Gators QB Jeff Driskel Needs to Watch his Tweets

A lot of college teams have banned their players from Twitter and with good reason. Too many kids tend to tweet without thinking (or while drinking) and fail to realize that there are thousands of people watching their every tweet. Any and every misstep is caught, retweeted, and used as fodder for late night jokes and bloggers everywhere.

So it is easy to see why coaches would not want to have their players on twitter--to protect them from themselves! However, while there are many guys that could use that protection (right Johnny Manziel?) there is good reason to allow and even encourage guys to tweet.

It's an easy way to keep tabs on guys.

Think about it. College athletes are essentially still kids. Kids are going to act like kids even though they are representing multi-million college football programs. It doesn't matter that their actions do not put the program in a favorable light. They don't think that far ahead.

This works. I used to coach a high school rugby team. One week I had a player give this big sob story about some kind of family tragedy that was going to cause him to miss a game on Saturday. As it turns out the only tragedy was the long lines at the amusement park he went to with his girlfriend.

Twitter can also e be a great way to feed players little reminders to stay focused and working towards getting better for the following season--like when Florida Gators quarterback sent the following tweet Saturday afternoon:

Bored
— Jeff Driskel (@jeffdriskel) March 30, 2013

Seemed like the perfect time for Florida's offensive coordinator to send his QB a message:

@jeffdriskel go study film
— Brent Pease (@CoachPease) March 30, 2013

Message received Jeff?