The Sports World is All a Twitter

that we talked about. It seems pretty much every day pie. No, not pie, different topic. The other topic we talked about every days the hundred forty character topic that that just won't die. Um, there's no, no, no, there's no secret. I'm a Twitter junkie. I really am, and that really is no secret, right everyone who follows kay and there are a lot of other Twitter junkies out there, but they're starting to become an unwelcome audience in certain venues.

And that's why you wanted to talk about specifically sporting events. Yeah, this is uh, this is the sports section this week. Yes, um? No, actually, um, it's been in the news quite a lot recently, especially with UM with the start of the Southeastern Conference football schedule not too long ago. Yes, I had to have

someone explained to me. But football, apparently is a game in which two teams battle it out on a field that has been divided up into a hundred yards and you have to move a ball from your side to the other side. Um. You know, since you pointed out, uh in an attempt to embarrass me, that I have not seen the movie Jaws and all in it, and

I'll own up to that. I can't see how you managed to graduate from the University of Georgia, which is one of the perennial well, actually everybody in the SEC is is known for uh not knowing that football is a game. I hate to tell you this, but I did not attend a single football game while I was at the University of Georgia. In fact, football games where the bane of my existence at U g A. But

that's for a different that's for a different story altogether. Okay, so we've established that sports are an important part of life in the Southeastern Conference. It's a big draw, especially football. I would say, yes, yes, there's a there's not an underestimation to say it's a billion dollar industry. It's actually

a multibillion dollar industry. And uh so when you're talking about a multibillion dollar industry, you've got people who are financially uh involved in this thing obviously, and that's that's a lot of money. So anyone who's gonna have their finances dependent upon something like that, they want as much control over it as possible. And part of that is controlling the information about the games as the games go on. Yes, this is because of those really really lucrative television contracts yea.

And when I said billions of dollars, that's what I'm really talking about here. Yeah, Yeah, these TV contracts with which give exclusive rights to certain channels to to show certain games. Yep. Um. In this case with regard to the with the SEC um, they have a vendor XOS Technologies. That's probably pronounced something different, but that's why I've only seen it in print sauce. Yes, entirely possible. Uh And so the SEC said, look, we are creating a new

media policy. You can't tweet, you can't send video out, you can't send audio out, you can't blog about the games while you're sitting in the stadium. You can't update your Facebook status to say just saw an amazing touchdown by so and so. Yep, can't do it because we said no, And that means that you're that they were going to try to control I don't know, upwards of hundred thousand or more fans usual. It was crazy. That

stadium is always packed. Every single SEC stadium has a huge capacity at least everyone that I've been in, and I've been in a few of them, and you're gonna try and control all those fans, not to mention the people in the press box whose job it is to actually uh you know, talk about the games as they go on, and it actually applied to them too. Yeah. The Southeast, Uh, they treat football differently than other parts

of the country. I would say. I mean, there are people who are really into their football teams, don't get me wrong, but the Southeast conferences that are going to argue with you when you're gonna get listener mail about that, I don't care the Southeast. It is a religion people, I am not joking. You see generations of people from like a U. G. A. I would see four generations

of a family all attending a football game. You would have the the you know, the grand parents, the parents, the students, and then like their little nieces and nephews who aren't even old enough to spell you g a much less be a bulldog. So you and I mean, I know people who live in in in Georgia who never attended the University of Georgia who call themselves bulldogs. This is crazy to me. I went to the U to u g A, and I did not call myself

a bulldog. Well, but maybe that's just because I'm lacking that sports gene. At any rate, it is a big business and and that's why the SEC came out with this media policy. They wanted to make sure that they were protecting that very lucrative and and and and that yes, that's important. And uh, the thing is it's sent a lot of people off into what they might call a tizzy. Yes, yes,

there was a bit of a tizzy over this. And uh and as you pointed out, how do you enforce something like this, You're talking about such a Yeah, I mean, when you've got the combination of a huge number of people, you've got smartphone saturation reaching a point that is greater than it ever has been in the history of the United States. I mean, you know, everyone seems to have some sort of phone that is compatible with with at least Twitter. I mean, anyone with a text messaging plan

can can post a Twitter. It doesn't even need to be a smart phone. It could be a regular cell phone. So you've got potentially nine thousand people who all could access this social media uh certain, all these social media services in some way or another. There's no way to control that. So, first of all, the premise alone was ridiculous, but the policy really did tick off a lot of people because there are other arguments to make, such as, hey, if I'm at home and uh or I'm on the road.

