OSU Football smartly bans Twitter use by players #Edchat

I recently read this article after hearing the news on the radio that new Ohio State Football coach, Urban Meyer, has banned players from using Twitter. Here is a link to the USA Today article.

I would like to applaud Coach Meyer for making this important decision one day after he officially became coach. With all of the issues the current team is facing, I'm glad he made Social Media his number one priority. I would like to also applaud a former student of mine and current Buckeye, Reid Fragel*, for using the irony I taught him in class to announce the ban on his Twitter account.

In this day and age, student athletes should not be concerned with the concepts of Twitter. They should be concerned about their new offensive or defensive packages. They should be focused on tackles, not tweets. Twitter is only a passing trend that these kids are not going to use when they leave OSU and become big time professional athletes. Can you even name a single professional athlete that even uses Twitter. I didn't think so. Twitter is not used in any professional realms either, so it would be a waste of time to allow students to even look into the site.

I actually think that Coach Meyer muffed this kick on this important edict though. Why not ban all social media? What about all of his athletes that are using Facebook? I understand that only a few thousand use Facebook and that the privacy settings are easy to understand, but why do they get a free pass? How about those weird kids that still use MySpace? Should they be allowed to post thoughts and feelings on their site? These kids are getting a free ride to a top university to toss the pig skin around, not use hash tags.

Banning all social media use is probably the best way to go. It will actually save time. Think about all of the hours that could have been wasted on teaching proper social media use. Fruitless attempts to teach social media etiquette can now be focused on the play action pass. The last think anyone wants to teach college athletes. The NCAA attempts at banning everything else has gone smoothly, I cannot see this being a problem for Coach Meyer.

Kudos to Coach Meyer for stamping out a student-athlete's First Amendment right to free speech. The University is not paying these kids to tweet, they're paying them to play! Oh, ummmmmm...scratch that last bit. Go Buckeyes!

*I taught Reid in Civics and American Lit. :-)

-@TheNerdyTeacher