Nervous NFL set to train sights on Twitter

AMERICA AT LARGE:The communications revolution is proving unsettling to the ever-wary NFL bosses, writes GEORGE KIMBALL

TO TWEET or not to Tweet, that is the question. At last month’s British Open at Turnberrry, Tom Watson’s opening-round 65 ensured he would be a four-day fixture in the press tent, and when Old Tom dropped the news that he had exchanged text messages with Jack’s wife Barbara Nicklaus on the eve of the tournament, a British golf scribe marvelled “I’m not sure which is more impressive, your score or that someone your age can actually send text messages”.

To which Old Tom replied: “Just don’t ask me to Tweet.”

Actually the most enthusiastic Twittering emanating from the British Open Media Centre was already underway, and from a man two decades Watson’s senior. At Turnberry, the irrepressible Dan Jenkins was covering a world record 201st Major.

Over the past 50 years the 79- year-old legend has covered tournaments for the Fort Worth Times-Herald, the Dallas Morning News, Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest, and. . . Twitter, which he managed to turn into a form of instant journalism: “Steve Marino shot a 68 today, which is remarkable because he looks like he broke out of prison earlier this morning.” “Is that Mark Calcavecchia or the Ailsa Craig? I can’t tell from here.” “A par for Tiger at 18. Unless a few guys on the course quit breathing, he’s done for the week.”

Even grizzled journalists who never play favourites recognized the potential for a great story in Watson’s week-long Cinderella tale but, like us, Jenkins harboured a sense of foreboding when the Open went into extra innings: “If he wins the play-off against Watson, [Stewart] Cink has a chance to become the most hated man in the world,” noted Jenkins.

“In the press room, we had a suspicion we weren’t good enough people to deserve Watson winning,” he Tweeted as the play-off took its painful toll.

“Shows you what happens when you make a 59 year-old guy work overtime. I’ve been to more uplifting funerals.”

Along about the time Cink’s name was being engraved on the Claret Jug, Jenkins was already looking ahead to Hazeltine: “It’s time to think about the worst year for majors: With the PGA to go, we’ve got Cabrera, Glover, and Cink. Goes along with a recession.”

The PGA defending champion might not be pleased by another of The Ancient Twitterer’s views that “Pádraig Harrington is redoing his swing after winning three majors. Well, why not? Maybe it’s dawned on him that Sergio gave him two of them.”

Stewart Cink too had been tweeting right through the Open, and had well over 500,000 in his network by the time he posted his final Tweet from the tarmac at Glasgow Airport: “Now on board flight back to the States, with one more carry-on than I had on the way over.”

The online social-networking tools are clearly no longer the exclusive province of your kids.

Professional athletes have taken to using them in what one supposes is an attempt to eliminate the middleman – us – in reaching out to their fans.

Lance Armstrong, for instance, maintained a running commentary throughout last month’s Tour de France (“Knock knock. Another antidoping control. Seems excessive but I’m not complaining.”) Just as Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand are among the most enthusiastic Premier League Twitterers, Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia and captain Derek Jeter post their own Tweets. Shaquille O’Neal, perhaps the Twitter king, has a network of 1.8 million.

It all seems harmless enough. But, with National Football League teams convening at their respective training camps this week, Twitter appears to have become the enemy, or at least to have the potential for becoming an enemy tool. Taking a cue from the US Military, which has determined that Tweets from combat zones constitute a security risk and hence is on the verge of banning its use by personnel, the NFL is taking a long, hard look at its own policies on Twitter.

Having banned the use of mobile phones, computers, and PDAs from pre-game warm-ups through the final whistle would seem to make it pretty hard to tweet during games, as Cincinnati receiver Chad OchoCinco (the former Chad Johnson) had promised his tweet peeps he would do this season. The mobile phone ban, you may recall, occurred after a couple of OchoCinco’s self-absorbed predecessors, Terrell Owens and Joe Horn, concealed their phones in the end zone and used them as props in impromptu touchdown celebrations.

But the loathsome “Look at me!” celebrations aren’t what has the NFL up in arms. Several individual coaches and the league officials are more concerned about security breaches – that game plans might inadvertently be leaked, that damaging information about injuries might find its way to the opposition, and that internecine locker-room battles that inevitably occur might now become public currency.

Some teams aren’t even waiting for the updated ruling from the league office. At the Miami Dolphins’ first practice session earlier this week, coach Tony Sparano all but banned Twitter outright. In Green Bay, Packers players were told that they would be fined outright if they texted or tweeted from team meetings or practice sessions. San Diego cornerback Antonio Cromartie was fined $2,500 for posting a Tweet in which he complained about the quality of food at the Chargers’ training camp.

And, if only to demonstrate that paranoia is not confined to the Pentagon and the No Fun League, the world’s largest sports network issued a company-wide directive prohibiting ESPN employees from Tweeting – “unless it serves the purposes of ESPN” or its parent organization, the Disney Corporation.

Last season the Redskins’ Pro Bowl tight end Chris Cooley, a pioneer in the world of NFL social networking, got himself in a world of trouble when he posted photos that included secret team study material, as well as unintentional locker room nudity, on his Facebook page. And OchoCinco has recently used his Twitter account to target the enemy, singling out sportswriter Mark Kriegel as, among other things, an “idiot”. (Kriegel responded with an online riposte in which he cited the original king of the trash-talkers: “Muhammad Ali,” he noted, “did it to talk his way inside an opponent’s head. Ocho is just yapping into cyberspace.“)

A player in any sport sending text messages or tweets while a game is in progress is unlikely to be properly focused on the task at hand, but it would appear there hasn’t been a great deal of thought behind the past week’s spate of anti-Twitter activity.

Sparano, for instance, whose policy may have been the most draconian, admitted in almost the same breath, “I’m naive to the whole thing. I really don’t know what it is. I just learned how to text a couple of months ago”.

And even in the midst of his other irrational ravings, leave it to OchoCinco to post, in his allotted 140 characters, the question NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell ought to be thinking about as he contemplates dropping the other shoe: “If I tweet during a game and they suspend me, would I get paid during my suspension since it’s not a legal issue?”