May 20 2013

Tweeting Support For Oklahoma

There are moments when working in sports social media that an event in the world makes you stop and take notice. In the past year alone, two news events (Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in CT, Boston Marathon bombing) have transcended sports and captured the social media consciousness. And today, in what might be the worst tornado disaster in history, we have Oklahoma.

Words escape me. The devastation is massive. The recovery will be equally massive. But they will need help. At times like these, its nice to see social media playing a bit part in that effort.

I do not know who is behind the Twitter account @TheOrangeCone. Sarcasm combined with knowledge and passion for the sport of racing, NASCAR in particular, Cone is definitely one to follow for me. Two simple tweets could have been enough for an account with over 33-thousand followers but it wasn’t.

One tweet can stir a community. Even a Twitter community:

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How much money that one tweet generated matters not. What matters is that it prompts action. To be sure, Cone was not alone. Here are a few examples of how others in the sports Twitterverse got involved:

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West Virginia’s baseball team was in Oklahoma for the Big 12 tournament.

Safety assured and not willing to sit idly by, the team came to serve:

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A coach, not from Oklahoma, went full-bore in spawning Twitter-action himself:

Replies? YES!!

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I’d like to end with two tweets as poignant reminders today. One of encouragement and one a sobering perspective:

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How you can help:

Text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross

Online donation can be made to the Salvation Army: https://donate.salvationarmyusa.org/uss/eds/aok

Feed The Children online donations here

World Vision Disaster Relief Fund here

Social media resources via The White House here

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CadChica Sports

May 15 2013

Challenge The Twitter Rants

Never let it be said there’s a dull moment on Twitter. But perhaps the most innocuous of tweets seems to be speaking louder to me than all others:

It’s not so much the tweet but the story link that has captured my attention. Here’s the headline:

Brennan: Too much made of Twitter rants on athletes

In a USA Today article, columnist Christine Brennan discusses the recent epidemic of fans harassing athletes on Twitter. For clarification and the sake of this column, I will call it harassing. Because that’s what it is as evidenced by some of the tweets directed this week at highly sought after basketball recruit,Andrew Wiggins.

Rumors were that Wiggins was headed to Florida State. No, make that Kentucky. Rumors of where only heightened fans interest in his decision. When he decided yesterday to attend the University of Kansas, non-Kansas fans let loose with their venom according to this article from Sports Grid.

From Brennan,

18-year-old Canadian high school basketball sensation Andrew Wiggins, who on Tuesday picked Kansas over Florida State, Kentucky and North Carolina.

This decision of course did not please fanatics who follow those other three schools, so they did what any red-blooded, hot-headed sports fan does these days and jumped on Twitter to call a high school senior every awful name and slur imaginable. Internet stories then were written quoting some of the most egregious comments, thereby giving those who tweeted them a great victory: mainstream media validation.

One thing Brennan gets right in the paragraph above, they “jumped on Twitter to call a high school senior ever awful name and slur imaginable”. Fan behavior can sometimes be, shall we say, deplorable, especially on Twitter.

She continues:

It is at this point in the story where you would figure we all should throw up our hands and talk about how the civilized sports world as we know it is coming to an end and how any semblance of intelligent discourse about sports is over.

But let’s look a little deeper into several of the particularly awful tweets about Wiggins. I’m not going to name the accounts they came from, and no family newspaper would ever quote the words they used, but there is other information we can use to judge their impact, their reach and their so-called clout.

The focus in the remainder of Brennan’s article is on the effectiveness of these tweets (follower numbers, etc.). That, in itself, misses part of the beauty of Twitter: communication. As Kevin DeShazo of Fieldhouse Media points out in his rebuttal article:

How many Twitter followers these idiots (I won’t call them fans) have isn’t the issue. They aren’t trying to be “worldwide social commentators.” They are sending tweets with Wiggins’ Twitter handle, meaning they want Wiggins to see the tweets. Hateful, awful, violent, racist tweets. And he does. Whether or not the world does is irrelevant.

Fans are communicating their feelings at athletes, teams and media in ways we’ve never seen on this massive of a scale. I know this because I’ve written on it here, here and here to highlight just a few. Fans can be passionate without hatred. We can trash-talk without bitterness. We can love our teams without disparaging, threatening or telling others to go kill themselves, when our team loses. We don’t have to behave this way.

But fans have turned their love of teams/schools into part of their identity. Every loss, every recruit-rejection becomes an affront to the individual fan. Fans take it personally and lash out. And because of that aforementioned beauty of Twitter, fans lash out AT the affronting individual as if it was a “personal” rejection of the fan themselves.

