Dade City judge and University of Florida grad Pat Siracusa is such a big Gators football fan that he sometimes wears a replica Tim Tebow jersey under his black robe on Fridays in the fall.
His profile picture on his Facebook page is a photo he took with his phone from the stands at last January’s national championship game.
It’s a good memory.
But the Southeastern Conference might use a different word to describe that image: illegal.
The SEC, one of college sports’ biggest, richest, most prominent conferences, earlier this month sent to its 12 schools an eye-opening new media policy. It places increasingly stringent limits on reporters and how much audio, video and “real-time” blogging they can do at games, practices and news conferences.
But even more interesting is that the policy also includes rules for fans in the stands. No updating Twitter feeds. No taking photos with phones and posting them on Facebook or Flickr. No taking videos and putting them on YouTube.
A conference spokesman said this policy was meant to try to keep as many eyeballs as possible on ESPN and CBS — which are paying the SEC $3 billion for the broadcast rights to the conference’s games over the next 15 years — and also on the SEC Digital Network — the conference’s own entity that’s scheduled to debut on SECSports.com later this month.
I do what I like. They can go F themselves.
I get how they can ban it from the players (sort of), but the fans in the stands?! How can they possibly hope to enforce that?
Why the pic change? I mean, c’mon!
#21, Thomas,
Simple. Ban all cameras and picture taking. Almost every concert I’ve been to lately says right on the ticket, “No recording devices or cameras”
#23
Impractical. First, they cannot possibly hope to prevent people from take cell phones to the games. Second, enforcement will be difficult. You’d have to siphon off security from the real knuckleheads at games in order have the “cell phone nazis” watching 80,000 fans. Third, it will kill their affluent audience who are the only ones that afford games any more. They’ll sit at home with better beer, better food, a better picture and TiVO and stop going to games (I know I have).
I realize this rule is more about having another excuse to throw someone out of a game but I really don’t see that they’ll get any gain out of it but they will get quite a bit of backlash.
Damn she looks good, but wouldn’t all that silicone leave a bad taste in the ‘gator’s mouth?
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has fans? Wait, what?
I am constantly godsmacked at how stupid the voting public is.
Obama wants to bring universal health care but its failing because people don’t want the government ruining the service brought by Big Pharma and Big Insurance Co’s paying their exec’s 100′s of Millions in stock options. No==THATS putting the government between you and your doctor.
But–left to their own devices, the same capitalist system is quite happy to lock down their customers as if they were but landed peasants chained to the ground to work only for the Lords of the Manor.
WAKE UP AMERICA: CORPORATIONS ARE PARASITES.
I love the current picture, but there was another one? Where? I wanna see it! Pleeease.
As a Florida alumni, all I can say is the SEC has gone completely off of the reservation. Do they really think fans in the stands taking photos pose a threat to their television contracts?
Here is a new flash to the morons at the SEC, football fans preferred method of watching games is on HD, not Facebook, Twitter, or anything else.
And how are they going to enforce this, are they going to send University cops into the stadiums to enforce this? Are they trying to start a riot in the stands by taking people’s phones?
Speaking of the contracts, where is the money going Machen (president of U. of Forida)? To funding your trips to Iran and Indonesia? Yeah, that’s right. When the university is raising tuition and fees and laying off faculty, the president is flying to these destinations of liberty and freedom to recruit graduate students.
Keep college football fun or just make it pro and stop pretending it is amateur athletics.
What have we, as society become, when draconian bullshit like this isn’t laughed at in their face.
Hey, the ACC banned alcohol in its stadiums when I went to NC State. And the campus security and local cops were doing an excellent job of finding 10% of the alcohol smuggled in.
#29 GatorEngineer
You said: “Here is a new flash to the morons…”
I think you meant to say: “Here is a newS flash to the morAns…”
So they can’t prevent prison inmate from using celphones to commit crimes, or arrange death contracts. But… some sports franchise CAN limit or curtail the freedom of speech of thousands of law abiding citizens from talking about football games. Cause it might cost the biz some profits! Yeah, we’ve obviously got our priorities straight, in this country.
FOR GODS SAKE I NEED TO SEE THIS LEGENDARY ORIGINAL PICTURE!! I just see two hot chicks on a gator’s back. Okay, back on topic, I hope the fans snap untold millions of stills, take hundreds of hours of video, put it all on PTP, and Twitter until their thumbs fall off.
Another group of business people to blinded by greed to understand they are running a popularity contest and if they lose no money.
# 25 Thomas said, in part:
“Third, it will kill their affluent audience who are the only ones that afford games any more. They’ll sit at home with better beer, better food, a better picture and TiVO and stop going to games (I know I have).”
I think that’s the point. Eventually, they’ll ban people with working eyeballs. No one will be allowed to attend the game who can see or hear or talk. You’ll _have_ to watch the game on TV, to maximize the ratings. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they tried to make it illegal to record the game in any way, VCR, Tivo or other DVR, anything.