Screenshot of Twitter
Urban Meyer’s first tweet sent on Aug. 27.
Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer has officially joined the Twitterverse.
On Aug. 27 he sent out his first official tweet: “My good friend Bob Stoops talked me into this Twitter stuff – lets see how it goes. 3 more days till game time!”
That first tweet from Meyer was accompanied with a picture showing a countdown leading up to the OSU’s season opener against Buffalo. Bob Stoops, the head coach at Oklahoma, was the one who convinced him to join Twitter, according to Meyer. Stoops has been on Twitter since September 2012.
In less than an hour, Meyer had more than 10,000 followers, and as of late Thursday, he had more than 38,600. The first person he followed was his Heisman hopeful quarterback and active tweeter, junior Braxton Miller.
Meyer never really voiced any opinion about Twitter before actually creating one. According to documents obtained by The Lantern the university is spending $360,500 to monitor student athletes on social media.
Meyer’s presence on Twitter, as well as numerous players and coaches, makes it seem that the Buckeyes are a Twitter-friendly team. However, this is not the case for a few other college football programs.
Florida State, another perennial national powerhouse, banned players from using Twitter in July 2012 after several Seminole players tweeted objectionable material many people found offensive. FSU coach Jimbo Fisher made the decision to ban the social networking site from his team. He has since also banned Facebook and Instagram.
Possible negatives to the Twitter bans are a loss of potential recruits, upset players, disgruntled fans, etc. The positives are a more focused team and a lack of distractions, according to the coaches that have banned social media. Nebraska coach Bo Pelini has expressed his disgust with Twitter.
“To me, there’s nothing good that can ever come from Twitter … The only thing that is going to happen through Twitter is bad, in any regards.” Pelini said to the Lincoln Journal Star.
The majority of Meyer’s tweets are promoting the Buckeyes and OSU. His Twitter profile picture is of him and his family.
