This document discusses how social media has impacted college sports in the United States in terms of regulations, reputation, and recruiting. It provides background on the growth of social media and how the NCAA and universities have implemented policies to regulate its use among athletes and coaches. The document examines specific NCAA social media policies and cases where schools faced penalties for violations. It also explores how social media can positively or negatively affect a university's reputation depending on how it is used. Finally, the document looks at how social media has changed recruiting culture and may benefit coaches' ability to promote their programs.

1. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT COLLEGE SPORT
How Social Media is changing College Sport in the United States. Examining regulations,
reputation, and recruiting policies
Ilia Platonov
MBA
Wilkes University
2018
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to find how social media changed college sport in the way of regulations,
reputation, promotion, and recruiting processes. In modern time, almost each university team in college
sport and its athletes have a social media profile account. Accounts that are running by the head coaches or
coach assistants have one common goal – to provide information about team activities and promote it to
the fans and potential student-athletes. During the era of Social Media, NCAA had numerous amount of
legal cases against Universities and/or its athletes that harm University reputation or affected athlete ability
to compete in the collegiate sport. Now, college team and athlete need to be very accurate about their
contacts, posts, and messages in Social Media accounts. This research will look deeply on specific
regulations made by NCAA and Universities against head coaches and athletes, specific cases, as well as
on promotion aspect between college sports fans and students. The main goal is to create a framework that
will explain the impact of Social Media on University/athlete regulations, reputation, and promotion
aspects.
The research paper answering following questions:
• What policies does NCCA imply to regulate Social Media activities among Universities Athletic
teams?
• How Social Media affects University Reputation and how non-compliance with Social Media
NCAA policies affect Universities reputation?
• Does Social Media change the culture of recruiting athletes and does it have a positive effect?
Keywords: Social Media, Regulation, Reputation, Recruiting, College Sport

2. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT COLLEGE SPORT
Table of Contents
I. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 1
II. Theoretical Framework……………………………………………………………… 3
III. NCAA social media policies………………………………………………………... 4
IV. University social media policies……………………………………………………. 6
V. Protecting the University Reputation. Benefits and Negatives …………………….. 8
VI. Social Media Effect on Recruiting …………………………………………………. 11
VII. Discussions …………………………………………………………………………. 12
VIII.Suggestions for future research …………………………………………………….. 13

3. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT COLLEGE SPORT
Introduction
Such social media as the tweeter, Facebook, and Snapchat have continuously grown from
the time they founded. Only Facebook increased almost three hundred million people from 2016
to 2017, and now it estimates more than two billion users. Nowadays nearly every celebrity has a
social media account, and all their words expressed by them can be immediately criticized by fans,
as well as all their daily activities, that can be recorded by other people and shared with millions.
It rose many scandals around the World, and it did not pass the World of collegiate athletic.
Universities and National Collegiate Athletic Association created different policies to deal with
the growing social media activity among Universities athletic teams and collegiate athletes. These
regulations establish numerous amount of cases, and one of the largest of them include University
of North Carolina football program that was penalized by $50,000 fine, a bowl game during 2012
college football season and cutting some available football scholarships over a next three years
(NCAA.org, 2012). This research examines NCAA policies and cases connected to them.
Another aspect of this research is how Social Media effect reputation of Universities and
its athletic programs. Universities are not just a place where students receive their knowledge, but
also big companies, that has its brand and reputation. For example, University of Central Florida
has 2,686 academic personnel, and 9,900 administrative staff (Wikipedia). Its Social Media
accounts estimate approximately 410,000 followers (Facebook + Twitter) and its football team
have more than 145,000 followers on Twitter. Athletes in Universities have a significant power to
affect reputation of it teams, for example when Lehigh`s top receiver Ryan Spadola wrote in his
twitter account negative post, he got suspended for the next game, and Lehigh University held a
series of campus discussions about racism and impact of racial language (ESPN, 2011). Even a
recent racism tweet case about the post in Spartak soccer club twitter account, where one of the
players calls his African teammates Chocolates, created a big discussion in FIFA and affected
Russian reputation prior World Cup 2018, which country will hold (AP, 2018). Even that this tweet
was a joke and all African and Brazilian players post a video that it is no racism in their soccer
club, the reputation of both, soccer club and the country, was affected (BBC, 2018).
In addition, this research paper will examine the effect of Social Media usage on coaches
recruiting process. "There is no question that college recruiting has become a big business. A
business in which hundreds of thousands (and potentially millions) of dollars are spent annually
to attract the highest-rated recruits to universities nationwide" (Rahmati, 2016). For example,
Wilkes University athletic budget includes recruiting trips for the head coaches. They have an
opportunity to see the potential recruit out of Pennsylvania, and University will pay for their
spending. However, in modern time it is necessary to advertise athletic teams thru Social Media
because around 72 percent of high school seniors reported that they researched colleges that they
are interested in thru the Social Media websites or mobile applications (Rahmati, 2016). Benefits
of using Social Media for recruiting process can be:
- Program awareness. Since it is impossible to promote University athletic programs thru the
University website, Social Media can benefit athletic programs thru their social media
accounts, where potential student-athlete can find information about the program, athletic
facilities, and others.
- Instant connections. Coaches can connect with the recruit thru the Facebook, Instagram,
etc. Since connection was established, this one-on-one contact can benefit both, coach and
recruit.

4. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT COLLEGE SPORT
- Insights. Even with all personal information security protection, now coaches have an
opportunity to monitor every word that recruits are posting in Social Media. It can benefit
coaches to determine what behavior they could use for this particular recruit.
- Competition. Universities and coaches can analyze strategies of their competitors thru the
special websites.
This research objective is to examine how social media affected and still affecting college
sport in the United States, specifically its regulations, reputation, and recruiting policies. This
research answering following questions:
• What policies does NCCA imply to regulate Social Media activities among Universities
Athletic teams?
• How Social Media affects University Reputation and how non-compliance with Social
Media NCAA policies affect Universities reputation?
• Does Social Media change the culture of recruiting athletes and does it have a positive
effect?
Future sections of this paper will include designed theoretical framework, review and
analysis of NCAA social media policies; social media policies of Universities; benefits and
negatives of social media in college sport and how it affects the reputation of both, athlete and
university; and how it affected recruiting practices among universities. At the end of the paper,
suggestions for the future research will be provided.

5. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT COLLEGE SPORT
Theoretical Framework
In recent years, social media platforms became largely accessible and powerful tool for
marketing processes. But for the most of the users, it is just placed, where they can express
themselves, share some parts of their lives and follow friends and other peoples. In recent years
social media became a big liability for athletic departments due to effect brought from misuse by
student-athletes and coaching staff.
In college sport, university representatives including coaches and athletes use social
media for communication between each other, promotion of athletic events, and greeting
triumphs. Most universities created the special section about social media policies in the student-
athlete handbook. For example, University of Maryland issued five pages guideline for its seven
hundred athletes about ground rules of using social media platforms. In short, these rules warn
student-athletes to think twice before using blame about sexual orientation, race, religion, etc.,
follow NCAA rules, and monitor their social media for an offensive language (Ho, 2011).
Thirty-three percent of institutions had written such guidelines. Various schools came to the
negative viewpoint of social media and banned it.
The school pays to different agencies to be able to monitor student’s social media, but it
cannot save Universities from possible punishments from NCAA for different violations as from
students, and as from coaches. The NCAA negligent approach to social media had some
universities to spent $7,500 to $10,000 per year on scanning student-athletes social media
profiles (Thamel, 2012).
This research suggests that because of social media usage between student-athletes and
coaches, university reputation and recruiting process can be affected negatively due to
punishment from NCAA, but also can be affected positively due to promotion capabilities. In the
conceptual framework, you can see that when student-athlete or university use social media, it is
affecting in positive way university recruiting process and its reputation. When student-athlete or
university use social media and break the NCAA bylaws, different policies and penalties from
NCAA can affect university recruiting processes, as well as university and student-athlete
reputation.
Figure1: Social Media effect on college sport

6. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT COLLEGE SPORT
NCAA social media policies
The rise of social media use has changed the way in which people communicate with
each other. Facebook is number one Social media website in the World, where active users spend
13 minutes average per day (Gray, 2017). Snapchat earned second place in the 2017 most
downloaded iOS applications rank, as well as Instagram took 5th
place (Bell, 2017). Now, with
the new ideas in Social Media usage, such as private chats between people, or groups of people,
it became harder to monitor those discussions. The recruiting rules of NCAA have a long story
of regulation changes because of new technologies in communication between people (as well as
university representatives and prospective student), and this time is not an exception.
Social media rise in college athletics can be noticed from everyday activity. Student posts
about practice, Instagram uploads from colleges' representatives, usage of live streaming during
workouts and games, all of these social media pages followers are occurrences where athletic
authority can measure the expansion of student-athletes' usage of social media (Sanderson,
2015). College's athletic departments join social media platforms because of their advantage to
promote athletic teams and events. To be able to stay up to date, athletic departments quickly
accepted the change and started to use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.,
into settled athletic department operations such as merchandise marketing and sales(Sanderson,
2015). But, this quick adoption had made a lot of discussion and problems regarding misuse
social media between student-athletes as well as coaches.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram give people a possibility to be heard by a mass, express
themselves in the way that they could not imagine before. Fifteen years ago people still wrote
columns in journals and magazines, in the hope that they will be heard. Now, after on click,
millions of people can read and hear what one have in mind. Social Media platforms create a
space where people can express themselves, like and follow the person by their interests and
opinions. For college athletics, it created a niche, where people can quickly react and respond to
the latest news, athlete’s posts, etc. For college athletics, it created the big new source of
marketing and monitoring. Around "45% of 18-35-year-olds follow sports teams or athletes
online, and 35% of them regularly use social media to comment on, tweet/retweet, share or link
to online sports content" (Blakely, 2012)
“The NCAA has no bylaw, policy or recommendation that directs schools to monitor
social media,” said Naima Stevenson, NCAA associate director of Public and Media Relations.
“We would certainly not ask member institutions to require student-athletes to provide username
and password information for the purpose of monitoring social networking activities”
(Stevenson, 2013).
NCAA agenda to inspire Universities take a leadership towards social media usage
education of their students. For example, students can learn from several cases, that posting
hazing or bullying material in social media is a wrongful act and will be disciplinary suppress.
Also, students learn that they should think what contest they are posting on social media and who
can have access to it because it can affect them in the future. However, NCAA rulebook does not
have a lot of rules and regulations about social media usage, since social media platforms do not
even mention in the rulebook.
NCAA rules regarding social media are concerned only about recruiting (NCAA, 2015).
“The NCAA supports student-athlete well-being by promoting a fair recruiting environment that
limits intrusions into the lives of student-athletes and their families”(NCAA, 2015) For example,
back in the days where people paid for text messaging, it was prohibited after high school
students criticized its cost. Main rule concerning message exchange between a potential student-

7. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT COLLEGE SPORT
athlete and university athletic departments' personnel thru social media messaging states that
such way of connection is limited and fall not only on student-athlete but also on his/her parents
or legal guardians. All forms of communication allowed after May 1 of the prospective student-
athlete senior year in high school, his/her signature of National Letter of Intent; and prove that
student-athlete made a financial deposit to University (NCAA, 2015). In 2012, University of
Michigan football team player posted a tweet with potential student-athlete (who was the high
school senior at the moment) name, and congratulate him on committing to the football program.
Even that it was the innocent post, this way of communication with the recruit was a violation of
NCAA bylaw (Meinke, 2012). The circumstance was urgently reported to Michigan's
compliance office, which submits it to the NCAA for examination the incident as the secondary
violation of NCAA rules. But, if school reacts this fast, it doesn't lead to big sanctions form
NCAA, however, consequences from student-athletes social media misuse can be much serious.
Today, it seems very hard to coaches to understand where they fall under NCAA social
media rules. It is permissible to contact potential student-athlete thru email or social-media
function, but the same thing is prohibited in Division 1 if the coach is aware that these messages
come to the student-athlete mobile device, and it becomes analog to text messages. However, in
2016, NCAA new rule stated: “An athletics department staff member may take actions (for
example: ‘like,’ ‘favorite,’ ‘tag,’ etc.) on social media platforms that indicate approval of content
on social media platforms” (NCAA, 2016). In addition, following the new rule, university
athletic department personnel can share the articles, tweets, potential student-athletes posts, but
without mentioning the student-athlete name (NCAA, 2016).
The NCAA, in general, does not imply any official policy that restricts usage of social
media by student-athletes. Universities have a choice of what policies they wish to apply, and
most of the student-athlete university handbooks have the social media policy in it. However,
NCAA delegate to universities to monitor and handle issues rose from students' social media
usage.
Furthermore, last enforcement actions boost questions to NCAA and its social media policies. It
does not seem like NCAA rules can appropriately interpret the current situations of
communications between potential student-athletes, university coaches, and NCAA.
Also, for people who are not a member or native of the member of university athletic
departments and choose to use social media for discussions about athletics, it is a question about
NCAA social media regulations and First Amendment rights. For universities, there is a question
of duty, and why they are punished for the behavior of people who are not associated with the
university athletics.
In recent years, NCAA enforcement department was busy in caring out expectations
regarding social media policies. Universities got enough time to adopt new rules and
technological advances. NCAA gave to the universities keys from regulating and monitoring
social media. Most of the schools have the personnel and student training regarding social media
policies. During the first years, enforcement department had to manage virtually all the problems
regarding social media misuse and gave a chance to the universities to maintain issues inside of
the organizations. Now, social media is around for many years, and NCAA tolerance is coming
to an end since more and more occurrences of misuse are existing. NCAA decided to punish
those who break the rules. In addition, the NCAA faces a pressure to address social media
concerns as violations have become more prevalent from student-athletes’ use (Epstein, 2012).

