Twitter a two-edged tool for modern athlete

Clemson professor Jimmy Sanderson follows more than 600 athletes on Twitter as part of his research into the relationship between sports and social media. Here are a few of his favorites:

Logan Morrison of the Miami Marlins: "Hilarious and very relatable."

Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder: "He engages fans."

Mark Wohlers, former Braves closer: "I grew up a Braves fan, and he is very active on Twitter. He will follow almost anyone who follows him."

Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors: "He's very positive with it."

Dale Murphy, former Braves outfielder: "A very good follow; it's fun to see him in that kind of light."

Brandon Phillips, Cincinnati Reds second baseman and Redan High graduate: "Not many athletes interact more. One kid asked him to come to his Little League game, so he showed up."

It used to take at least three acts to write with impact about the American legal system — see “Inherit the Wind,” or “Twelve Angry Men.” Now, Roddy White can do that in less time than it takes to make out his grocery list.

The Falcons receiver was among the latest of our athletic elite to stumble over the tripwire of Twitter last week when he took to social media to advocate mass suicide. His reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict caused dyspepsia among both grammarians and a public-relations specialists.

“All them jurors should go home tonight and kill themselves for letting a grown man get away with killing a kid.”

Oh, the damage done in 140 characters or less (White’s was a lean 90).

The pathway to the immediate, unfiltered thoughts of today’s celebrity athlete is a potholed one. For there is no team spin doctor, no agency suit to smooth out the rough edges. That is both the charm and the dangers of this form of communication.

Twitter for one can seem like such a banal diversion, a vehicle carrying the trivial updates of everyday life. But in the wrong hands it has been a forum for expressing everything from empathy for Osama bin Laden to racist statements that have cost athletes their spot in the Olympics.

“It is not a toy. It is a very powerful tool. You have to be smart,” said Kevin DeShazo, whose Oklahoma-based Fieldhouse Media helps instruct colleges and their athletes how to use social media.

“I’m of the belief that social media and Twitter have changed sports in an unprecedented way,” said Jimmy Sanderson, assistant professor and program director at Clemson’s Department of Communication Studies. “Athletes have a media channel to say what they want, how they want, and teams don’t have control the way they used to.”

Victor Cruz of the New York Giants may have trumped White with his Twitter storm last week: “Thoroughly confused. Zimmerman doesn’t last a year before the hood catches up to him.”

Both quickly took down the controversial statements and apologized, not for their outrage over the verdict — an opinion they had every right to — but how they chose to express it.

Taking down the tweets, banishing the words to the ether, does not automatically erase them from public memory. Not for the high-profile athlete who has thousands of followers (White has 164,000) and whose opinion carries disproportionate weight.

Nor is dealing with the fallout of the intemperate tweet as easy as banning players from the platform. Teams and coaches — pro and college — have found social media a valuable way of connecting with fans and customers. It can be a most humanizing experience.

Count Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson as a recent convert. A practical man who does not waste time or breath, Johnson had successfully avoided the technology until six months ago. He even banned his players from Twitter last season — a policy since rescinded.

But he joined the Twitter party at the urging of his daughter (“Hey dad, you’d be good at it, have some fun with it”). His contributions have been entertaining and wide-ranging, from pumping up his players and the coming season to campaigning for Freddie Freeman’s All-Star candidacy, from his daughter’s singing career to golf in Scotland.

“At times everyone wants to define you, and you have no way of countering that,” he said. “They can print what they want when you talk in interviews. And it was something I felt we could get some information out about the program.”

The benefits of social media are tangible. You can boost a guy (Freeman) into the All-Star game. You can connect with potential recruits. You can give fans glimpses of life beyond the field. You can build interest in the team, and consequently, in buying tickets. You can disseminate the message of your choosing.

DeShazo calls social media the “new form of the autograph,” a bonding transaction between athlete and fan.

At its best, Twitter personalizes the sports figure, which should in turn translate to increased marketability. “A real benefit is that it displays more of an athlete’s personality than you see in the mass media. You see him on vacation, at home with the kids. Maybe the music he likes is the music you like. It makes a connection,” Clemson’s Sanderson said.

“What gets interesting is when it gets into political commentary.”

Good Twitter example: During the 2011 NBA lockout, Oklahoma City Thunder star Kevin Durant tweeted that he was bored. A flag football team at Oklahoma State invited him to play. Suddenly there was one of the league’s biggest stars mixing it up in Stillwater with a bunch of college kids.

Bad tweets, which by percentage are quite slight, are still plentiful enough.

Following the takedown of bin Laden, Pittsburgh running back Rashard Mendenhall both questioned what really happened on 9/11 and wondered, “… how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak, we’ve only heard one side.”

So repugnant were the racially charged tweets of Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou and Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella that they were booted off their national teams before the 2012 London Olympics.

Keeping pace with the technology of self-expression has been a challenge. Pretty much across the board, the major college and professional teams locally hold preseason training sessions for their athletes dealing with the promises and pitfalls of social media.

It doesn’t sound all that difficult to keep the message on the tracks.

“I think with most of the guys on the team it’s common sense,” Georgia running back Keith Marshall said. “If you have thousands of followers, you have to be careful about what you tweet. You’re representing your university, your family. It’s not like a lot of kids our age where you’re just tweeting and nobody is thinking twice about it. If we tweet something crazy it’s going to be in the media, so you have to be smart about it.”

Are you listening Johnny Football?

In his lessons to college athletes, DeShazo hits on certain fundamental points. Class is in session:

Granted, it is far more entertaining or infuriating when someone famous ignores one or all of the above. The rawest, more reflexive reactions make for the noisiest tweets. It is a fine line the author treads, between being interesting and being offensive.

Even as try to shape social media to their needs, teams will not be able to completely sanitize the forum, said the Twitter scholar.

“Roddy White was far from the first athlete to send out something controversial. And he certainly won’t be the last,” Sanderson said.