@NYJets

Social Media is bringing sports fans closer to their favorite teams and players than ever before. A big social media outlet for this is Twitter. With many Jets having a personal twitter account, as well as an account for the team, I, along with all Jet fans, can see what players such as Mark Sanchez, Santonio Holmes, and Dustin Keller are doing. However, for this post I am going to stray away from talking solely about the Jets and talk more about social media in sports in general.
 
Sports and social media are starting to go hand in hand. From having a "Tweeting Station" at the latest NFL Pro Bowl, to top tweets showing up on SportsCenter; the two worlds are colliding. This, along with most things, has positive and negative benefits. It allows fans to look into the lives of their favorite athletes. It gives people a deeper connection to the people they watch compete on TV every day. Athletes sometimes have Q&A's with fans on Twitter, contests, giveaways, or just express their ideas and experiences.

A series of controversial tweets from Steelers RB, Rashard Mendenhall

However, with the good comes the bad. Some athletes are taking advantage of this site and have seen the negative consequences. NBA players have been fined for tweeting to soon after their games are over, athletes have broken trade stories about themselves, negatively talked about their teammates or coach, or say other ridiculous and inappropriate things. What these athletes have to realize is that the spotlight is anything on them; anything they tweet will be read by millions, shown on Sports Center, and talked about for days. They, along with the rest of the world, have to learn to think before speaking, or in this case before tweeting. Darnell Dockett, NFL player for the Arizona Cardinals, infamously tweeted what was going on when cops pulled him over and asked if they could search his car; he was sitting there tweeting about it for two hours. Or when Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall tweeted about how was disappointed in the Americans who celebrated the death of Osama Bin Laden and then questioned what actually happened during 9/11.
 
Sadly, these are just two of many stories about athletes who get themselves in trouble or get bad publicity from Twitter. They have to get smarter and realize how many people want to know what they say at all times and everything they say will be scrutinized and picked apart.