8. References
University Social Media Policies
Social media never stops changing. With each new update and application, it is much
harder to follow the progress. Student-athletes in the modern world can easily accept and use this
new updates, and it is a very big dilemma to the intercollegiate athletic department to monitor
and construct new policies. Policies in the student-athlete handbook are made to protect student-
athletes as well as an athletic department from possible mistakes (Sanderson, 2015). Social
media profile is the tool that a lot of people can instantly access and communicate with each
other; it provides a limitless audience. Because of that, personnel in the athletic department have
responsibility for policies, have to change their policies and practices about student-athletes and
their use of social media due to possible danger. Still, in this days, athletic stuff, including
coaches, are unsure about social media policies and rules. Coaches do not understand if they are
responsible for monitoring student-athletes social media or other personnel from the athletic
department. Also, it is concerned about breaking the law, specifically if scanning social media
profiles interfere student-athlete rights, especially right for the free speech (Sanderson, 2015).
Most of the universities, as well as professional teams, have an account in three different
social media platforms-Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook (Sanderson, 2011). For example, most
of the Wilkes University athletics teams have at least three accounts in different social media.
Wilkes University football team have the total of 1,341 followers, and it is including current
players, alumnus, parents, and regular fans. It means that each similar post in those media gives
an opportunity to broadcast to 1,341 people, who also have an opportunity to report and share
information with their followers, again and again. Also, Facebook and Instagram can promote
the post to reach a larger amount of page viewers and increase the number of potential followers.
While it has a lot of benefits from the promotion point of view, this function also allows negative
comments to be directly shared apart from post creator. Posts may be deleted, but before that
thousands of people will have an opportunity to save it and share. For athletes, this can be a
problem, because social media represent not only a person, but also a brand of this person, and
organization that this athlete competes for (Sanderson, 2011). For example, NBA basketball
player Draymond Green inappropriate post in Snapchat immediately went to the public because
of the number of followers that he has (Alonso, 2016). It happens because Green hit the wrong
button and was able to figure out the problem too late. It is possible to happen with any of the
student-athletes, but it also will affect their teams and athletic organization, this is why it can be
very beneficial, but very risky regarding reputation.
In 2013, the survey by the College Sports Information Directors of American discovered
that only 33 percent of the 450 participating institutions had written social media policy for
students. But an even bigger surprise was in the fact that only 50 percent of sports information
directors reported that they needed to remove a social media post from the coach or athlete
during the 2012 academic year (CoSIDA, 2012). Also, 36 percent of schools do not have a
particular way to run the strategy, or even do not have a goal for social media within their
departments (Syme, Dosh, 2014). Institutions see social media as a risk to their reputation. Some
universities choose to take laze fare approach to athletes social media use. For example,
Pennsylvania State University choose to not follow NCAA recommendations. University did not
monitor coaches and athletes social media accounts. University stated that if its representative
decides to post or comment on social media, he/she need to be ready to be accountable for it
individually. This approach sounds the most ethical and legal, but it is opposite to NCAA
suggestions. University can lie under NCAA restrictions (Epstein, 2012).

