The Finger Wag – Athletes using Twitter and Social Media to their Disadvantage

Earlier this week PFT leaked some interview excerpts from an ESPN The Magazine feature with Dwayne Bowe, the Kansas City Chiefs’ wide receiver.

During the interview the topic of social media came up, specifically Facebook .

The older guys get on MySpace and Facebook a week before we go to a city; when a pretty one writes back, they arrange to fly her in three or four days in advance. They call it importing.”

One of my favorite parts of this though is how he follows it up about why it’s only the older guys doing this:

“Younger guys don’t have the money to do it,” Bowe added.

According to this article the minimum salary in 2007 for any player in the NFL was $285,000. The NFL travels for 8 weeks on the season (more if you make the playoffs but come on Bowe is on the Cheifs) and the young guys can’t afford a hotel room on that salary? Where the fuck are they staying? A room at the Super 8 in Jessup Maryland is only like 50 bucks (A story for another time), you can swing it Dwayne.

Honestly, I did try to this one time. I was going on a shore vacation with some buddies and hit up myspace for the town we were going to. The rejection responses I got back were not nearly as mean and insulting as the ones I sent out in my home town. Ocean City you have yourself some kind women there.

ESPN held their “upfront” thismorning, according to wikipedia:

In the North American television industry, an upfront is a meeting hosted at the start of important advertising sales periods by television network executives, attended by the press and major advertisers. It is so named because of its main purpose, to allow marketers to buy commercial airtime “up front”, or several months before the television season begins.

Why does any of this matter to us? ESPN is prepared to overtake the internet. Done are the days where they just want to ruin 4 channels on TV and a host of websites with different local “flavors”. No today marked a huge announcement. ESPN plans to help bring Facebook down in flames. You may have heard of Facebook, it’s a social networking tool that used to be just for college kids. Now it has expanded to include anyone who has ever touched a computer. Facebook has recently decided
that privacy is useless in this new world so now everyone who knows you now knows you listen to Collective Soul on Pandora.

Why am I so critical of Facebook? I can’t stand half of my news feed. It is filled with too much crap. I do not care about your mafia and I really hate seeing what kind of pig you are raising on your farm.

ESPN is about to make my Facebook experience even more annoying, we are talking ESPN2 First Take level of annoyance. ESPN will be partnering with Playdom to create a Facebook game based off Farmville. It will actually be called ESPNUVille. Let that soak in a bit.

I personally can’t wait to see Facebook friends bitching that their
UVille isn’t producing enough Sasha Vujacics…

Upfronts: ESPN Gets Into the Game