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.
Whats this post about? Can’t concentrate on anything but the picture.
I guess I agree? Or don’t? Who cares those chicks are hot.
On a side note its gonna be another SEC (Florida) vs. Big 12 (Oklahoma or Texas) showdown again this year. The Pac 10 (USC) and Big 10 (OSU and PSU) don’t have what it takes yet again. Don’t even bother bringing up the Big East, ACC, MWC. Give me a break, its gonna be a Florida vs Texas or Oklahoma in the BCS championship game.
Dvorak will probably come on here and sell his own team out once again (in favor of App State or whatever), but Cal has a very good shot of besting USC in the Pac 10. SEC is overrated, with LSU sucking it up, Georgia on the slide again, and Tenn nowhere to be found, Florida is the only team of note in the conference.
The business model for the record companies and newspapers is so successful that everyone’s doing it!
Oh my gosh! There’s an article below the photo? Geez, how long has that been there?
So you’re at an SEC game and a buddy calls and asks where you are, are you supposed to say that you’re in an “undisclosed location”?
As soon as the SEC tries to implement this policy onto the fans they are going to get a hurtin’ from the backlash.
Come on, Florida State isn’t even an SEC school.
Let’s see:
A) full ride, plus stipend, at North Dakota State
or
B) out-of-state tuition at Florida State
Hmmm…
Oh and another thing… That photo is completely wrong! FSU is ACC, not SEC. What, couldn’t find any pictures of hot Gator chicks?
It is not a game, it is a business. A business that by rule does not pay it’s lowest employees. It only has to give the appearance of “in kind” pay (tuition, room, board).
Yes, because images on Facebook and Twitter updates are really going to substitute watching the game on TV. I don’t understand why these organizations don’t want their fans celebrating and sharing the game. If I miss a game, why can’t I watch highlights after 72 hours? That is completely bogus.
Fuck the SEC.
Fuck the MLB.
Fuck the NFL.
And fuck any other organization that wants to limit the viewing and expression of the game by their fans.
Wow, I can’t believe I made that error. Ok – picture fixed to Conference appropriate Gator fans. I guess I was looking for an excuse to use the original photo.
That picture is NSFW. I can’t get anything done.
Hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of this non-sense we call football. Here’s an idea, get off you butt and actually do something to improve your own fitness on Saturday afternoon. Is it really that exciting to watch a bunch of tards throw a ball around? In all that this world has to offer, is that the best you can come up with?
well, i’d like to see how they are going to enforce this at a stadium filled with between 60-100 thousand fans and hundreds of press people potentially there.
if they caught a luxury box owner or two breaking the rule, would the school actually tell that person they’re banned from any stadium that houses a conference game, in this economy? what if celebs at say the “world’s largest cocktail party” break the rule at that game, would the conference and the schools be willing to lose their potential drawing power?
unless they make it clear they are willing to lose that potential money and more on a school by school basis, then this rule will just be hot air.
Greedy bastards! They want every last Goddamn cent they can get.
Just look at what the internet did.. It ruined everything!
Whoever made the rule does not understand technology or law. How to enforce it in practical situation? How to limit private communication by non-employees? Even for “employees” it is on a fence as to legality of these restrictions.
What was the original photo?
American Football is rugby for pussies.
Oh to be a large wart on the back of that gator so she would have someplace to sit.
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?
#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 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.