Social Media- The Outside World’s Inside Scoop

By: Aimee Adams

On September 24, 2012, Brandon Redmond, a member of the Avila University Men’s Basketball team, tweeted about getting suspended from the team, along with Bopp Churchman and Justin Reed. Redmond unleashed some serious frustration via twitter. These outbursts caused an outbreak of rumors amongst the Avila Campus.

            With Eagle Madness right around the corner, Redmond’s tweets had Keiana Moyer (a member of the Avila University Glitter Girls Dance team) anxiously searching for a new dance partner. Every Year at Eagle Madness, the Avila University Glitter Girls perform a guy girl dance.  Each girl from the team is required to dance with a student-athlete. After reading Redmond’s tweets, Moyer knew her coach, Cindy Freeman wouldn’t allow her to dance with Redmond, assuming he was no longer an athlete at Avila.

            Two days after the tweets were written, Redmond, Churchman, and Reed had an official meeting with head basketball coach, Rodney Perry. Perry discussed the player’s actions, which led to their recent suspension. At the end of the meeting Perry withdrew the punishment and allowed the players to keep their place on the team.

            Shortly after the meeting, Redmond deleted the tweets from his twitter account. However, the deletion of the tweets didn’t delete the uproar they caused.

Darrian Miller (former KU running back)

            The popularization of social media has affected Sports teams across the board.  The Kansas University Football team was banned from using all social networking sites in 2011. Darrian Miller, former running back for the KU football team explained the reason the team was banned from using social networking sites was because a player got injured at practice and immediately began tweeting about it. Tuner Gill, the 2010-2011 head football coach believed social networks were a distraction to the team and an unnecessary source of team information open to the pubic. Because of these beliefs, Gill banned all team members from using any kind of social networking sites. The players were less than pleased with Gill’s decision; “I don’t believe it benefitted us in any way. It brought more attention to the team not having it than when we did have it,” Said Miller.

            The universalization of Social Media has caused as many upheavals as it has praises in the sports world.  When the world has the resources to read one’s every move, it can be good or bad. In the case of the Avila Basketball team and the KU football team, social media did more harm than good.