Media's Effect On College Athletes

How many times have you seen an interview with a coach or player in the last week? Or seen news about athletes doing something honorable or something awful. Whether you like it or not, the media has been consistently becoming a bigger part of sports as many people know them today. They are becoming more and more connected every day. Some changes are subtle, and some changes are more obvious. One thing that is obvious though, is how much larger the sports world has become because of media. Along with this, there are many other ways that the sports world has benefited from the media becoming more involved. Some of the effects of media on sports that others have looked at are marketing, athletes actions and reactions to the media, how administration

Some of the kids that the media is all over are 18 and 19 years old, they don’t know the right things to say yet. For some of them, this effects the type of scholarship that they get from certain schools, it may even cause them to not be able to go to the school that they want because the media caught them doing something that they shouldn’t be or they posted something on one of their social media pages that they shouldn’t have. A 2014 study done by Chris Symeon showed some very eye opening facts about college athletes and their social media sites. Some of them being: Seventy-four percent of athletes have an unprotected twitter, so anyone can see what they are posting; Sixty-two percent didn’t know most of their followers, so there could be stalkers or other unwanted guests seeing what they are doing or thinking and where they are at; and lastly, 14 percent of college athletes are victim to harassment on social media because they are on the team that they are on or they made a bad play. One example of this is the Michigan Wolverines’ punter, Blake O’Neill. After fumbling a punt on the last play of the game against the Michigan State Spartans and losing the game, he has been receiving threats to hurt him, and his family. One of the tweets defending O’Neill from Joel Klatt reads “I'm still sick to my

Many coaches are making an effort to show players how social media can impact both them, and the team. The colleges of Clemson and Baylor have both made big steps in how to deal with the media as a player. They go as follows: ignore it, don not listen to them and they won’t bug you; use it as motivation, if it just fuels you to get better, you’re going to be pretty good; just block them, if they can’t see your profile they can’t harass you; and the last, and least recommended is to answer the harasser and confront them, maybe they will stop once they know that you are not afraid of