As you may have noticed, coaches, players and media outlets alike are hopping on the Twitter bandwagon.
As you may have also noticed, we here at alligatorSports recently hitched our car to the Twitter train as well, posting breaking news and scores as well as our random musings on our page. At this point, we'd be left behind if we didn't, given the way major sports media outlets are heading.
As much as I personally don't enjoy the social networking system &ndash my personal page has been updated about 10 times in nearly a month &ndash I have to admit it has its merits. The alligatorSports account is already following coaches like UF's own Urban Meyer and Tim Walton, Lane Kiffin of Tennessee, John Calipari of Kentucky and, of course, Ron Zook of Illinois.
As a fan of unintentional comedy, I couldn't help but laugh when an update from Zook began, "made a mistake yesterday," nor could I do anything but shake my head when reports surfaced about Kiffin's secondary recruiting violation when a recruit's name was posted on his Twitter feed.
When stories regarding the potential transfers of UF basketball players Allan Chaney and Alex Tyus used their Facebook status updates as sources, I knew we were heading into uncharted territory.
We have reached the point where Twitter posts are being read on SportsCenter. It's terrifying. After the Magic won an NBA Playoffs game, the Worldwide Leader in Sports found it appropriate to post this profound quote with the attribution to Dwight Howard's Twitter Page:
"Win!!! We take game one. Let's go!!"
This is absurd for reasons aside from the disconcerting number of exclamation points used by a grown man.
Re-read that really quick. Does it tell you anything at all? Yes, they won. Yes, Dwight's excited but has nothing to say of any value. What Howard wrote meant nothing, yet it was thrown around SportsCenter like he had really just dropped some knowledge.
This is a scary precedent, and it's only made worse by the fact that a lot of people are starting to view social networks as legitimate alternatives to real-life interactions, even in the cases of athletes.
One of the most followed athletes on Twitter is Shaq, whose page is hilarious at times and obnoxious at others &ndash a true reflection of the man who updates it.
After Shaq openly criticized Dwight Howard and Stan Van Gundy on his page, a Yahoo! Sports columnist wrote a piece about how immaturely The Big Aristotle, clearly jealous of the fact that Howard could be more successful than Shaq was as a young Magic center, was behaving.
Shaq responded with the following on Twitter, an attack on the columnist, the media and the English language:
"O my yahoo sports wrote a bad article abt me , I'm gonna cry , yea rt, wanna kno the real its comn frm my shaqberry I'm da reporter now."
It's not like the columnist wrote anything untrue. He was writing an opinionated take on Shaq's recent actions, but Wilt Chamberneezy, who has done a spectacular job of creating his own press throughout his career, didn't like being called out.
As of Monday, Shaq has more than 1.18 million followers, the 10th most of anyone in the world &ndash just three spots behind President Barack Obama. That number has probably gone to his head. If he wants to tell his fans something, why bother dealing with the media, which has been critical of him in the past?
It's become far too easy for anyone - even athletes - to simply bypass the media and remove themselves from any sense of responsibility and accountability.
So keep an eye on how the University Athletic Association, which is taking interest in the world of social networks, encourages the use of Twitter going forward.
Several coaches already have pages - and most of them are genuine, authentic, often insightful and occasionally funny - and I would expect many more to follow.
(I'm incredibly excited at even the remote possibility of a Billy Donovan Twitter account. However, if the first post doesn't read, "Two straight NITs. Jai's gone. Marreese is in the NBA. Tyus almost left. Nick went to play in Greece rather than stay. FML," then I'll be disappointed.)
But once again, this is uncharted territory.
For fans, it's an exciting way to stay updated on the activities and thoughts of their favorite - or least favorite - players and coaches.
But at the same time, it's potentially just one more way for those same players and coaches to not deal with the media, publicizing the content they want seen and pretending like the bad press doesn't exist.
For better or worse, the runaway Twitter train is still picking up speed. Now we just have to see where it takes us.
