Apr 24, 2013; New York, NY, USA; NFL commissioner Roger Goodell interviews at the NFL Play 60 Youth Football Festival at Chelsea Waterside Park. Mandatory Credit: Debby Wong-USA TODAY Sports

Today I am taking a break from all things Pittsburgh Steelers and instead I’d like to offer up ten ideas to make the NFL somewhat fun again. Some of the ideas range from the practical to wishful, but allow me to dream.

1. Goodbye Goodell. I am not a Goodell fan, I think he’s bad for the NFL no matter how noble his intentions. Since taking over for Paul Tagliabue, Goodell’s NFL can be best compared to the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain during the height of the Cold War. While he’s not the worst commissioner in sports (Bud Selig is absolute garbage and David Stern lets the inmates run the asylum), Goodell talks one game and tries to play another. I’m a little (make that very) tired of his puffed out chest and I’m-the-sheriff attitude. How can you say you are all for player safety yet want to add two games to the regular season?
Solution? Give he and every commissioner in sports an eight year term and that’s it. If the President of the United States can only serve two terms, why should commissioners of major sports be different? Let Sheriff Goodell have his eight years and let him ride off into the sunset, tin badge, ten gallon hat and all.

2. Rotate the NFL draft site. Why does New York always get the fun? Do you really think the players care if they are walking on the stage at Radio City music Hall or town hall? Do what the NHL does and rotate the draft site every year so each of the 32 team cities get to host a draft. Pick a stadium, an arena or whatever. It’d be great fun for the fans. A simple venue works just as well, the draft doesn’t always need to be a cirque de soleil presentation. Besides, I’m sick of hearing the J-e-t-s Jets Jets Jets chant every year whenever gang green comes up to pick.

3.Move the draft to March. News that the 2014 draft will be moved to mid-May due to scheduling conflicts with the Easter Bunny came out yesterday and it’s a very bad idea. Anyone who thinks a May draft won’t be a permanent thing after 2014 obviously still believes there is an Easter Bunny. Back in the old days, the draft was in February. A May draft would mean more analyzing and over analyzing (and more Mike Mayock) and would screw up the NFL calender. Move the draft (Easter Bunny be damned) to March and keep it there. By then the college all star games and combine would be over and teams would have a couple of weeks to make their choices. I know this conflicts with Pro days, but who cares? Make the pro days a week after the combine. There, problem solved.

4.Make preseason games free.O.K., I don’t know how exactly the logistics would work, but one solution is include them for free for season ticket holders in their packages and offer the remaining seats at the games for the rest. And since they are free, they can not be sold for any monetary value on stubhub or ticketmaster. Face it, half the guys playing the pre season games won’t make the team, why force people to pay to watch in person?

5.Keep the pre season schedule as is. Four games, that’s all. First game should be all rookies, rookie free agents, free agents and backups. No starter should take the field in the first game. I don’t need to see Ben Roethlisberger take four meaningless snaps and call it a day. Second pre season game the starters should play a quarter. The third and fourth games they play a half.Yes, the risk of injury is there, but you risk getting injured walking across the street. Every sport needs a preseason to get into shape, run the offense and defense and work on timing, etc. I know most teams keep it vanilla in the pre season but for guys trying to make the team, pre season games may be the only shot they ever get.

6.No more opening day kickoff concerts. The Broncos play the Ravens on Sept. 5th. That’s all we need. We don’t need some stupid half hour or hour long concert prior to it. What does Nickelback or Justin Beiber have to do with football? Just play the damn game.

7. Never, ever let Norv Turner or Wade Phillips be head coaches again. This one really applies to Turner, who for some reason keeps getting head coaching opportunities and does nothing with them. Some guys can do it, others can’t. Turner can’t. Phillips knows defenses, let him do his thing there. This one should be mandatory. Just hearing the words ‘Head Coach Norv Turner” makes me cringe.

8. Place some type of sensor in the football and end zone pylons. This one really is for running plays when there is an air of uncertainty whether or not the ball crossed the goal line. Place a sensor inside each end of the football so if it crosses the pylon, the pylon lights up indicating a score. If technology can allow us to program our TVs with our cell phones, they should be able to handle this.

9. Division rivals should open and close the season. Steelers-Ravens, Packers-Bears, Cowboys-Redskins, Giants-Eagles should all be on the opening and closing day slates. Sometimes these games are scheduled mere weeks apart in the middle of the season. Give some meaning to the last game of the season with an old fashioned rivalry that may even have playoff implications.