And that, ultimately, is the point missed by Ms. Brennan. Twitter has enabled some fans to go far beyond what they would do in person or at a game. Flipping an athlete off is one thing (yeah, I’m looking at you Miami Heat lady). But tweets filled with hatred, racial epithets and wishes of harm are inexcusable. To let it go unchallenged, is to condone its acceptance. The only way fan behavior will change is to challenge it. For far too long, the rules have simply been to make fun of “fanatics” or ignore them. That was before we had the tools necessary to police ourselves as fans. We have Twitter. We have blogs. We have Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, etc. Public forums where we fans can say enough already.

Challenging fan behavior isn’t providing “media validation”. It’s simply saying: 

Be Better!

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CadChica Sports

May 15 2013

Journalists Anonymous

Monitoring Twitter most of the day can be a mixture of entertainment, learning and frustration.

I came across a tweet in my NFL list today that was intriguing.

Quickly it was followed by this

Sources can be a (wait for it) source of consternation among many in the sports media Twitterverse. As such, I retweeted the above two tweets.

But the tweets continued. One, however, stood out among others:

It goes without saying that there is obviously more going on that we don’t know about behind the tweets. Something sure set him off to tweet/post on Facebook that diatribe about journalism.

No, what I’m more interested in what was said about bloggers.

For a number of years, I’ve felt that there was a lack of a knowledgeable (aka: reasonable) fan voice to the sports conversation. Too many times you hear the ‘idiots’ get on sports radio or are laughed at on Twitter as what’s representative of the sports fan. That, for me, is far from the case. Radio is a little more selective than Twitter as producers can decide who gets on the air. Often times, it’s the ranting/raving lunatics that get air-time (think: ratings).  Twitter allows for anyone, and I do mean anyone, to have a voice.

That’s why I started this blog. It’s one thing to tweet 140 characters of what you feel. It’s another thing to put your sports opinions out there on a blog. Although I’m technically “in media’, at my core I’m just a fan. And at their core, bloggers are fans too.

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The fan voice is getting more and more powerful. Why else would sites like SB Nation and Bleacher Report become such prominent members of the sports media industry? Fans want a voice. And fans are the backbone of those two sites which is probably why Deadspin, et al, have added Community-type pages where regular folks can be contributors.

Contributors who are non-journalists.

Non-journalists who do not have a journalism degree AND are not paid to write on “blogs” or sites. Non-journalists who believe that there is an unheard voice in the mass conversation that is the sports landscape. Non-journalists who what they lack in education make up for with passion. Non-journalists who know that despite the odds, there is a place for them if they write responsibly, ethically, analytically, and diligently.

See, I’m a non-journalist. I didn’t go to college. I don’t have the degree. I haven’t toiled at a newspaper. But, I like to put that I went to the:

University of Life

School of Hard Knocks

Degree in Common Sense

In this day and age, common sense can be a forgotten trait. But as I’ve transitioned from the corporate world to sports media, it’s come in more often than you can imagine. Common sense helps me to know when something should be reported (tweeted or retweeted). Common sense guides me in who I should trust or for that matter, follow on Twitter. Common sense has taught me to use my instincts with interview questions or topics to write.

And common sense combined with an uncompromising work ethic is what I have built this blog on. It’s what I’ve used to gain what I hope is respect in this business.

Despite not having that title of “journalist”.

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CadChica Sports

By CadChica Sports • Posted in Media
1
May 9 2013

#NHL14Cover Vote

One doesn’t have to be a fan of an NHL team to know there is a something going on in hockey involving Twitter. Not just the playoffs. But there’s a cover vote going on: the cover vote for EA Sports’ NHL ’14.

On Monday, the round of 16 competitors were announced on Twitter.

No better time to do so than right in the middle of the NHL Playoffs, right? Attention on hockey is at its peak during the playoffs. And oh did they start with a bang.Two of the three games on opening night went to overtime (Chicago over Minnesota, 2-1 and St. Louis over Los Angeles, also 2-1).

Starting off with exciting games is a great way to garner attention to your sport. Well, that, and social media, which is one of the ways EA Sports and the NHL are spreading the word (and utilizing votes) for this year’s cover vote. According to this article on The Sports Network’s (TSN) website:

The NHL 14 Cover Vote will also be promoted prominently on TSN’s official accounts on

Facebook and on Twitter using the hashtag #NHL14Cover.