Let's say I'm on the road and I don't have access to a channel that is showing this, and there's no way that I could watch this through a quote unquote uh legitimate way of you know, there's no way I could all the game legitimately. What's wrong with getting a Twitter message that says that someone scored a touchdown? Also, I don't see this as replacing any sort of broadcast

kind of uh function. I mean, who in their right mind is gonna say, you know, I could turn on ESPN and watch the game, but I'd rather read about it. In a hundred and forty characters at a time. That's the way I want to consume my football, so to speak. I mean, not literally consume your football as I understand it, they are made from pigskin. Uh yeah, I am. You know,

I used to be a big fan of those. Depends it depends on I think it depends on the league and then and then, but yeah, probably anyway, Basically what happened was, after after the initial outcry, the SEC realized that it needed to resolve this before the beginning of the football season, which so they rapidly approaching as we record this, it will already be in progress once this goes life right actually where we're we're podcasting immediately before

the the first the pardon kickoff weekend. We're actually tailgating

right now. Who um. But the thing is, they realized that we're gonna have to take care of this very quickly, and so what they did was they actually revised it a couple of times, but the most recent revision as of this recording, allows credentialed professionals to do what they need to do as far as you know, there what what they what they need to do as far as their normal media activity, but the average person in the stands is still not supposed to be twittering or sending

uploading video or audio of the game. I'm sure that you could probably be kicked out of the stadium if you're caught, but come on, you're in. You're one of ninety thousand people if they don't enforce the no alcohol rules, right, no joke. So yeah, this I just I don't see them being able to enforce this at all without spending way more money than they would lose from anyone watching a little snippet of video online. Um. I mean, I assume that this is all because of exclusivity deals that

that that their contracts state. So technically, if they did not take these steps, they would be responsible to the broadcast partners who would say, hey, our contract says that you would, you know, only do this for us, and if you're letting other people do it, then you're violating the contract. Okay, from a legal standpoint, I can understand it. From a practical one, it just doesn't make any sense.

And this is the way the world is moving. You know, We're moving into a world where you can't turn around without someone having a cell phone out capturing video or taking pictures of something. There's no newsworthy event going on in the world today that does not have someone pointing

a phone at it. When you can see video images from the darkest regions of the most remote places on Earth because someone has a cellphone that happens to have a camera and they are able to open it up and take video of it, you can no longer expect that to to be a non factor. It is here to stay, Jonathan and yeah, breathe, pie, He's gone to his happy place. Yes, my happy places. Okay. The thing is it's not just the SEC. There are other people trying to control Twitter too. What and uh well, I

mean other sports organizations. And the funny thing is all of the sports major sports leagues and their teams have Twitter feeds. Even the SEC does. There's an SEC Twitter feed. But other recent news has the NFL prohibiting social media activities during games as well. Now as I understand that the NFL is an organization where people play this game I was talking about, but they do it for money

instead of for getting good grades. I mean, I'm sorry, I don't mean to suggest that football players in college get good grades in return for playing football. I would never suggest such a thing. I certainly never saw that at g A. I was what. I never saw it that I just said, I never saw that. Actually, if you're going to go there, never mind, I shouldn't say that something about, you know, violating rules by getting paid while you're in college and playing ball, no kidding, um.

And I certainly wouldn't say that about any school because I've never seen that happen. Truth be told, I have never seen it happen. I am not making any allegations now. We're teasing because it's one of those things that every school has their opponent's school making accusing. There are certain schools in the SEC that have in the past been accused of such things. I am not suggesting that any

of them are actively doing that now. Okay, disclaimers over the NFL, which which actually does pay their players and they're supposed to and and it's actually legal. Um uh, we've lost control. Um. The NFL has uh is preventing its own players from using Twitter and Facebook during the games, and referees and referees and you know and even uh there are holding the sign that shows you when the first Oh no, okay, um the wig on. That guy can do it. Actually, that guy's in jail. I think

he was making bombs. Um. Apparently it is. Uh, it is a prohibition during the game, uh ninety minutes before game up until the postgame interviews are completed. They can't talk about it, right, and even the media have restrictions on when they are allowed to send out messages. It's usually things like at the end of a quarter they can give a score update. So apparently this game is played in quarters. Yes, therefore that was played on the field,

