As we enter the Final Four this weekend, there are a lot of familiar faces headed to New Orleans to compete for the 2012 NCAA Championship. In fact, all of the programs (Ohio State, Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisville) have all been to the Final Four at least nine times. While all the programs have prowess on the court, Kentucky, which also happens to be the title favorite, has done an exceptional job of promoting their basketball players through social media.
Earlier this month the Kentucky Wildcats pushed the value of Twitter to a whole new level when they sold ESPN on the idea of featuring player Twitter handles during a live game broadcast. While showing the handle for a commentator is not all that uncommon, having the availability of team and player handles is a new phenomenon. This inclusion has since become a best practice for ESPN and other networks when broadcasting college basketball games.
Whether to not to adopt Twitter has been an ongoing debate within college athletics, with many schools taking drastically different approaches when developing their policies around student-athlete interaction with the media community. For example, some coaches ban their players from using Twitter, while others, such as Kentucky coach John Calipari, openly endorse his players’ use of social media. It should be noted that coach Calipari is also very active himself , with over a million followers and over 5,000 tweets on his account.
Kentucky basketball has long had the most passionate fanbase in the country and its embrace of Twitter has only raised that profile with fans around the country and the world. This devotion only figures to grow in numbers as Kentucky continues to penetrate the market and gain new fans with its unprecedented coverage of the team – coverage such as coach Calipari linking to videos of himself inside the locker room before and after games.
The Kentucky Athletic Department also takes this use of social media the extra mile, by actively teaching its student-athletes how to tweet and avoid missteps with the public eye following their accounts. UK Associate Athletic Director DeWayne Peevy says, “they preach promoting and protecting their brand and I think they do a pretty good job with our assistance.” He also says these accounts “are already public and we monitor them. Also, the players loved it.”
It can’t be taken lightly that the “players love it”. This means many other young kids around the country will like it as well and have the opportunity to become a fan at a very young age. With social media it no longer matters if you live in Lexington or out of the country, you can always feel like you are in the middle of Kentucky basketball. Also, with so many top high school recruits looking to build their exposure and brand before embarking on an NBA career, Kentucky’s open social media policy will likely encourage prospective players to choose the Wildcats over the numerous top basketball programs around the country.
This phenomenon is nothing new to Calipari, as he was featured in the New York Times in 2010 for embracing social media. He is raising the bar for other top programs on and off the court as he continues to do everything in his power to make Kentucky an attractive choice for top high school recruits to play basketball. I expect other schools to start adopting some of these policies but they will be playing from behind against the Wildcats – just as many do when they step on the court.