The college American Football season provided dozens of exciting games, the first freshman Heisman Trophy winner, continued dominance for the South Eastern Conference, a dynasty in Alabama and plenty of story lines off the field. When we think back on the highs and lows of college football, as the leaves fell and seasons changed, it is interesting to reflect on the real-time impact Social Media had on our ability to communicate with friends, express our emotions in written form, capture information about topics of interest and, believe it or not, influence people we don’t even know.
Traditionally word of mouth would spread to a limited audience and reasonably slowly. So now at a macro level, consider how rapidly “word” can spread thanks to mobile and social technologies…8.6 trillion texts annually, 163 billion tweets annually, approximately 1 billion active Facebook users and hundreds of other channels.
The day following the BCS National Championship resulted in a 50% split in online buzz between Alabama and Notre Dame (the two competing teams), however, negative sentiment toward Notre Dame (the losers) outweighed positive. Surprisingly, a look across the last 10 days finds Notre Dame with 63% of the share and sentiment still trending negative due to off the field issues with Manti Te’o (if you haven’t heard about these I’ll elaborate below) and rumors of their head coach leaving. Mentions about Alabama may have fallen sharply, but their dynasty is intact.
Now, let’s take a deeper look at 2 individuals intertwined with storied football programs:
Manti Te’o, the Notre Dame star with an inspired story centered on the death of his girlfriend and stellar play on the football field. Recently we learned her death was a hoax and now Te’o is faced with mounting negative publicity and mockery across social networks (see #teoing). Only time will tell how this impacts his NFL marketability, but in the meantime there will be plenty to tweet about. Common topics tied to Te’o following the news include “hoax”, “fake”, “fictional” and “imaginary”.
But now for this week I'll call a wrap and I'm afraid you'll have to wait for next week for my second example and remainder of this post!
To be continued....
Steven Strickland
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