9. References
It is very hard for athletic departments to control student-athletes social media misuse.
Imagine an athlete, who is going home after tough losses and he/she is most likely to post
negative information in its social media. For the post-game interviews, universities have a media
relations professionals, who are trained to coach the athletes to give right responses. Some of this
methods include time after the game for cool down or even restrain athlete from the interview.
Social media does not provide this method since it takes only couple seconds to post an
inappropriate response.
In general, Universities do not educate student-athletes until any violation occurred. Form
student-athlete perspective, athletic personnel should spend more time with the students teaching
them about what to post in social media, than waiting for them to get a violation of rules,
students think that personnel does not use their time effectively (Sanderson, Browning, 2014).
When Sanderson analyzed 159 written social media policies from NCAA Division 1 programs,
he discovered that Universities social media policies are used to outline how social media should
not be used, instead of teaching students about how to avoid misuse of social media. This study
shows that only seven of this 159 social media policies define favor of social media use
(Sanderson, 2011). Student-athletes have an aspiration for social media education, but they
cannot cite exact paragraphs and reflect same similar accusations about uncertainty (Sanderson,
Browning, 2014).
But student-athletes, not the only people who use social media platforms in
intercollegiate athletics and athletic departments have to deal with it. Coaches of athletic teams
need to learn about social media policies and since they have the power not only to post in their
social media accounts but also in team profiles. It is possible that infraction violations can lead
up if coaches break the by-laws via the Internet. They are allowed to use social media under
recruiting rules. Not every coach finds social media useful for recruiting processes, but more and
more of them find that it is the easiest and fastest way to make contact with a potential student-
athlete. But because of modern technologies, that allows people to make screenshots of
conversations, it became much easier for coaches to get caught up with a potential infraction,
based on social media posts (Epstein, 2012). Now, coaches can analyze potential prospect for
recruiting even before the first contact with the students. It became possible thru analyzing social
media accounts of the prospect, where can be found a lot of indications about prospect character.
An example of Fairport High School basketball players is a good confirmation of this idea.
During the game, one of the big college coaches came to the high school coach and said that he
liked two of his players, and both of them will fit well his college basketball team in their
freshman season. But also, he added that he would recruit only one because they found
information of another player Twitter account that is not representative for their university
(DiVeronica, 2014).
Brandon Chambers, an assistant men's basketball coach at Marymount (Virginia)
University, said: "Never let a 140 character tweet cost you a $140,000 scholarship," (DiVeronica,
2014). This is a good expression of what students can lose because of one rash act. Even a single
comment can start a conversation that will worth a costly amount of scholarship money. Athletes
should be very confident in what they post in online space, because ones it is posted, it will never
be gone. One of the students said that most of them did not understand the change that happened
in social media, more specifically that amount of people using it rose significantly, and what in
the past was a place for private room for a talk, became a public conversation, where people can
capitalize on the verbal mistakes of the others. There why it was not so much of public attention
years ago as there is today (Seip, 2015).

