The 20 Something Year Old Entrepreneur

ESPN.com did a special four-part series examining the impact of online social networks on college athletics and Heather Dinich’s article, How much is too much online? looked at what colleges and universities are doing to help educate their student-athletes on their social networking interactions.

Dinich wrote about how several universities are reaching out to a third party for some guidance on social networking.  According to the article, Sports Media Challenge “has helped universities and entire conferences embrace sites like Facebook and Twitter as marketing tools and ways of branding their athletic programs, but Sports Media Challenge president Kathleen Hessert also has been asked to help some schools set social networking guidelines for their athletes.”

Coaches and administrators are worried about what their student-athletes may post and often talk to them about what is acceptable and what is not.  But is it the athletic departments job to educate and monitor their student-athletes?  Or should the student-athletes be held responsible for their own actions?

Dinich highlighted Myron Rolle from Florida State who said “For me personally, what I did, I policed my own site. I wanted people to think of me as that upstanding scholar-athlete. Anytime someone was thinking about tagging a picture of me, I’d make sure I’d look at it first and say, ‘OK, is this picture OK? Would my mother appreciate this picture?…I didn’t put any status updates that had curse words or foul language or just wouldn’t be representative of who I am and who I want to be. As much as the school can do, each individual athlete has to look at himself and say, ‘What do I want out there, and what kind of person do I want to look like on these sites?’”

It’s unfortunate that not all student-athletes think like Myron Rolle, and I can see why he is a Rhodes Scholar!  He clearly understands what Scott Monty, the Head of Social Media at Ford, meant when he said: “What happens in Vegas stays on Google.”

I honestly feel it should be up to the individual/student-athlete to monitor their own social content and interactions.  The university can hold meetings, educate their student-athletes all they want, but ultimately it’s not the athletic department who’s going to be posting.  It’s the student-athlete and it’s up to them to create their own image in which the public will view them.

So I ask you, social networking etiquette: who’s responsibility is it?  The universities athletic department?  Or the student-athlete?