Twitter and college athletics may seem like an unlikely pairing, but dozens of coaches, conferences and athletics departments are aggressively using the microblogging Web service to keep pace with a new generation of prospects and fans.

Twitter, which limits users to 140-character posts known as “tweets,” is designed to provide a quick glance into what a person – or entity – is doing, thinking or feeling. Twitter doesn’t require an Internet connection and can be accessed with a cell phone, with the communication appearing as a text message. The service is free.

College coaches began using it to communicate with the public – and recruits – months ago. In recent weeks, more conferences and college athletics departments have created Twitter accounts to promote their programs.

Southern California football coach Pete Carroll used his Twitter feed to share his favorite music, and LSU football coach Les Miles detailed his Mother’s Day plans. Athletics departments are tweeting about student-athletes earning academic honors, updating competition statistics and reporting on the latest recruits who have signed to attend the school.

Sports information directors increasingly understand the limitations of traditional media and are embracing technology that allows them to communicate on their own terms.

“Even though a number of these technologies reach a very fragmented audience, those are still audiences that we want to be in front of,” said Oklahoma Sports Information Director Kenny Mossman. “We want to make sure we take advantage of every possible opportunity. We have the rare opportunity to reach out to our fans in a way that’s unfiltered. We can send our message directly to them in the form that we – and they – desire. That aspect is very exciting for us.”

Skipping the middle man

At Kentucky, Twitter allows the athletics department to provide up-to-date information to fans, sometimes before information is available at news sites. Kentucky’s Eric Lindsey said the athletics department wants to avoid becoming a news outlet itself, but it does want its Web site to be included in fans’ daily Internet stops. Twitter can help by providing snippets of information with links to more comprehensive coverage on the Kentucky site, an approach used by several athletics departments.

Lindsey said Kentucky still relies on traditional media to disseminate national news – for example, when the Wildcats changed basketball coaches earlier this year. But for other updates, like National Letter of Intent announcements, Twitter is the perfect tool.

“The media and fans want to know when a recruit signs, and we can use Twitter to make that announcement. For some of our smaller sports, it’s a good way to get out information like player of the week and links to game recaps,” Lindsey said.

Athletics departments seem to value Twitter’s ability to make fans feel more connected. “Like fans of the Ellen DeGeneres show feel like they’re best friends with Ellen, fans on Twitter feel a connection to our coaches – like they’re getting an inside peek into their world,” said Ben Chulick, Colorado State marketing director.

Twitter fraud

But with the intimacy of direct communication comes peril.

One of the most prolific and popular tweeters in college sports, Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari, has six Twitter accounts – only one of which is actually the tech-savvy coach. Impostors can take Twitter names and post outlandish comments, and even college presidents are not immune to the whims of tech posers. Presidents at Georgetown and Texas both recently had student satirists open Twitter accounts in their names.

Schools can take steps to close the spurious accounts or just let them run their course and, hopefully, disappear over time. Mark Bryant, new-media coordinator at the Big South, said a similar phenomenon occurred in the early days of the Internet when people secured domain names with an eye on a big payday down the line. At Colorado State, the athletics departments actively secured the Twitter accounts for all its coaches and sports and any variations they could think of. Most schools try to make their accounts – and those of their coaches – look official, with links back to the school Web site and official graphic displays.

Are more rules needed?

The immediacy and intimacy of Twitter has made it a popular recruiting tool, but some tweets have resulted in secondary violations, prompting the NCAA to lay out its current rules for using the medium.

While the need for further regulation has yet to be determined, writing rules for constantly changing technology has challenged the Association for years. Oklahoma’s Mossman suggested that future regulatory efforts should include people from the technical community.

“Otherwise we are going to be writing rules for technology that is a year old and almost forgotten,” he said. “I hope that if and when that day comes, we will be wise enough to involve the technology community to help us figure out the best way for us (to regulate it), if it’s even possible to have regulation.”

The Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, which stridently opposed text-messaging between coaches and prospects, hasn’t taken an official position on Twitter yet and will discuss the technology at its July meeting in Denver. The SAAC itself uses Twitter to communicate with members and potential members.

Chair Matt Baysinger, a former Kansas student-athlete, said that some of the SAAC’s main concerns with text-messaging – the cost and the lack of professionalism – are mitigated with Twitter. To receive tweets to a mobile phone, a prospect would have to sign up for Twitter, “follow” a particular coach and have the coach follow the prospect in return, and agree to have messages sent to a mobile device. Baysinger said it’s likely that people who would go through all of that would not be worried about the cost. He also said the frequent lack of professionalism in the medium is mitigated by the absence of personalization.

“At this point, I don’t feel Twitter is a personalized medium. It’s meant to be public information. It’s meant for everyone, which puts it in a different category from a text message,” Baysinger said.

Tweet with a strategy

For all of the fun and opportunity that Twitter provides, some athletics departments caution against keeping up with the technologically savvy rivals. The tool should be used with a strategy, a target audience and a goal. Wisconsin Sports Information Director Justin Doherty said he encourages his staff to be adventurous and to anticipate the next evolution of technology, but always with a greater purpose in mind. The school uses its Twitter account most often to push people to content offered on its more comprehensive Web site.

“It’s great to use all this stuff, but you don’t want to use it just to use it,” Doherty said. “You want to know whom you are reaching and the best way to reach them. We’re not afraid to try something different to lure people to the Web site. Twitter is great to call attention to your content.”

Indeed, those who make effective use of Twitter and other communication technology could reap significant rewards.

 “If you’ve got the next big thing, you have the world at your doorstep,” said the Big South’s Bryant. “I think the key for an enterprise like a college team or conference is keeping your eyes and ears wide open, not limiting where you go but seeing what others do, listening to a variety of mass media to see where the next momentum shift is going.”