10. References
Proposition 1: NCAA social media policies are concerned only about recruiting, and it put all
other responsibility of athletes/coaches social media usage to universities student-athlete
handbook rules and monitoring.
Reputation. Benefits and negatives of social media in college sport
Social media has a negative reputation among universities, but also it has a lot of benefits
to offer. Very often, negative incidents outweigh benefits of social media, because of student-
athletes rash posts. (Sanderson, 2015). If social media used in the right way, the university can
have a lot of benefits from it. The main areas where this benefits can be seen are marketing of
products and games, fund earning potential, and the potential increase in reputation of the
university. For example, in the attempt to sell more tickets and attract more people to the home
games, University of Central Florida used their Facebook account page to promote their football
team`s defensive play against the University of Houston (Sanderson, 2015).
Another benefit is that social media allows coaches to follow their athlete's life, and see
their honest personality. Since coaches can contact with athlete mainly in the time of practices
and team meetings, they are not able to see athletes thru face. Because social media is very
popular, athlete's usage of it can interpret themselves as a people, who is not only an athlete. It
helps not only to follow day-to-day life of the athlete but also build a brand around his name and
can give fans an additional way to analyze and interact with university athletic performance
(Sanderson, 2015).
Social media give a space to create special relationships between individuals. It can be
used to create special bonds between athletes and fans, market home games and university
merchandise, translate news and games in real time, create confrontation inside or outside of the
team, and even manage this confrontation. For example, with the Twitter network of contacts,
student-athlete can post and receive immediate information. Social media platforms give
efficiency in connection because one post can reach numerous amount of people, and it saves
time, because of uselessness in sending one message multiple times. Basically, with one click,
the message will be distributed to all followers of the sender. If it used in the right way, it gives
unique opportunity to create the positive brand.
Social media can present a person, athlete, or whole organization without any
interference. “It gives athletes the opportunity to drop mini press releases on the public, without
a filter," says Vacchiano and O`Keefe in their article, “There’s no PR expert telling them you
can’t say that” (Vacchiano, O`Keefe, 2009). But, in this case, it is also sounds of people who can
respond to athlete's words, using any type of text. This opportunity can be looked as the benefit,
but also a downside. Famous athlete stated, “I think the main point is you can’t be misquoted.
When I post something, I know what I meant and what it says. I mean, it can still be interpreted
whichever way people read it, but it’s quoted right, word for word” (Vacchiano, O`Keefe, 2009).
Also, since many student-athletes studying away from home, it gives a unique
opportunity to connect with the family and friends. Nowadays, people stopped to pay for the
minutes and SMS-messages, but they pay for the data usage. Social media application is one of
the biggest smartphone "data killers" because of it often usage (Elliott, 2017). Since Apple
announced its first iPhone in 2007, mobile internet usage surpasses desktop. It became possible
because of the changing trends in communication between people. Back in the days, people
could share information only direct to person by the phone call or text message. Now, people can
post a video of themselves, make a live translation as to the certain amount of people, as well to
everyone who wants to watch. Also, it gave the possibility to leave a private video. All of it gave
an opportunity to students to connect and share their moments. Especially social media benefit

11. References
students from different countries since back in the days they were not able to call their parents or
friends every day due to the high cost of mobile service between countries. Now, they have an
opportunity to do video calls do not even pay for it.
Also, due to the creation of social media platforms for professionals, such as LinkedIn, it
can also help student-athletes from a networking viewpoint and career development (Sanderson,
2015). Student-athletes can profit from these tools long after their college career. Posts in social
media can serve in the way of connection between professionals in the certain field, who may in
another way have never connected. But everything comes down to athlete understanding of
social media usage and what to expect from each post.
Another benefit from social media usage can include a simple report of games scores and
statistics. Since, only big colleges covered by national news, small colleges from Division 2 and
Division 3 can use social media to spreading the news about programs and success. Before, small
universities were covered only in their local newspapers, but with social media platforms they
can share their success with the local community and create positively open relationships
between student-athletes and people (Ohio University, 2017). Also, another option of posting
pictures and videos in media such as Instagram helps student-athletes to feel important and
supported. This type of sharing keeps people connected and reminds to student-athlete that they
are not only competing for themselves, but also for the school team and brand (Ohio University,
2017). Using social media helps to present school in a good point of view, it can present school
core values and benefits. Social media is much cheaper for marketing then TV service provider,
newspaper advertisings and radio promotion, and investing in social media marketing can show
the people that school does count its money and invest it right. Also, communities will better to
read stories from student-athletes then paid advertisement (Ohio University, 2017). Probably, the
most impressive feature that social media can give is the ability for fans to be inside of their
favorite team and access to information.
Often, the biggest problem of social media use when university finds that student-
athletes posted improper material. Lewis Neal said: "everything comes with a consequence, so
you have to be smart." "You can't just come out and express all of your feelings because you are
already high profile so whatever you say is going to be judged regardless"(Harris, 2015).
Student-athletes can hurt or even ruin a reputation of their coach, team, or University by posting
inappropriate material. Consequences can range from verbal rebuke to student-athlete be
expelled from University; from social media training to firing coaches; from written note to
suspension of the athletic team. Student-athletes need to spend some time to think and reread
before sending their comment over the social media. In the modern world, if someone wants to
uncover deleted information, it will be done via cyber-footprint.
Another big concern about how to figure out what information is rightful to post and
what is considered as rightful information. For example, people of different ages can have the
different view on what is inappropriate and what is not. It is possible that people who grew up
without this much of an access to information, would not see the same post, as student-athletes.
It can take only one wrong post or comment to have a deal with sanctions, which can lead to the
loss of scholarship or even future career (Sanderson, 2015). It might be not fair, but all duty lie
down on a neck of coaching and athletics administration staffs. Posting pictures from student
parties including alcoholic beverages can be a joke at the beginning, but at the end, student, who
wished to be a teacher in the future, will ruin the whole career, because of one post.
In their study, Browning and Sanderson organized interviews with Division 1 student-
athletes about their attitude to unfavorable posts. This study shows how social media platforms

