Neither of Iowa’s Division I head football coaches have official Twitter accounts — and I’m perfectly OK with that.
Tweeting is not for everyone. For some, it’s a technological non-likelihood; we all have an old (or not-so-old) relative or acquaintance who isn’t very tech-savvy. It has to do with delegation of responsibilities, management and which tasks are too time-consuming for well-paid officials.
Being a head coach for a program that has 85 scholarship athletes is tough enough without the distraction of having to tweet out thoughts after a tough loss, thank sponsors or promote a preseason fan event.
Football and basketball coaches are frequently the highest-paid employee within their state’s government. Iowa Hawkeye coach Kirk Ferentz is scheduled to make $3.65 million each year through 2020, and I don’t feel that our tax dollars should be spent on having a leader think of 140 characters to help sell tickets — or even to inform us about legitimate team issues.
Ferentz and the UI athletic department issued a news release early last Tuesday evening regarding the death of Tyler Sash. There might be fans and/or media that would liked to have gotten the coach’s reaction sooner, but some responses take time to be formulated in a sincere and sensitive way. I’d rather wait for a few hours to hear something genuine than to hear platitudes during a moment of extreme emotion.
With Saturday’s CyHawk game being such a heated rivalry — at least locally — I would hate to see one of the head coaches lose his cool, be it with the other coach, the refs, fans or a player, and tweet bulletin-board material right after the contest.
Granted, sports is part of entertainment, but it gets much more exposure and is usually more incendiary than it is with other entertainers. Then-New England Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes took heat for the 2012 expletive he dropped on replacement officials during the lockout, but imagine if a Broadway star did the same to a director? It would have to be an A-list star for most media to pick that story up.
It seems social media is more commonly a disastrous tool of self-inflicted aggravation of injury than it is a way to remedy a problem. Kansas State University probably drew more attention to last weekend’s marching band show when the band director and KSU President Kirk H. Schulz quickly took to Twitter to apologize to “anyone offended.”
That is probably the smart legal move for K-State, but it makes one wonder how much time a university band director and top college brass spend on social media. It would be great if the interns or paid staff who are assisting these well-compensated public employees were the ones advising their bosses on social media tactics and doing the monitoring of comments and re-posts and retweets.
Outside of college sports and entertainment, there are other public figures who should leave social media to their staff as well.
I noticed not all state treasurers have social media accounts. California is an exception, but that is a state that outgrew is financial and sociological britches long ago. There are about 18 million registered voters in that state, and I hope they soon choose to break the state up into several new states.
Federal elected officials and agency heads should have staffs to take care of social media, and I believe the military has fairly strict guidelines in this area. Government officials or employees should not use social media to second-guess or encourage disobedience of unpopular directives; the phrase “not my president” is popular among voters, but shouldn’t be used at all by those paid with taxpayer dollars.
Contact Jason W. Brooks at
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or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com