10. Let Tom Brady wear a dress already. Injuries are no laughing matter. I’ve watched several HBO sports spots on retired players dealing with the after affects of the game. Ray Easterling, Andre Waters and Junior Seau are just some of the tragic cases of what years of blows to the head can do after their careers end. And yes we’ve all seen how guys like Earl Campbell and Joe Namath and Conrad Dobler can barely walk due to destroyed knees. That said, ever since his knee injury Tom Brady has turned, well, soft. Even if a defender brushes his sleeve,the future hall of famer is whipping his head around towards the ref looking for a penalty. C’mon Tom, I know you’re married to a supermodel, that doesn’t mean you have to act like one. Jack Lambert made the famous quote about putting dresses on quaterbacks, maybe Tom Terrific should be first in line.

10a. O.K. I cheated, but here’s one more. Can we stop referring to Bill Belichick as a genius? Correct me but wasn’t he a defensive guru with the Giants? Name me the last time a Patriots defense terrorized opponents. He’s a good coach, bad dresser and not a genius. Einstein was a genius, Steve Jobs was a genius. Let’s keep it real.

10b. Sorry, I know I said 10. Here is the last one, I promise. Please, someone do something about the NFL network. How many sound fx and top ten marathons can we endure? Why is NFL a.m. on at 1pm? I don’t care about ‘hard knocks’ You have an entire treasure trove of NFL films at your disposal. How about going back in time to show us NFL games of the week from the 70′s and 80′s? Or this week in pro football from the same time period? How about team yearbooks? How about actual vintage games? A game from 2011 is not a classic. We keep getting the same tired “classic games” that are only 5 years old. My God has a network with so much ever done so little? And this top 100 players thing is the pits. And then we get the top 100 reaction show? Garbage. Simply garbage.
What are your ideas fans?

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Esera Tuaolo came out two years after retiring. Courtesy of ohlalaparis.com

I guess the realistic headline should not read ‘When Will NFL Follow’ but instead read as ‘Will NFL Ever Follow.’  On Thursday, the NHL announced that the organization as a whole (including the NHLPA) is in support for gay rights and is beginning a joint coalition against homophobia with You Can Play Project.  YCPP is an organization that promotes equality in sports including getting professional sports to be in support of gay rights.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman had this to say about the joint effort:

Our motto is Hockey Is for Everyone, and our partnership with You Can Play certifies that position in a clear and unequivocal way.  We are delighted to reaffirm through this joint venture with the NHL Players’ Association that the official policy of the NHL is one of inclusion on the ice, in our locker rooms and in the stands.

This is a huge step for the NHL as well as a huge step for the LGBT community at large with regards to finding more solid footing in the sports arena.  Long has homosexuality and sports been seen as complete opposites of the spectrum due to the stereotypical rhetoric that has been in place for decades.  Through the lens of the male athlete, toughness, strength, and will could never exist in someone who was a homosexual.  Through the lens of the female athlete, having these qualities meant that you must be a lesbian.  This culture created within sports left no room for grey, and it forced many professional, semi-professional, and school aged homosexual athletes to hide behind the veil of straightness.  Rarely do athletes reveal their sexual orientation until after they retire – when there are no direct consequences for being open.  In fact, no gay NFL athlete has ever come out while being on an active roster.

So will the NFL ever step up and do something similar to the NHL?  And that is the real question – ‘will’?  In the natural evolution of society and culture, more and more people, groups, and organizations will accept homosexuality.  But, will the NFL ever form its own alliance with equal rights groups to help shift its own absurdly masculine saturated culture?  It’s obvious that homosexual athletes participated in the NFL based on the few that have come out since retiring from the game.  Who’s to say that there aren’t any currently on a roster?  There is speculation out there right now that a current gay player (and even up to four) just might come out while playing for an NFL club.  Is there anyone brave enough to do so when the NFL could just as easily turn its back on an idea that stereotypically is the antithesis of what the NFL stands for?  Let’s face it, the NFL is the most homophobic arena on the planet.

