Thank You For Not Twittering

With the college football season revving up, the Southeastern Conference--one of the most competitive football conferences--plans to ban the use of social media at any of its sporting events. The media credential policy announced for the upcoming season bans both broadcasters AND fans from updating Twitter, Facebook, youtube, etc. with updates from the games. Fans at the SEC games are prohibited from sending out “any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction, or other information concerning the event.” Easier said than done when you consider that SEC member University of Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium seats 104,000 people, while the University of Georgia’s Sanford Stadium and LSU’s Tiger stadium can hold 92,000 loyal students and alumni. How do you prevent all of these fans from reaching for their cell phones to share a Twitter moment with the world? Will security guards be frisking football fans with mobile devices capable of accessing Twitter and Facebook accounts?

The SEC itself has already embraced the Twitter world, building an account called @SECSportsUdate, which is capable of sending “real-time” tweets about sporting events. Will they continue to do this once the policy has gone into effect?

Also, When the US government has not even made concrete guidelines or laws pertaining to how to monitor social media effectively, what makes the SEC think they can limit fans from sending tweets about their teams’ victories or losses?