Teryl Austin wants his players to stop tweeting. Or twittering. Or twerping. Whatever it is they do — what are they calling it?
If it wasn’t for that damn Twitter, Austin wouldn’t have found himself answering questions about freshman cornerback Cody Riggs’ health last week.
If it wasn’t for that damn Twitter, Cody Riggs wouldn’t have told all his followers he came down with strep throat last week.
Football teams — especially big-money SEC teams — micromanage their information outflow. If some detail can maybe, possibly, probably give opponents an edge, Florida is keeping it under lock and key. The Gators hide all practices from the public for a reason.
Info about the No. 3 cornerback’s throat is far from the worst news that can be leaked.
Maybe a high school player will update his status from a strip club during his campus visit, or maybe he will just pose with $16 and a gun, which he says is only filled with pellets.
Point is, Austin has a right to sweat. We’re college students and, at times, we’re really, really dumb.
But that’s only one side of the coin. Riggs was a member of one of the best recruiting classes in the nation, and so far the group has thrived with 10 true freshmen playing at Tennessee on Saturday.
The group has been close-knit since arriving on campus, something that would not have happened without social networking. Before signing their letters of intent, Florida oral commitments communicated frequently on Facebook.
And more important than being tight is the fact that the whole group came to Gainesville in the first place, which in part can also be chalked up to Mark Zuckerberg and his knack for giving young people exactly what they want — a grammatically incorrect outlet to socialize with other people their age.
Pop psychologist Malcolm Gladwell wrote in “The Tipping Point” about “connectors,” the type of person who ignites a movement because they can spread information to a lot of people. In the book, he uses the example of Lois Weisberg, the commissioner of cultural affairs for the city of Chicago.
But her current job, she once opened a second-hand jewelry store, ran a drama troupe, ran a salon inside her house and served on the council of lawyers, among other gigs. By constantly changing, she became friends with actors, musicians, doctors, lawyers, politicians and homeless people.
Being a connector like Weisberg isn’t about holding a bunch of jobs, per se. It’s a personality type, a type that makes the world work. Weisberg wasn’t important because of her work; she was important because her work led her to meet a lot of people and cultivate those friendships.
Freshman Trey Burton is also a connector. He grew up a Gators fan and orally committed two years before he could actually enroll. As a high school junior, he told me after an interview, “If you have any questions or need any information about the 2010 recruiting class, just give me a text.”
He said he never wanted to pressure other players to come to UF. He just wanted to connect the soon-to-be Gators and, if anyone was on the fence, let those players know Florida was a good option.
This isn’t to suggest Burton was the only connector in the class. And don’t think players came to Florida just because they were Facebook friends with other commits. Players enroll at a school for several reasons, and friendship is just one of them.
But, at the very least, connectors like Burton help strengthen a group’s relationship and make the transition to UF easier.
Just don’t bother following Urban Meyer on Twitter. He said before the season that he doesn’t update his account himself. Meyer and Austin don’t see the need to tweet, and that’s OK.
Social networking is a young man’s game. But so is college football.
