The sporting world — ranging from star athletes to coaches, schools and various teams — is increasingly atwitter over social media.
Whether it's setting up Facebook or MySpace fan pages, writing personal blogs or creating Twitter news feeds, the options for fans to follow and often interact with their favorite sports passion are seemingly endless.
So, too, are the reasons behind the phenomenon.
"This is how the younger generation communicates," said David Locke, a talk radio host on 1320 KFAN who frequently updates his Facebook and Twitter feeds with news, opinion and tidbits designed to not only interact with his listeners, but to draw them to his radio show. "We're seeing a new method for information to be spread. Today, people are used to getting their news and information almost immediately. Twitter is just another way for that to happen."
Schools such as Utah, Utah State and even Westminster College are jumping on board. For some coaches, the wave of social media is a way to broaden their recruiting influence. For others, it's a way to keep in touch in a world where space in the newspaper or the evening news is hard to come by.
"It just seemed like an easy way to keep in touch with our fans and parents," said Utah State volleyball coach Grayson Dubose, who recently followed the lead of Aggie women's basketball coach Raegan Pebley and created a Twitter account. "It's been a real positive for us ... I see who my followers are and track that. It's kind of a nice way to keep in touch."
Nationwide, college coaches use Twitter or Facebook differently. Southern Cal football coach Pete Carroll might update his Twitter page several times a day. Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham, on the other hand, hasn't updated his since June 3 when he tweeted "Loving the way recruiting is shaping up."
Many other coaches have not, and probably never will, tweet on Twitter or update a Facebook status.
Utah has Twitter feeds set up for many of its coaches and teams — Whittingham has nearly 1,000 followers and hoops coach Jim Boylen has about 550.
"I do miss seeing my guys around the office," Boylen wrote in a post on Thursday, "but I am confident they are working hard to improve on the court & in the classroom this summer."
BYU, on the other hand, only recently added a Twitter account for its athletics department and had a little more than 300 followers Friday morning.
"Right now, it's kind of an experiment. I want to see how it can be used," Dubose said. "We're seeing the potential of something and think it can be a way to get our program out there a little bit more and reach people a little bit better."
Many of the athletes with the highest profiles in the world are diving headfirst into social media. Lance Armstrong, for example, sometimes doesn't speak with reporters after a bicycle race but, as his 1.3 million Twitter followers know, will typically send a message, picture or video out almost as soon as he hops off his bike.
Former Utahn Levi Leipheimer, also a top contender at this year's Tour de France, similarly pulls out his iPhone as soon as he hits the team bus after a stage to post his thoughts and feelings.
The reasons for this are myriad.
Armstrong, as much a corporation as an athlete, is able to control the message when he is both author and distributor.
It also provides the athlete with a way to directly interact with fans and friends in a very public way. As part of the Tour de France, Armstrong and his Livestrong foundation have created a simple function that places one of the familiar yellow bands across a Twitter user's avatar.
Twitter, an Internet-based bulletin board type service, lets users post their thoughts or Web links in short messages limited to 140 characters or fewer. Those who subscribe to the Twitter feed receive those messages in different ways. For most, logging on to Twitter will pull up a list of real-time messages posted by those the user chooses to follow.
Others, especially if they have a strong interest in a particular team, school or athlete, will set up their accounts to have those messages sent to their cell phones immediately via text message.
That has business savvy individuals thinking of ways to drive traffic — and dollars — with social media.
For Locke, it's a matter of promoting his radio show.
For Westminster sports information director Josh Fisher, it's an effort to sell a few more tickets or get students more involved with campus activities.
"It makes perfect sense. It's an easy way to market our events to a lot of people," Fisher said. "We have a very small budget and with things like Facebook and Twitter it means I can instantly get ahold of people that are in our target audience. And all it takes is a few seconds to send out a message."
Chris Cooley, the former Utah State football player and current Washington Redskins tight end, has grabbed hold of the technology world with both hands and appears to be having a lot of fun doing it. His Twitter feed is updated often and frequently includes links to videos or pictures of him at practice, goofing off at a rodeo in Wyoming or selling autographed posters.
Media outlets, such as the Deseret News, are also hopping aboard the Twitter express.
With the print product usually reaching subscribers only once per day, newspapers have turned to the Internet as a way to compete with 24-hour news sources such as television and radio. By including links to fresh stories, media outlets hope to drive traffic to their Web sites and increase advertising revenues.
Sports teams and colleges, likewise, are taking advantage of the marketing potential that social media provides.
"We were one of the first teams to jump into all these (things)," said Eric Schulz, vice president for marketing with the Utah Jazz. "We did it so fans could interact with the team. People like the fact that they can send a request or question and have it answered directly by someone with the team."
The Jazz, who for the past couple of years have given fans an opportunity to write team-hosted blogs, have an employee dedicated to social media, Schulz said. That person updates Web sites, sends out Twitter messages and answers questions from fans. The team has 5,300 followers on Twitter and more than 10,000 on Facebook.
Schulz said the team has sent as many as 10,000 text messages a day to drive ticket sales and other promotions. The recent "ticket buddy" program designed to help season-ticket holders split a year's tickets with another fan drew more requests for information via text message than actual phone calls.
"For a lot of people," Schulz said, "it really has taken over as the preferred method of communication."
The Jazz boast more than 31,000 fans on Facebook, and Schulz said the team has designs to further push into the world of social media and fan interaction, with live fan polls during games allowing fans to text in their votes for player of the game.
"We're all kind of stumbling forward with this, but we think we are on to something and it is working," Schulz said. "We're going to try and embrace it even more."
There are, of course, dangers in social media for athletes.
There are countless impostors out there pretending to be a certain athlete or coach. A Jerry Sloan impostor has a Twitter page complete with a folksy message and a John Deere logo. Another account, pretending to be Kyrylo Fesenko, has the young Ukrainian center frustrated by Sloan's coaching and his inability to attract women.
Several sports personalities have sued to stop impersonators, and Twitter has begun using a "Verified Account" designation on high-profile pages for celebrities and other public figures.
C.J. Miles has a fairly active Twitter account under the name KidCoolC, but few other Jazz players are currently on the service — something Schulz said the team may encourage if for no other reason than to protect themselves from impostors.
Though the primary purpose behind social media is purely social — athletes and coaches frequently communicate with each other as "Facebook friends" or Twitter "followers," news is often inadvertently broken this way.
Shaquille O'Neal talked about his trade to the Cleveland Cavaliers on his Twitter account, and Chicago Bulls forward Tyrus Thomas sent out a few messages related to the trade rumors sending him to Utah for Carlos Boozer. "The media is a mess," he said as well as "No, I'm not traded."
Salt Lake City cyclist David Zabriskie announced via his Twitter page before it hit the newspapers or radio stations that his house had been broken into a few months ago.
Rather than let fans and media speculate about various things, Locke said, athletes would be smart to embrace the technology and set the record straight.
And while some might be slow to embrace social media as a preferred method of communication or marketing, there is no denying it has carved out a sizable niche.
"It's a way for me to be connecting with my audience," Locke said. "You're just trying to find a way to break through the wall and connect."
e-mail: jeborn@desnews.com