So anyway, is it close quarters? Smart bets? You have a player from the Cincinnati Bengals who is not in the least bit media savvy and can constantly drawing attention to himself. His name's chad Ocho Sinko. Uh, smart bets having him pulling out his cell phone and twittering in the end zone after a touchdown at least once fines be damned. Right, Um, Based on what I know of this fellow, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. I just want to why not, But for doing something like this,

I'd be surprised that this phone could survive a football game. Now, I guess if it can survive a football game. Give that man an advertising contract because there's your ad. Well, our phones can withstand a full tackle of my NFL players. You know, there you go. They are wearing pads. What. Um. In the past, other players have done such things as Terrell Owens pulling out a sharpie and signing a football and throwing it into the stands. This would be taking

that a little further. Um. But you know there are other there are other organizations, I mean not not everybody as as prohibitive as the SEC in the NFL are and and we should also stress the NFL has said that they want their players to be able to use social media. They want that fan interaction the just during the game, right they but they encourage their players too

to have this guy. If they want to have this sort of user you know, this fan player interaction, they're they're more than welcome to do it, which I think is great because as you and I know, I mean, even in our field, which has nothing to do with sports but has a similar uh feature in the sense of, you know, we have people who listen to us, fans who listen to us. We like to be able to have that kind of interactivity with them, and so it's

not just a one way street. It's good to that they are fostering that with their players, And to me it makes sense that you don't, you know, for the players anyway, that you don't give away information that could potentially affect the outcome of the game. Yeah, and then

I understand the reasoning behind that. And you also want to, uh as a team, keep your players focused on the game, right right, Sure, you don't want their head to be like, oh, I hope my five thousand followers like the fact that I just, you know, avoided the tackle on that last two yards. Oh wait, wait, I just thought of something. Yeah, yeah, Um. That's why the NBA team, the Milwaukee Bucks, prohibited Charlie Villanueva from tweeting because he was tweeting during the game

from the bench. Now, then they basically said, yeah, can you not do that during the game. The NBA, we're talking about different. That's a game called basketball. There's an orange ball and you bounce it up and down on the floor and when you get to the end of the floor, you're supposed to throw it through this little circle, which one of the sports has a field goal. That would be football. Are you sure that basketball doesn't have

a field goal. Actually it would be basketball too, got your Pilette, but both of them do, yes, So I was that was a that was a trap for Pilette because I actually know something about basketball. Actually trapped yourself because you just proved you just proved that you knew something about both sports, damn it. So um yeah, the the uh yeah, NBA their policy is essentially that every team has can develop its own policy. There's no there's no NBA wide policy. And I was unable to see

anything about major legue baseball. Uh, whether you guys don't know how to use a phone, I would like to say that he said that and not me. I'm kidding. I'm actually have flenty of time if you're sitting, if you're on yeah, if you have time to tweet. You know. I should also point out I am a huge baseball fan, so I'm definitely joking about that. And in hockey you would not have time to because you don't have like five seconds to rest and then you gotta go and

hit the ice again. So hockey that should change, right, So crushed climbing over wall, Yeah, I mean there would be some great tweets from hockey. I think everything would end with a so, um but yeah, king up teeth, hold on good nice. Yeah. So I'd love to see some hockey tweets. That'd be fun too, That would be funny. We should make a fake Twitter account for for some

some fictitious hockey player. Okay, then patent pending, um everything every time we make up something new or so yeah, So NBA, the policy is left up to each individual team. Uh and the going just this is backtracking a little bit to the NFL. But whereas I understand that they don't want you to to send out any messages that could affect the outcome of the game, what I don't understand is sending up messages of hey, we're we're twelve

points up. You know that Again? To me, I don't think anyone out there is following folks with the intention of, Hey, this way, I don't have to have that that burden of watching the sport I love. I can just read about it in a hundred forty characters at a time. That doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, and and this really is a um an issue that goes out to a lot of other industries and organizations. UM. You know, especially considering marketing people who get excited about news that

that you know, may affect their company. I mean you hear about it. Every once in a while, somebody will say, oh, hey, we just got chosen to be the so and so, and you'll find out that there wasn't an official press release going out. Yeah, or we we've got a partnership with such and such, or we're going to acquire such