12. References
give many challenges for student-athletes as it made them defenseless to an unsympathetic
situation, on which they wanted to answer. Surprisingly, students were able to control themselves
and do not answer on such behavior. It shows that student-athletes were educated about
consequences that can arise from such a quick rash act.
Social media is a very important tool to increase the reputation of the institution. During
the year, the Super Bowl has the largest amount of online text messaging during of all the events
(Park, Ditmore, 2014). Professional athletes have one of the largest amounts of social media
followers. For example, Cristiano Ronaldo is number three in the World by the total amount of
followers in three biggest social media platforms.
College athletic departments use social media without any strategy and need to have a
detailed marketing strategy for the point of establishing their brand, creating a fan base, and
starting to make revenue. (Martin, Miller, Elsisi, Hall, 2011). If athletic departments include
social media into marketing strategy, they can become successful marketers with a low amount
of spending (Martin, et al., 2011)
Now, it is very significant to use different forms of social media. Facebook, YouTube,
and Twitter are well-known platforms, with their benefits, but the usage of Instagram, Snapchat,
and other new platforms does give diversity and integrated marketing strategy, and it gives more
opportunities for messages and targeting wider audience (Clavio, 2011). When the fan likes, or
start to follow an athletic, social media page, two-way communication door is open, and it
became possible since consumer changed from the passive to active (Pronschniske, Groza and
Walker, 2012).
Proposition 2: Social media can affect the reputation of both, student-athlete and university. It
has policies benefits and negatives.

13. References
Recruiting
College recruiting is a big business. Nationwide, universities spend millions of dollars to
attract new student-athletes. Big universities have whole recruiting teams that include coaches,
recruiting specialists, and data analysts to find information about potential student-athletes, and
factors that can attract them to the particular university (Rahmati, 2016). Some of these factors
are academic reputation, playing or training facilities, sports teams success, etc. University
always looking to promote their athletic programs on the national level.
More than 72 percent of potential student-athletes reported that they looked for their
college on social media platforms (Rahmati, 2016). Athletic departments quickly understood that
it is the best way to communicate with those potential student-athletes. Years before, recruiting
process began from high school coach. Now university representatives can contact prospect
directly. Coaches can get more information about players, and players can receive more
information thru interactions with coaches, students, other recruits of the particular university. If
all of these connections done in a right way, it is the great opportunity for the universities to
attract more and better athletes, but if done in the wrong way, universities can face sanctions
from NCAA (Rahmati, 2016).
Also, it is impossible for a foreign athlete to come to the US for recruiting trips. Most of
the coaches know it and try to contact them thru social media. This advantage allows coaches to
talk directly to the athlete, help with paperwork and be sure about their progress in results and
practices. For foreign athletes, social media is the way to promote themselves, which can give
them attention from schools, as well as possible scholarships and professional sponsorships.
Before social media, it was not a way to contact with foreigners directly, but only thru the mail
or agents. Now, both, schools and potential student-athletes benefit from this development.
Back at the beginning of the 2000s, it was two ways of contact with potential student-
athletes: email and phone call. Now, every social media have an advantage of text messaging,
and now around 69 percent of the Americans have at least one social media account. Thirteen
years ago this number was much lower – 5 percent (Pew Research Center, 2018).
With a continuous advantage of social media, it will be easier and easier ways for
contacts between universities and potential student-athletes. In the future, social media will play
an even more significant role in everyday life, including the role of providing evidence for
NCAA violations.
Proposition 3: Social media changed the culture of the recruiting, and it affected it positively.
More channels for contacts with potential student-athletes became open. An easier way for
potential-student athletes to follow the news with their picks of universities.