Current players, owners, and retirees are working diligently to form their own group to act as a support group if and when the day comes that the world knows of an openly gay American football player.  Chis Kluwe has been the loudest advocate of late, and other players are joining the ranks.  It was announced on Wednesday that former Patriots wide receiver Donte Stallworth joined Athlete Ally, another advocacy group fighting homophobia in sports.  He believes that the culture shift is beginning and that it is important to help these current gay NFL athletes feel comfortable in coming out.  And that feeling of being comfortable is important.  There is still a social stigma out there that if a gay football player comes out it will ruin his relationship with the team.  The locker room will no longer become a comfortable place, a brotherhood will be broken, or any other lame excuse as to why the silence should continue.  I believe that the trend within the NFL of players expressing their support of their fellow homosexual athletes will continue.

If Roger Goodell wants to help change his own public perception, he can do so by leading the league the way Gary Bettman did for the NHL.  If player safety is such an important issue within the NFL and championed so highly by the Commish, shouldn’t this be part of that conversation?  Aren’t players who feel threatened, either physically or the potential of losing their job, due to their sexual orientation at a safety risk?

Or, will the NFL feel like they are destroying their own image and brand of being the penultimate gladiatorial mucho macho sport by showing a bit of human compassion towards its fellow man?  Will the NFL ever openly support gay rights?

Rogeez. Mandatory Credit: Chuck Cook-USA TODAY Sports

Of course it’s Roger Goodell.  If there is anything or anyone threatening the game from the point of view of the diehard NFL fan its good ole Rogeez.  For those of us who follow this game 365 days a year the Commissioner should have relatively the easiest job on Earth.  Just sit back and count the money and leave our game alone.  Not too much to ask if you ask me.  Unfortunately, Rogeez is ruining for us because of one major problem; he doesn’t give a crap about the loyal fans of the NFL.  He’s got our money, he’s got our loyalty, and he’s got our attention, and he’s smart enough to know that there’s not a whole lot he could do to seriously threaten any of those in his attempts to put more money in his and the owners’ pockets.

Roger Goodell’s first public “FU” to the loyal NFL fans was Spygate.  To have a cheating scandal to that degree involve one of the highest profile teams and coaches in the league could have destroyed the league.  The way Goodell chose to handle it, however, he just destroyed the evidence instead.  The scandal that, in 2007 alleged the New England Patriots, at that time winner of three out of the previous eight Super Bowls, had been video-taping opponents defensive signals during either games or pregame walk-thru’s.  Belichick actually admitted to a certain degree of the video-tapping, citing he thought he was within the rules as long as the footage wasn’t being used during the same game.  This does explain why the Patriots, during their success, were just so damned good against teams in the playoffs in which they had already played during the regular season.  2004 AFC Championship anyone?  Still makes me bitter just to think of it.  But rather than rehashing every infuriating detail of Belichick’s clear “If you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t trying” coaching philosophy the takeaway is that rather than hold the coach and the team more accountable than a fine and a loss of a draft pick, the commissioner destroyed every single shred of evidence involved in the investigation, never to be reviewed by anyone else.  That move will always follow Goodell for the remainder of his tenure as NFL Commissioner.  Just unheard of to uncover a cheating scandal of that magnitude and destroy all evidence involved.

The next time Goodell was involved in a team-scandal was last year with the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal.  In spite of being partly responsible for the brilliant PR move to highlight the Saints’ success in the wake of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, to the point where for a few years it almost felt like rooting against the Saints was akin to rooting for hurricanes, Rogeez waged an all-out war on the coaching staff and some players when a bounty/pay-for-performance program was discovered to be ran on the team for several seasons.  The team was initially warned to stop the program immediately without any retribution but the warning was ignored and the story of the bounty program blew up across the league last summer.  In response, Goodell immediately suspended then DC Gregg Williams indefinitely (which later turned out to be for just a year), and HC Sean Payton for the entire 2012-13 season.  Then Rogeez set his sights on 4 Saints players.  Without the proverbial “smoking gun” linking any specific player to a bounty to cause injury to another player, Goodell proceeded to suspend Jonathan Vilma, Will Smith, Anthony Hargrove, and Scott Fujita for lengths varying from the entire season for Vilma to three games for Fujita.  Each player appealed the suspensions, which in the power-hungry world of Goodell means he just says no again, and lawsuits were filed all over the place.  Most notably Vilma and Rogeez began a season-long pissing contest that even involved a defamation lawsuit filed by Vilma.  Eventually, the matter was turned over to former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who overturned and vacated all player suspensions.  The damage had already been done; the Saints finished the season 7-9 and missed the playoffs.  Screw the fans; Rogeez was on a mission to discipline.