and such company before it's actually finalized. And I have I have the feeling that it's not going to be much longer before there are official policies in place for many, many, many governmental bodies of legislation that hasn't yet been passed, or things that are going on behind closed doors, because politicians are starting to tweet a whole lot more than these. Once again, we've gotten to the point where the technology is outpacing the legal system. I mean, it happens there. No,

there are no official rules. There's a lot of these cases because this stuff is so new, no one's thought, hey, how do we regulate this so that it doesn't affect us in a negative way. Yeah, Um, let's get back to sports. I was gonna want to talk about that was the fun reason why we decided to start this podcast. Um, let's talk about the US Open. Oh, golf. That's a game in which you hit a ball with a stick, go find it and hit it again until you can

knock get into a little hole. Or did you know that? I was wasn't talking about that US Open? But all right, okay, that's right, the other US Open. Yeah, I was talking about the game you play with some rackets and a green fuzzy ball and you hit it over a net. I think if it as yellow fuzzy ball. But okay, okay, well yellowish, greenish whatever. Um, but hey, you know you want to go on with that golf thing. I want to hear where this is going. Um, actually, why don't

you talk about that? I'll see if I can find anything on the internet. No, no, no, alright, So so seriously, let's just talk about about, um other reasons why you wouldn't want to use Twitter in sports. One of the reasons it would be very difficult to do if you're

playing tennis. Yeah, well, one of the reasons is that you don't The reason for the the US Open administrators don't want the tennis players to use Twitter is not because it may give someone an unfair advantage, or it may give you know, you may find out, oh, my opponent tomorrow has apparently got a bum ankle um, I should hit things more to his or her right instead

of left or anything like that. It's more because that information might be used by the gambling community to adjust odds, and they are very much concerned with their appearance and they do not want to look like they are feeding into this gambling um community. So it's more of a kind of a pr thing. You know, they don't they don't want to be thought of as um enabling folks to to wage your huge amounts of money on various players.

And if you were to leave a little information about someone, you know, maybe their arm feels a little weird, something like that, then suddenly that creates a flurry of activity in the gambling community and it looks like you are you are sort of endorsing it, I guess, just by allowing this information out. So there have been a lot of warnings put up at the US Open saying don't

use Twitter for those kind of reasons. Use Twitter, just don't use it to to give information like that, you know, use a little critical thinking before you start tweeting, and most people would say, hey, this is common sense. Who the hell would you know use Twitter to give away information that could potentially cause them problems down the line.

But we see it again and again that people get these ideas, like a thought occurs to them and they have to put it down in Twitter, like they don't stop to saying, hey, maybe I shouldn't share this with the entire world before you know, hitting inner, and they just go ahead and do it. I mean I've done it too. I've sent out messages where I thought, you know, maybe I should have thought a little before I actually

wrote that. Yeah, when you when you apply the logic of how it might affect, um the odds and gambling that that might cause some serious thought among the other leagues, certainly are the major leagues and in the other professional sports, because um, you know, when you think about that anything, you know, a picture could be going back in the dugout and saying, you know, and feeling a little stiff,

hopefully I can work this out. That might you know, it's the second hitting all of a sudden that changes the complexion of the game. You know, somebody calls back to the dugout talks to the manager and goes, hey, dude, you know Johnson just twittered that his arms feeling stiff. You know. Now you know the guys and the other

dugout are also reading Twitter, you know. So, I mean, I have the feeling that it's gonna be there are going to be prohibitions on it pretty much, uh, within the next year to two years, in pretty much all sports, I would guess, just because of that. Yeah, it makes sense to me. Gives a competitive advantage and affects the

gambling odds, you know. Yeah. There. It's funny because it's things that you would never really thought about back when Twitter first hit the the you know, the public consciousness. I imagine that. Uh, it's the kind of thing that the founders of Twitter probably never thought it would happen. For one thing, it's because people have turned Twitter into such a marketing tool, either they're marketing a product or themselves, and so with that come a whole host of other

problems that people just didn't think about. Like, for example, um, let's say you're an actor and you're on a movie set and you've got a Twitter account, and you send out a Twitter message saying I shot this great scene with so and so. But the the the so and so's presence on the movie was a secret. It was supposed to be uh, you know, a treat so that people would find out just when they went to see the movie, like, oh my gosh, so and so showed

up in this great cameo and they kept it totally secret. Well, Twitter, and now it's a lot harder to keep those secrets. It's not just the actors, it's the crew, you know. I mean, it's anyone who happens to be working on

the film set. So you've got this concern now that anything that would normally be kept under wraps because I mean, they're there are movies out there that are famous, like the Air directors who are famous for keeping things as secret as possible, destroying script pages, printing it on dark paper so you can't make copies. Twitter is a huge security breach in that approach. Yeah, and then you have you know, stuff like these writers or idiots, I hate

this script. If they don't fix it, now, I'm gonna walk right and I'm sure that the uh, the studio people are going to rupture something when they read that. You know, then the producers come along go you know, what if you guys can't work this out. Uh, it's just another example of how our online lives and our personal real life lives are just getting more and more intermingled. You can't really, you can't really keep the two separate.

