as for MySpace...I work for a law school and we make sure the students can't access MySpace while on our server...our firewall won't let them on the page. The reasoning behind this is because of all of the malware that is on MySpace. So one way a school could limit(they could never stop) would be to not allow students(all) on MySpace through any computers on campus or that would be using campus servers. I have a MySpace page and I actually go through and review different things on my students pages....the reason being is that if I can do it so can the GA BAR and future employers...these kids are just having fun but I don't want it to change their life in a horrible way...so I just shoot them an e-mail and let them know what they may or may not want to clear up on their page and why.....it works pretty good for us but would be more difficult for larger schools and would require someone doing this as a job not just because they are watching out for the students in their spare time.

[PantherRob82]

xlolx xlolx xlolx xlolx What did he say? " Man that kicker we got is a stud, great athlete and the women cant get enough of him"xlolx xlolx xlolx

no he talked about missing some kicks and got in some arguements.

[PantherRob82]

They werent that bad, were they?
PMxsmiley_wix

I've seen worse on myspace, but closer to R than PG-13.

[PantherRob82]

Yeah, but most player ever post or become members of message boards. I remember reading a few during my playing days at SU and they did nothing but make we want to go out and kick the arses of everyone who was talking isht about us. Exspecially after a hard loss!xnonono2x

That's exactly why they want them off the boards. xthumbsupx

[PantherRob82]

Well as for MySpace...I work for a law school and we make sure the students can't access MySpace while on our server...our firewall won't let them on the page. The reasoning behind this is because of all of the malware that is on MySpace. So one way a school could limit(they could never stop) would be to not allow students(all) on MySpace through any computers on campus or that would be using campus servers. I have a MySpace page and I actually go through and review different things on my students pages....the reason being is that if I can do it so can the GA BAR and future employers...these kids are just having fun but I don't want it to change their life in a horrible way...so I just shoot them an e-mail and let them know what they may or may not want to clear up on their page and why.....it works pretty good for us but would be more difficult for larger schools and would require someone doing this as a job not just because they are watching out for the students in their spare time.


My work firewall won't let me on myspace, but there are easy work arounds.

[Marcus Garvey]

yes. our kicker lst year started posting last year. xrolleyesx

Whew! At least no football players were posting. xsmiley_wix

[aggie6thman]

Our women's crew team was busted after some pictures were found on either Facebook or Myspace. Just have to be smarter about the whole situation!

[ButlerGSU]

A school would punish an athlete for saying racially charged comments, comments about alcohol/drugs, etc. which is the same thing as writing them online in my opinion.

Not to mention, whatever is public online will eventually be used against the player by another team, I've seen it several times at Paulson. If a player has a Myspace or Facebook account it should at least be set to private so that only their approved friends can see it.

[CCU97]

I completely agree ButlerGSU! Not to mention they may run into SuperJon out there and he will make them look stupid in the end! He's given Drafts from Chuck South Hell at games with stuff found on his site and I know he has a few things in the works for this year too that are even better!