Speaking of discipline, the biggest bone of contention that I have with Rogeez is his policy on discipline.  From his reaction to off the field incidents to the suspensions for what is now called “dangerous hits” Goodell has been extremely inconsistent with his interpretations of the personal conduct policy and the illegal hits he’s now trying to outlaw.  Remember last offseason when player after player were being arrested for DUI’s, drug possessions, and various incidents?  Guess how many of them were suspended under the league’s personal conduct policy?  You guessed it, zero.  Goodell was brought in partly to be the Big Bad Wolf and be tough on players and their behavior since that was never Tagliabue’s strong-point.  Ironically, seeing has how many times we’ve seen shots of Goodell hugging it out with every Steelers favorite preaching linebacker Ray Lewis, Goodell was brought in to control the league’s discipline partly in response to the high-profile murder investigation Lewis was involved in.  But the biggest problem I have with Goodell and his personal conduct policy is it seems he relies on fame and popularity of the player to determine how harshly, if at all, he will react to their conduct.  Just 2012 NFL player arrests ranged from DUI to domestic violence and Rogeez never suspended a single player.  For the on-field hits, so far James Harrison has been the only player suspended for being what he has been dubbed as a “repeat offender” of the violent hits club, although most of the hits he has been fined for in the past were questionable at best as to whether or not they were by the rule, illegal.

My final gripe with Rogeez and why I fear he’s ruining my favorite of all sports is his constant need to expand the season and/or bring it overseas more.  Just leave it alone, dude. We all want more football because we enjoy it so much but we know that if you extend the regular season to 18 games it’s going to water-down the product and it’s going to suck.  I don’t want to watch 4 weeks of teams resting players after they’ve already clinched their spot any more than I want to actually sit down and watch all 4 weeks of preseason games but I can recognize the purpose for the preseason games.    I don’t want the playoffs expanded so that we have an 8-8 or 7-9 team making the playoffs each friggin year.  And I don’t want more games in London.  The biggest proof that Roger Goodell is an evil genius is that he scheduled the Steelers to play in London next season.  None of us actually wants the possibility of a team in London or a Super Bowl in London, or any variation of that but Steeler Nation travels so damned well we just couldn’t resist buying up all those tickets and immediately sold out next year’s Steelers game against the Vikings in London validating Rogeez’s feelings that an NFL team can succeed in Europe.  It’s a very scary thought to deal with the reality that someday in the future, the Super Bowl, which is already too far out of reach for the diehard fan that can’t afford the average $2K a seat, could also involve a flight to London on top of the cost of the game.

Basically, I would like to plead to Rogeez to leave my NFL alone.  Just sit back and count the money.  Now I’m not that old, so this isn’t a “old people can’t change with the times” kind of situation.  I’m all for changes that will enhance the game and will enhance the fan experience of the game.  I just don’t think Rogeez gives a crap about my experience of the game so the changes he wants to make aren’t with my preferences in mind.  When the NFL’s new television contracts go into effect the NFL will go from printing their own money to crapping out golden footballs and my fear is that the greed will then take over the owners and Commissioner’s intentions and slowly phase out the diehard fan in attempts to gain more money from trying to get new fans.  Might sound like an elaborate evil plot, but I wouldn’t put it passed them.

What are your thoughts, Steeler Nation?  Do you think Goodell is hurting or improving the NFL?

Follow me on Twitter @Kimmy_KimKimM and follow all of NPC’s posts @NicePickCowherC and Like us on Facebook

You could almost play the “Which of these things do not belong?” game with this picture. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports

I know what you’re thinking.  It’s nothing new to see a sports blogger bash ESPN but there are definitely a few things I need to get off of my chest and quite possibly there are some things you haven’t heard yet.  As I’ve stated in the previous posts of this series, these are things which I believe are slowly but surely ruining the NFL experience for those of us diehard fans.  The ones that can’t get enough NFL coverage, analysis, and talk all year long.  You’d think that the World Wide Leader would be the ultimate place for a fan to quench their thirst on a regular basis however as the years has gone by the coverage and integrity of the network has definitely been on the decline.  Here are just a few examples to prove my point.

ESPN began the NFL coverage that most resembles what we know today back in the late 1980’s with shows like NFL Gameday and NFL Primetime.  It was then when we were all introduced to Chris Berman as the voice of sports coverage.  It’s too easy to bag on Berman for being annoying, repetitive, and just tired.  My biggest gripe with ESPN is the fact that although they’ve covered the NFL for the majority of my lifetime, yet they proceed as if I haven’t learned a thing all these years.  ESPN would prefer it if all of us NFL fans just stayed dumb, so we’d continue to find their coverage entertaining.

Each year the NFL coverage on ESPN grows, the more retired or former players join the staff as “analysts”.  These guys probably are single handedly ruining it for me.  I should say the majority of them are former players and not necessarily “retired” players.  I’m sure they officially filed retirement paperwork with the league at some point but most of them were informed of their retirement in the form of not receiving call backs from any of the 32 teams once they were released from whatever team they played for last.  They’re working there because they needed the job and they passed the screen test.  They may or may not have the educational background necesary, but they look good on camera and don’t piss off the current talent.

Take Trent Dilfer for example.  Dilfer is one of the most highly regarded “analysts” on ESPN and is featured on Monday Night Countdown as well as most of the other NFL coverage-related shows the network offers when he’s called upon to give his expert opinions.  Trent Dilfer did not retire from the NFL; Trent Dilfer was not picked up by another team after his last season with the 49ers in 2007.  Dilfer started 6 games that season and had 7 TD’s with 12 INT’s.  In fact in Dilfer’s 13 year career in the NFL he only ever averaged more touchdowns than interceptions 4 times.  Dilfer said he retired after tearing his Achilles’ Tendon playing basketball with his wife, but come on.  Dilfer is most notably known for being quite possibly the worst quarterback to ever have won the Super Bowl when he won with the Ravens in his one and only season with them in 2000.  If not for ESPN falling in love with the way he “breaks down the game” Dilfer would be the answer to a trivia question and nothing more.  In just this past season Dilfer explained that NFL fans were having their intelligence insulted when it came to the disaster that was the replacement refs and later on we were all “declining in intelligence” when it came to the incident in Kansas City where fans reportedly cheered an injury of quarterback Matt Cassel.  Dilfer’s main job at ESPN seems to be to review game tape in whatever medieval vault they’re always talking about and give obvious comments about what already transpired in games in order to make vague and nonspecific predictions towards games that haven’t happened yet.  And we’re supposed to eat it up without any hesitation.  The key is, if you haven’t been paying attention to the NFL in the past 25 years and have picked up a few things yourself, you’d be much more amazed with the crap that comes out of his mouth than the average diehard fan.

Speaking of declining intelligence, there can’t be a post written in regards to the dilapidated draw to ESPN without mentioning the train wreck that has been ESPN’s Tim Tebow coverage.  If there can be anything worse than the way the Jets utilized Tebow in their Wild Cat packages, it was ESPN’s coverage of the polarizing backup quarterback.  Naturally, ESPN fell in love with Tebow when he was at UF.  He had an amazing career there, and was quite entertaining to watch if you love college football.  Unnaturally, ESPN decided to follow Tebow’s journey to the NFL draft, in spite of the fact that most of their own experts declared him unfit to play quarterback at the professional level before his collegiate career had even ended.  We all know the story and the infamy that was his first season in Denver.  We don’t need to relive that.  Tebow was sent to New York and ESPN drooled all over themselves trying to cover every second of his time there as not even the official backup quarterback and using the fact that New York is such a high profile media market to excuse their ridiculous coverage.  I often heard radio show hosts complain about the fact that they had to talk about Tebow as much as they did but yet say that because he was in New York he drew so much attention so they had to.  Really?  Who were the ones calling up ESPN to ask them to cover Tebow to a nauseating level?  I find it hard to believe that ESPN’s coverage of Tebow was actually in response to the demand for Tebow coverage from fans.  I find it especially hard to believe considering the fact that due to former ESPN employee’s giving interviews leaking the truth that production meetings often had instructions from the higher ups to work Tim Tebow into any and all conversations on the various programs.

There’s no bashing on the Tim Tebow coverage without mentioning Skip Bayless, quite possibly the most prime example that ESPN is more out to obtain the Maury Povich audience during the day than actual, intelligent sports fans.  As host of the daytime show First Take, Bayless often debates Stephen A. Smith during the football season on how Tebow is the greatest player on the planet and anyone who doesn’t think so is just a hater.  First off, I would not know of the existence of this particular show if it was not for the fact that our break room television at work is constantly on ESPN and my frequent checks of Twitter throughout any given day.  When I first heard these two idiots debate some moronic topic with the idea to get their names trending on Twitter as opposed to sparking any form of entertaining sports commentary I remembered that Smith was primarily a basketball journalist.  After looking up Bayless I saw that he too had the majority of his background in basketball.  To give these two any credit or validation on commentating or debating football topics is asinine but, like I said, they’re after the Povich crowd and not us critical thinkers.  If you ever find yourself home sick on a weekday and have already seen the episode of the woman searching for her baby’s daddy, do not turn the channel to ESPN thinking you’ll get anymore entertained or enlightened from First Take.

The saving grace for those of us who love the NFL and keep getting disappointed by ESPN is the fact that the other networks are growing at rapid paces as far as expanding their NFL coverage.  NBC stole the Sunday Night Football from ESPN (although listening to Collingsworth kills my soul a little bit more each season) and now have the bigger marquis game each week over the Monday Night Football that ESPN holds.  CBS is growing with their sports radio stations as well as Fox Sports.  I happen to listen to sports talk radio all day long during my workday and I can give you the rundown of each of the national shows no matter what the day or the topic.  On Mike & Mike Greeny will mention how nerdy and/or metro sexual he is and Golic will mention being fat and a former player.  Colin Cowherd will call Belichick a genius and SVP & Russillo will explain time and time again why they are just so much effing cooler than you.  There, save yourself the trouble and find some local sports talk radio to listen to instead.  Thankfully, I feel like ESPN might not actually get the chance to completely ruin the NFL for us diehards, as the alternative options are increasing by the minute.

Follow me on Twitter @Kimmy_KimKimM and follow all of NPC’s posts @NicePickCowherC and Like us on Facebook

Cardinals WR Larry Fitzgerald live tweets during the 2012 Pro Bowl. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee/Image of Sport-USA TODAY Sports

I’m back on track this week with my list of things that are tarnishing our beloved game of football for those of us diehard fans who just can’t get enough of all things NFL.  This week brings me to the topic of social media.  How athletes use it, how fans interact with athletes and how the athletes interact back with fans, and how it affects the overall harmonious relationship between the two.  For me personally, I love social media.  I’ve been able to connect with Steeler fans all over the place, it’s allowed more people to read my silly ramblings about football, and it’s actually become quite a helpful news source for the most part.  Still, there are things I don’t like about social media, especially when it comes to the football season.

How an athlete uses their social media accounts, if they choose to have them, is more important than even they think sometimes.  Whether or not they will tweet or post status updates themselves or has a handler do it for them makes a huge difference in the whole fan interaction experience.  Also, how often they use their accounts plays a big role in their impact.  Are they updating their accounts with every detail of their lives or are they only logging in sporadically?  Then comes the topics they choose to discuss on their social media pages.  What I don’t think athletes always understand is that when they take to social media to express their opinion on any number of topics, they’re essentially giving a press conference.  Their tweets or status updates can be broadcasted to not just the thousands or millions of followers they may have, but millions more if it’s displayed on other athletes’ pages or gets displayed by ESPN or the NFL Network.  That’s a whole lot of people that can possibly take issue, or be offended by any and all interpretations of what was written.  An athlete’s tweet has on many occasions become the sole topic of discussion for sports television and radio talk shows. Not only athletes themselves, but their wives, siblings, and parents’ tweets or status updates can be used for fuel in a media firestorm if needed.  Just last week a “Twitter beef” between Seattle’s CB Richard Sherman and Jets CB Darrell Revis was all the talk on the networks.  I know feel a little dumber for having used the term “twitter beef”.

How an athlete interacts with their fans and followers can sometimes change your opinion of them.  If they argue back and forth with fans who heckle them and then spend the next few hours retweeting people who compliment them, in my opinion, looks a little tacky.  I absolutely have no idea what an athlete has to deal with on a daily basis when it comes to heckling, to be honest.  There are plenty of idiots and nut jobs that will tweet an athlete or celebrity all day and all night hateful insults, just in an attempt to get some attention for it.  I’ve seen racist remarks, ignorant and disgusting comments, personal attacks, and even death threats tweeted at athletes by various keyboard warriors.  I have no idea how it feels to deal with that and I give some athletes a ton of credit for being able to ignore it and move on.  The whole idea of being able to connect with your favorite athlete so directly and instantaneously should be a great thing, but just like everything good the idiots ruin it for the rest of us.

Speaking of ruining it for the rest of us, the whole “Catfishing” hoax that continues to surround Manti Te’o affects the social media interaction for all of us.  Not only are NFL GM’s and head coaches going to look more closely at social media, but athletes (the smart ones anyway) are going to be way more cautious to interact with fans online.  Now you can justifiably question the identity of almost anyone you come into contact with online.  How likely is say a Troy Polamalu going to be to respond to someone reaching out to him to contribute to their charity if he can’t be certain the person and/or charity they’re representing is legit?  It’s a doubled edged sword for the athletes though.  They want the fame, if they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t be playing in the NFL and they sure as hell wouldn’t have a social media account in which they collect thousands of followers.  They want those numbers to go up just like you and I like to log into Twitter and see that you’ve gained a few new followers.  It’s an ego boost, people want to hear what you have to say, they want to interact with you, and they want to connect with you.  But you have to take the bad with the good.  For every few followers that genuinely enjoy what you have to say and want to learn more about you, there are a few nut jobs that will threaten to set your pets on fire or try to find out where you live so they can dig through your garbage.

Take Ben Roethlisberger, for instance.  Ben doesn’t have his own Twitter or Facebook page.  What he has is a fan club page that is administered by a manager who tweets and gives status updates for him.  Sure Ben is missing out on the close fan-to-athlete contact he could have through social media by handling it this way but he’s also avoiding the constant heckling and being called a rapist by trollers all over social media that can clog the mentions and responses his actual fans might be trying to contact with him.  How many times a day do you think Ray Lewis gets called a murderer on Twitter?  How many times do you think someone mentions dogs to Michael Vick or marijuana to Ricky Williams?  Take yourself out of Twitter and you don’t have to deal with that, but take yourself out and you’re missing out on actual connections that can be made with genuine fans.

The other increasingly irritating facet of social media is fan to fan interaction.  During and especially following any given Steelers game there is what I like to refer to as “fan police” out and about Twitter and Facebook criticizing everyone who criticizes the Steelers for one reason or another.  People who constantly take the time to pledge their allegiance to the Black & Gold and act as if those who don’t pledge in the exact same way are somehow less of a fan.  First off, complaining about the Steelers is as inherited in Steeler Nation as loving the team itself.  We all learned how to scream “Aw come on!” at the television just the same as we learned to cheer a sack or a touchdown from our parents and grandparents.  Criticizing the team doesn’t make you less of a fan, and you shouldn’t have to justify yourself for it.  Those people who take the time to call out perfect strangers on social media and question their fandom based on what they might remark about a certain play, player, or game should just go ahead and apologize to their friends for being the biggest loser they know. There are also people who take offense to anything and everything a Steelers player might tweet with regards to another team, take it any which way to describe a betrayal of loyalty if a player doesn’t express hatred towards are rivals as much as we do.  People actually went after Steelers players on Twitter during the week of the Super Bowl if they expressed any kind of pick over who would win the game.  Either they were a traitor for wishing the 49ers would win and thereby tie the Steelers for the most Lombardi trophies or they were a traitor for picking the Ravens to win just because we’re all supposed to hate the Ravens with every fiber of our being.  The thing about Steeler fans in particular is that we don’t want to emulate or favorite athletes, we want them to be just like us instead.

Social media is only going to grow and expand in ways we haven’t even thought of yet so there’s no shutting it down or ignoring it.  How the NFL deals with it, on the other hand, is a different story.  Especially given how the Manti Te’o situation played out showing just how gullible or manipulated athletes can be on social media, NFL front offices are going to pay closer attention to their players’ social media accounts.  No one wants the kind of ridiculous embarrassment that Te’o has gone through.  There’s no telling if that particular incident will cause athletes to pull further away from fans either.  Most college teams already restrict their players’ access to Twitter during the season given how many times college age kids will tweet something completely ridiculous and then a 60 year old head coach has to have a press conference explaining it.  Pro athletes are another story.  It’s said that the NY Jets have a list of “do’s and don’ts” in their locker room regarding the players tweeting because, you know tweeting is their major problem.    Hopefully social media won’t actually ruin the NFL and can continue to allow genuine fans and athletes to connect with each other without all those idiots getting in the way.

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