I mean, it's it's just impossible. I mean, the only choice you really have is to avoid creating an online part of your life. I mean, I know that we've had to worry about things that we post up on our social networking sites, just to make sure that you know, we don't do anything that would give away company secrets, like anything that was intellectual property or anything that was you know, not public knowledge. We have to be careful about that. Yes, So not that they tell us anything.

I mean, we pretty much don't know it anyway, But if we did know, we wouldn't be able to tell about it, yes, I mean, otherwise people would find out that the reason why how stuff works dot com and so popular has to do with Elvin Magic. Yes well, um, or the fact that I'm no longer supposed to send out Twitter messages saying things like Josh Clark, host of Stuff you should Know, likes to dress up as a clown and eat kittens. No, I'm not supposed to do that.

I could say it on the podcast. I'm just not supposed to, you know Twitter about Oh good, well, I mean as long as there's a clear line. Yeah. Actually I was told I can say that on Tech Stuff Live too, so you never know what I might pipe up, So I got to go ahead. Yeah, live video. That's

that's not nerve racking at all. Okay, now that we've exhausted um like, like we said, we're probably gonna see even more regulations in the future as people start to figure out what I would think what Twitter's place is in the world sports. It kind of takes some of the fun out of it, but I understand why they're taking there's Yeah, you have to have some accountability. They're not just kind of ality on the internet. Who thought it? Yeah, it's crazy, blah blah. So that, I guess wraps that

conversation up. That brings us to our favorite segment, A listener man. Uh huh. Today's listening mail comes from Alex. Alex says, Hey, guys, I was listening to your video game podcast and noticed that you said the PlayStation three was not backwards compatible, but in fact, the first sixty gigabyte models were backwards compatible. I love the podcast, guys, keep up the good work, Alex. You we're not the only person to write in about this. Actually, we've got

several emails and it is true. The sixty gigabyte model of the PlayStation three was backwards compatible. However it is no longer. It is no longer on the market. You can find used ones. I mean actually they go for quite a bit in some cases because of the that backwards compatibility, you know, all right, which is funny because they just came out with the PS three slim right, so you can you can buy, you can, yeah, you

can buy. You can buy a new PS three sometimes for less money than you would be able to buy a used one, because the new ones do not have backwards compatibility, and those, of course are the only ones that are available in stores. So that's why we talked about the lack of backwards compatibility. We were really talking about the consoles that were available on the market at

that time. It's funny because immediately after we record that podcast, Microsoft came out with its announcement of cutting prices and getting rid of one of the models of Xbox. So it just shows you that as soon as you finish a podcast, someone's gonna change something to make it obsolete. Yes, and uh, there's just in there's no more Twitter. Thanks very much. You say there's just in no more sports. Oh, that would have been better Twitter. I can live Twitter,

I can live with I I need Twitter. I can't sports gone, that's I mean, I'm miss uh you know, Oh, and curling, you know, the really competitive sports actually never Okay, I like curling. I think it's kind of cool. We're really going down around you know, you could just sort of be yourself and let's just take this conversation offline, Shelley, I'm pretty sure our listeners don't want to hear it, okay, but if you do want to hear it, you can write us at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.

We'll tell you all about our conversation about curling. Uh. If you have any other comments, source questions or suggestions in those as well. And if you want to learn more about Twitter and sports, you can find that at how stuff works dot com. Did you have something else you want to ask? Yes? And if you would like to follow Jonathan on Twitter, Yes, he's John Strickland's j O N. S. T R I C K L A N T. And if you like to follow me, I am tech stuff Chris Um, which is you know, pretty

easy to spell. H one's not so difficult, but yeah, go ahead, join us, join us, all right, We'll looking forward to it. Yeah, thanks very much for listening. We will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the house Stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you