The title of Jerry Sandusky's book, "Touched," retweeted by sports social media community
It may not be O.J. Simpson hiding in the back seat of a slow-moving, white Ford Bronco on Los Angeles freeways, but it may as well be.
News that former Penn State college football coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged with 21 felony counts of abusing boys between 1994 and 2009, and that Penn State athletics director Tim Curley and Senior Vice President Gary Schultz allegedly perjured themselves before a grand jury is the most far-reaching, negative news story to emerge during the era of the 360-degree sports viewing experience.
How Penn State moves to heal its following through sports social media communication, the figures who emerge as the most effective communicators and which sports content providers provide the best outlets for audience interaction will be important milestones in the development of best practices in sports social media.
On Nov. 7, Penn State was still a breaking news story. And, because of sports social media and the seriousness of the allegations, the story is breaking fast, loud and profane. Here’s what is happening right now:
Deadspin aggressively advances story, mainstream media largely a no show
True to form, Deadspin had the edgiest story among the major media outlets when the sports feature news cycle began on Nov. 7.
Here’s a Deadspin-centric tweet:
Columnist Jason Whitlock continues to step up as a mainstream media guy comfortable with sports social media. On Nov. 7, he took his strongest stance so far:
The Penn State story is proving a prove a boon for independent sports blogs.
TheBigLead, which was founded in 2006 and acquired by Fantasy Sports Ventures in 2010, has been knocking on the story hard while the big boys have tried to make sense of it.
A Nov. 7 story that posted at 10 a.m. titled “Joe Paterno Should Resign” generated 356 responses, 131 likes and 177 tweets in its first four hours.
Here’s TheBigLead’s strongest tweet on the morning of Nov. 7:
ESPN gun shy after > Tebow?
TheBigLead was enjoying good interaction, especially in contrast to ESPN. ESPN’s Penn State lead story on the morning of Nov. 7 was a SportsCenter video. Comments were not allowed. That may be a critical misstep step by the sports network. ESPN is currently the subject of an out-of-control comment string related to Tim Tebow, according to an earlier article in MobileSportsReport. If ESPN opted out of publishing commentary-based journalism about Penn State on the morning of Nov. 7 because it was still gun shy over the Tebow incident, it lost out on an opportunity to provide a forum for anxious legions of fans to speak out.
Yahoo! scores early, then disappears
In contrast to TheBigLead’s interaction, Yahoo! Sports’ failed to capitalize on an early advantage it established in the Sandusky story. On Nov. 5, Yahoo Sports sportswriter Dan Wetzel’s “Penn State’s insufficient action amid child sex allegations stunning” broke the facts central to the story. Wetzel wrote:
“At approximately 9:30 p.m. on March 1, 2002, a Penn State graduate assistant entered what should have been an empty football locker room. He was surprised to hear the showers running and noises he thought sounded like sexual activity, according to a Pennsylvania grand jury “finding of fact” released Saturday.
When he looked in the shower he saw what he estimated to be a 10-year-old boy, hands pressed up against the wall, “being subjected to anal intercourse,” by Jerry Sandusky, then 58 and Penn State’s former defensive coordinator. The grad assistant said both the boy and the coach saw him before he fled to his office where, distraught and stunned, the grad assistant telephoned his father, who instructed his son to flee the building.
The next day, a Saturday, the grad assistant went to the home of head coach Joe Paterno and told him what he had seen. The day after that, Paterno called Penn State athletic director Tim Curley to his home to report that the grad assistant had told him he had witnessed “Jerry Sandusky in the Lasch Building showers fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy.”
A week-and-a-half later, according to the grand jury report, the grad assistant was called to a meeting with Curley and Gary Schultz, the school’s senior vice president for finance and business, where he retold his story.
…Curley did not notify university police or have the graduate assistant further questioned involving the incident. No other legal or university entity investigated the case.
Despite telling the facts of the case first, Yahoo Sports failed to capitalize as the story developed. Its lead story on the morning of Nov. 7 was posted 14 hours earlier, and titled “Paterno statement in abuse case raises more questions.” The story had 1,000 likes but only 143 tweets, fewer than TheBigLead.
The key reason Yahoo dropped the ball may be fantasy sports. Yahoo has the largest audience and the largest revenue base for fantasy sports among digital sports content providers. Operationally, Yahoo moves from primarily a sports media outlet Monday-through-Friday to an information service company over the weekend. That may be the reason Yahoo ceded its status as news leader, at least temporarily, on Monday morning.
Public advances story with fact and observation
Twitter proved to be a better place than most websites to see facts that advance the story on the morning of Nov. 7.
These three tweets might seem trivial, but you can be pretty sure both of these facts will turn up in Sports Illustrated or similar in-depth magazine articles in the coming week:
Penn State takes solid approach
Penn State displays best practices in public relations on its live Twitter feed, providing tweets about official news related to the case. Early on Nov. 7, it moved its latest update:
Arrington gets attention
Former Penn State great LaVar Arrington is one of the leaders in getting attention through Penn State on Twitter:
Arrington, a former No. 1 National Football League draft pick who was coached by Sandusky at linebacker U, is a radio host and sells T-shirts through his Arrington Entertainment brand. His Twitter posts are more inflammatory than a neutral blog post he wrote on the subject on the Washington Post.
The people speak
Comments on Twitter were running about one per minute on Twitter on Monday morning, and the average Twitter person delivered strong commentary:
Interestingly, some of the earliest tweets were among the most profane:
