The San Francisco 49ers made news this week when the Wall Street Journal published an article outlining the franchise’s newly implemented steps towards connecting with its young talent base. Namely, the digitization of calendars, play books, and other items previously limited to hard copies, change of routine in terms of meetings and breaks, and postings of team news and information on social media all are elements first year head coach Jim Tomsula is trying.
While the efficacy of Tomsula’s methods is still to be determined, the shockwave through the NFL, which is notoriously slow to change and embrace new practices, has been felt. Although teams across the league are not clamoring for tutorials on how to better use apps to reach their players, the 49ers’ methods have made news and elicited mixed reactions. Many admit that changing long-held habits to suit player needs seems to make sense, but resistance is, unsurprisingly, still dominant.
More pertinent in this space, however, is the potential effects these changes could have on college athletics, which oftentimes follow the trends of professional teams. Digitization and the use of social media seem especially important for college athletic departments to consider, as their constituents fall firmly in Generation Z, who have been raised with screens and social media even more exclusively than members of any professional football team.
To get an expert’s take on the trends being displayed by the 49ers and how they might be relevant on a college campus, I turned to Dr. Adam Gismondi, a Boston College social media researcher who focuses on college student use. According to Gismondi, while most media attention following the WSJ story seemed to focus on the revised meeting schedules, what struck him more was the digitization of materials. “Ultimately, building in smartphone breaks is just an experimental practice, whereas the proactive movement towards digitally-focused team management is here to stay,” Gismondi states.
Fortunately, the athletes are ready for this transition, as it is already a part of their daily lives. “The changes implemented by the 49ers reflect an acknowledgment that players come to camp with an ability to switch quickly between online and offline worlds. From many players’ perspectives, these worlds are so well integrated that they feel seamlessly intertwined.” If this is the case for professional athletes, it is even truer for younger students who have never known life without the presence of such technology.
Gismondi continues, discussing how this might trickle down to the college ranks where such trends might find even greater efficacy: “Universities are facing this same reality, as many institutions now consider digital environments to be extensions of campus…Athletic departments are in the same position as many other campus departments when it comes to social media, in that most students come to campus with a diversity of technological competencies.”
Ultimately, like any other college department, college athletics will have to acknowledge that diversity of technological competencies if it wants to reach participants at the highest level. Campuses are already rapidly shifting to interconnected, digitized communities that take advantage of students’ abilities to simultaneously exist in both online and offline worlds. The question now becomes not “if” but “how” college athletic departments will make (and afford) the progressions the 49ers are already considering.
Feature image via 49ers.com
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