Cougars coach talks Twitter pros, cons
By Gary Lloyd
Clay-Chalkville head football coach Jerry Hood acknowledges Twitter is a fun social media tool, but he wants his players to understand the pitfalls that come along with it.
“We try to educate them about it,” said Hood, who is entering his fifth season at Clay-Chalkville.
Last month, Hoover five-star cornerback prospect Marlon Humphrey tweeted about Ole Miss being “racist” and about a “KKK march.” Those tweets — seemingly posted in a joking manner — were deleted, and Humphrey used Twitter later on to apologize for the comments.
“This tweet is to the Ole Miss Coaching Staff and the Ole Miss Family,” Humphrey tweeted June 24. “I have not been on your campus as a recruit. I have not felt any Racism from anyone on your campus I am sorry for misleading anyone in thinking that there is any racism coming from the Ole Miss family.”
Ole Miss is the Southeastern Conference school where federal marshals and national guardsmen had to be called in when the school admitted its first black student, James Meredith, in 1962.
Hood has heard about the Humphrey story. He also has seen Twitter as a problem at times with his own players.
“It will cost them. It will cost them a scholarship,” Hood said. “I’ve seen examples of that, where a kid puts some stuff on Twitter, and the coach that was recruiting him copied it and sent it to me on a text message and said, ‘You can tell him we’re done with him.’ It was just that cut and dry. It is very serious.”
Hood said he doesn’t mind his players interacting on Twitter, trusting that they will have self-discipline when using it.
“Everything that you do makes an impression,” he said, “so let’s make it a positive impression.”
College coaches use Twitter to determine what type of character potential recruits have, Hood said. He said players have to realize they aren’t anonymous when tweeting.
“Somebody can always pull that up and find out who you are,” he said. “It could be costly.”
Hood said he and assistant coaches will scroll through Twitter feeds every now and then to see what is being posted, but they don’t strictly police it. He will use questionable tweets as examples when talking to the team about how what has been posted represents that player and Clay-Chalkville.
“They’re not just talking to one person,” he said. “They’re talking to the whole world with that thing.”
Hood said the positive to Twitter is that it can reveal character pretty quickly.
“At the end of the day, it’s a fun thing to do to stay in touch with your friends,” Hood said. “I think it’s just the nature of our world now with technology. We’re instantly connected to everything. To prevent kids from doing it, I think, is a negative. You’re not going to win that battle. They’re going to talk to each other, they’ve been talking to each other for years. Our job is to make sure it doesn’t affect us in a negative way.”
Contact Gary Lloyd at news@trussvilletribune.com and follow him on Twitter @GaryALloyd.