14. References
Discussions
Since attention to social media is on a high level, athletic departments have a very hard
choice regarding social media, because it is very easy for student-athletes to get caught. The
athletic department should be very careful and ahead of their athletes to be able to control the
situation and achieve results. If universities will be active and educate their athletes and staff not
only about negatives of social media but also about positives sides, especially brand marketing.
For example, if university personnel see growth popularity of certain hashtag, it should notify it
athletic teams about this movement, and those teams should post certain information to be able to
achieve larger brand recognition. Also, posts behind the scenes, like during the practices or
game, will attract more people because of exclusive contests. The idea behind this posts is to
make fans feel like being part of a team. But athletic department should be aware, that all these
posts are not breaking the law.
Social media monitoring was invented in the school system because of the problems from
misuse by student-athletes. Most of the colleges are using the help of third parties to be able to
monitor social media content of its student-athletes. One of such company is UDiligence, the
Indiana based business. It became possible for this companies to work for universities because
internal compliance offices were not able to keep track of all student-athletes in the particular
university. But it is not about controlling student-athletes, but protecting their reputation and
reputation of the university.
Schools should be knowledgeable about consequences that arise from misuse of social
media, and it is regardless what id decide to do about social media policy (Epstein, 2012). This
approach should be balanced, because very strict policy can raise questions about constitutional
rights, and overly relaxed policy can be a reason of sanctions from NCAA. Social media will
continue to be a part of intercollegiate athletics, and athletic administration needs to find a soft
way to control it. Otherwise, the institution could have a problem on all sides, including
sanctions and decreasing reputation (Epstein, 2012).
Internet change an everyday people live, how they connect with each other, and speed
and methods of data sharing. Because of it, student-athletes need to be very careful about what
they post on social media since every wrong word will be shared with incredible speed. This
concerns not only what they are posting, but also all the people who are around them during the
certain time. Michael Phelps is a perfect example of a role model, which reputation was hurt
because of leaked photo from his friend phone of him smoking marijuana. Athlete receives the
suspension from the Olympic committee and other disciplinary sanctions. Student-athletes have
even more responsibility then Mr. Phelps because they represent the university and in case of the
wrong post, university reputation will also be hurt. Student-athletes should listen to the
guidelines from universities social media policies, and also be smarter and implement even
stricter restrictions for themselves. The way of deactivating their account during the time in
school is very strict, and it should not be implemented, because student-athletes will miss an
opportunity to promote the positive picture of their characters. Student-athletes should think in a
way that social media should work for them but not against.
Finding in the research prove the theoretical framework and propositions, and answers all
questions that were stated in an introduction. In recent years, social media affected reputation
and recruiting policies of universities thru the penalties from NCAA. Some universities athletic
programs were punished with strong restrictions on their recruiting policies and big fines as well.
The reputation of those universities was affected since scandals had high attention from social
media, as well as newspapers and TV broadcasters.

15. References
Suggestions for future research
Social media will continue to grow and advance its technologies with the creation of new
applications. Experts are already concluding that social media changed in last years, with the
more privacy control over social accounts and creating more meaningful engagement between
people, rather than different information going everywhere. Since more and more social media
platforms arise from the minds of program engineers, it would be possible to see a change in the
behavior of student-athletes and athletic departments. Back in a day, social media provided just
pieces of information, while now it can give the whole picture of the particular problem
(Sanderson, 2015). Athletic departments should focus more on how to teach better their student-
athletes about social media use, and how to use it to promote athlete and university brand.
Regarding future research, it can be some directions researchers can go through. First,
researchers need to look how the situation changed regarding student-athlete social media policy
handbook and student-athlete education about social media usage. The finding could prove what
is better for use: strict policy or soften policy. Secondly, researchers should analyze how
universities are going in time, and if they are aware of new ways of social interactions. Lately,
researchers can spend plenty of time to find how social media increase the value of athletic
programs, making a comparison between programs with strong and weak social media
interaction.

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