Twitter ban for Pro Athletes during competition NFL and ATP Tennis

During one of my trips in the car I was listening to an interesting interview about the NFL and ATP Tennis organizations not allowing athletes to post anything on twitter 90 minutes before, during and 90 minutes after the match.

According to the NY Times ATP Tennis player Andy Roddick is strongly opposing this rule.

Some quotes in the articles are:

“I think its lame the U.S. Open is trying to regulate our tweeting,” he wrote Friday night. “I understand the on-court issue but not sure they can tell us if we can’t do it on our own time … we’ll see.”

The rules state that tweeting is not allowed on the court during matches. They also warn players about using Twitter away from the court, saying that sending “certain sensitive information” could be considered passing along inside information to gamblers.

“I definitely respect the rule about inside info and on court, but you would seriously have to be a moron to send ‘inside info’ through a tweet,” Roddick continued in a total of four tweets.

“Not very subtle/smart … come on.”

The 90 minutes rule before the game and  untill 90 minutes after the game that has been set by the NFL yesterday is creating some vibes as well.

The NFL said that it will let players, coaches, and other team personnel engage in social networking during the season. However, they will be prohibited from using Twitter and from updating profiles on Facebook and other social-networking sites during games.

In addition, they will not be allowed to tweet or update social-networking profiles 90 minutes before a game and until post-game interviews are completed.

 Twitter has been picked by many athletes as way of directly communicating to their fans. It is a great marketing tool for them and their sport organizations. So why the ban in some sports.  Take a look a the following quote:

The fact that the NFL won’t allow tweeting during games isn’t new. The league instituted the policy for players after they started using technology in touchdown celebrations. But the updated regulations now extend to just about anyone who is remotely involved in the game.

The above statement indicates that maybe some unfair play is going on with sending messages through twitter into cyberspace. This could give the twitter spies information about their opponent and they can adjust their tactics. Maybe some unfair gambling practices could happen since internal information can leak out just before a game starts.

I don’t think you can stop the internal leaking of information by not allowing all involved to twitter.

The only solution for completely eliminating leaking information is to make sure we isolate the athletes and their coaches 90 minutes before the game until 90 minutes after the game  in a bubble without any form of communication to the outside. No cell phones, no radio signals, no pagers, no hand signals or any other body language, no smoke signals. So all our available communications in history will be eliminated and that will allow us not even to actually see the game on our TVs. 

The information that comes available through twitter can be useful and informative. Yes, some information can be sensitive and give an opponent in advantage. But I think all athletes are adult enough to use common sense in what they personally post on their twitter feeds. And if any information is damaging, they should just pay for their mistakes and actions.