While the hashtag #NHL14Cover hasn’t itself generated much buzz, it’s the variation added to it that has drawn my attention.

Via EA Sports

Via EA Sports

Teams, fans, and a certain celebrity we know, have taken to Twitter since Monday to show their support for their favorite player. And today, on double-your-vote Thursday, it’s been especially prevalent:

That last tweet occurred shortly after P.K. Subban scored a goal for the Montreal Canadiens in tonight’s game against the Ottawa Senators. The lone bright spot tonight for Habs fans. As of this posting, they were losing 4-1. Sorry, Habs fans.

 

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Hockey fans are a passionate bunch. Some might say they’ve gone a little overboard with their tweets but hey, it’s all about their “man” on the cover:

And if it’s not “their” player?

Passion, however, can only go to 140 characters:

Small details, like who is in the running, doesn’t diminish passion:

Although Twitter votes count double today, it isn’t the only hashtag being used to spread the word. That certain celebrity I mentioned earlier? Yeah, her husband’s pretty resourceful on YouTube:

But we’ll let Carrie have the last word here in this tweet from last week (to help get him to the round of 16):

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CadChica Sports

 

May 7 2013

Passion > Boring

“I have a right to an opinion” — “Unless yours disagrees with mine”

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For anyone who has been on Twitter long enough, you’ve come across either someone tweeting something “controversial” or a Twitter fight. The smallest of slights can turn into a rage against the Twitter-machine.

Or, the smallest of rages can turn into the biggest of slights according to Twitterazzi. Just ask Brad Keselowski.

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This past weekend’s NASCAR race at Talladega Super Speedway was eventful, to say the least. Dogged by rain and crashes, the intrigue grew as organizers and drivers raced (no pun intended) against the clock and Mother Nature to finish before rain and darkness hit the area.

Nearing the end of the race, a wreck involving 16 cars caused further delay to the race. Tensions were mounting. A restart was called for after the crash. Once it was all said and done, however, David Regan from small-team Front Row Sports, was the big winner of the day.

That restart and finish prompted these tweets from Brad Keselowski:

Reaction was swift on Twitter. A sampling of fan reaction:

Keselowski reaction

Needless to say, Keselowski didn’t win any fans that day. Not that he was looking to do so, because obviously he wasn’t.

 But was what he tweeted okay? Are any of us free to tweet whatever we feel like? I’m all for (relatively speaking), athletes tweeting what they want in terms of opinions, or in the case of Brad Keselowski, your feelings after an event like this.

It is, however, a fine line. Not to go all-scientific on you but “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Again, if you’ve spent time long enough on Twitter, it’s safe to say that it applies there too.

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We can tweet what we want but there can be consequences to what we tweet. Not everyone thinks or holds the same beliefs/ideals as you do. We all know that but I think Twitter has helped highlight our differences in a 140-character way. Robert Griffin III found that out recently just like Keselowski did:

Retweeted over 13 thousand times, reaction became a mixed bag of confusion as to its intent or…irritation:

Certainly aware of the response, RGIII tried to explain further:

Even this one…

…didn’t satisfy some:

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Which brings me back to the question: Are we free to tweet what we want? In daily life, our actions and words can sometimes be misunderstood, misconstrued or they can be big-time screw-ups. We’ve all done it. Hopefully, when we screw up, we atone for it, apologize and grow from it. It appears Brad Keselowski has:

The apology from his website:

Brad Keselowski apology

Key statements in his apology, for me: “I was very passionate about the finish because I thought we had a chance to win the race if I restarted the race in the 10th position instead of ninth. Passion is a very important characteristic to a champion driver. That passion is not something I will apologize for.”

Keselowski apologized. Despite fans attacking him, he apologized for his Twitter rant. Because of how his tweets came across toward the winner, David Regan, I believe an apology was the appropriate course of action.

Does RGIII need to apologize? I’m sure there are those who believe he does. I am not one of them. Folks who disagreed with RGIII had every right to tweet their disagreement, provided it was respectful. But that doesn’t make them right just as what RGIII tweeted doesn’t make him right either. Agreement, in this context, is an opinion.

Again, tweet what you want (obviously not death threats, people). Opinions are yours to have and make.  Just be prepared for backlash and consequences, including being “called out”. But…

If we attack athletes, because they tweet something we don’t agree with, what’s the point of them being on Twitter? Just to sell their brand? If that’s what fans and media want, to me that makes for a very boring Twitter experience.

Passion > boring.

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CadChica Sports