The Role New Media Will Play In This Season Of College Football

For more than 25 years, OSU coaching legend Woody Hayes threw punches at reporters, conducted interviews naked after losses, and pushed cameramen.

Some of his behavior cost him suspensions. But he only got himself booted from his job after physically attacking Clemson linebacker Charlie Bauman on a live ABC telecast, mid-game.

It’s hard to imagine any college coach or player getting away with even a fraction of the legendary behavior Hayes got away with in his day.

It’s not that in those days the media wasn’t there to cover bad superstar athlete and coach behavior.

They were.

But today, even a hint of bad behavior captures days of 24-hour media and blogger attention.

In Woody’s day, we found out about some of the bad behavior of our favorite college stars. Now, with information moving so fast, we not only find out about the bad behavior, we are also kept up-to-date about the possibility of bad behavior.

Compare Woody’s legendary temper with any college football coach working today and you’ll see how easily Hayes got off the hook.

Last year in the Big 12 Conference, for example, Nebraska Cornhuskers’ new coach, Bo Pelini, felt it was necessary to issue apologies for his passionate leadership style after a selectively edited YouTube montage of the coach grabbing the facemask of one of his players and yelling from the sidelines started generating thousands of hits online.

Never mind that Pelini only briefly clutched defensive tackle Terrence Moore’s facemask after Moore was ejected from the game for trying to punch an Oklahoma player.

When it comes to in-depth analysis of plays, strategies, and skill, there is no denying the positive impact today’s 24-hour, YouTube, blog news cycle has had on showcasing NCAA Football players and fans alike.

But is it possible that so much in-depth coverage could even be changing the outcome of games?

Pelini breathed some life back into the defense of the once-formidable Cornhuskers last season—yet in a 2008 press conference, he expressed concern that footage of him yelling from the sidelines could hinder his recruitment chances in the coming season.

With the snap of a cell phone camera, an athlete can face months of suspension. And the fear of YouTube can force a coach to either change his methods or face recruitment troubles and the threat of losing his job.

It’s not that this modern relationship between college football and the media is bad per say—it’s just that for better or worse, New Media is as much a participant as it is an observer of the game.

Need more proof of the power of today’s media to change the course of a football season?

In the 1960s, Hayes supposedly ordered one of his players to remove his helmet so that he could hit him in the head—an event witnessed by then-journalism student and future executive Washington Post editor, Leonard Downie, Jr.

Downie has since said he regrets not having reported on the incident when it occurred.

If he had, Woody Hayes might have been out of job long before he was able to lead the Buckeyes to two of their five national titles between 1954 and 1970.

But if the same incident occurred today, it isn’t difficult to assume that anyone with a blog or Twitter account could have easily taken the decision to leak the incident out of one reporter’s hands.

Before this season of college football begins, it's good to keep in mind that a player or coach’s ability to generate good PR and keep his behavior off of Facebook and YouTube is now as instrumental as athletic ability in crafting a successful season.