More Stupid Corporate Tricks: The Sports Edition

I’ll admit to being biased. I think most college sports executives played one too many downs without a helmet. The recent attempt by the Southeastern Conference (SEC) to ban Twitter, Facebook and other social media from their football games proves my point.

At one time in the past seven days, the SEC released a proposed policy that would have banned fans from updating their Facebook status, posting a game photo on Flickr or tweeting from the stands at any SEC football game. No calling the brother-in-law to brag about your seats or blogging about that game-changing interception caught before your very eyes.

Seems the SEC believed being sports fans would be violating the SEC’s copyright and their lucrative contract with CBS Sports by reporting their own game updates. The solution, of course, was to act like a salmon and swim upstream against the massive current that is the omnipresence of social media.

After about 24 hours of being bombarded with “Are you kidding me?” messages from the blogosphere, alumni and season ticket holders, conference leaders relented. The new policy makes it clear that you can tweet from your seat as long as you’re not making any money doing it:

“No Bearer may produce or disseminate in any form a “real-time” description or transmission of the Event (i) for commercial or business use, or (ii) in any manner that constitutes, or is intended to provide or is promoted or marketed as, a substitute for radio, television or video coverage of such Event. Personal messages and updates of scores or other brief descriptions of the competition throughout the Event are acceptable.”

That’s a reasonable policy, but why all the drama that damaged the SEC credibility and presented an image of an organization hell-bent on holding back the tide of progress? Let's hope other organizations and executives look at the SEC's example and skip the Hail Mary pass (and excessive sports analogies) to save their reputation the harm and embarrassment.