Texting to Players May Cause a Brent Musburger Moment for Coaches

Brent Musburger probably wishes he didn’t “fire” some words out the other night in his commentary regarding Katherine Webb, the girlfriend of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron. As of today, Musburger is still “looking for daylight” and the Brent Musburger Campus Drinking Game has found a new rule for sure.

As a coach, if you’ve never experienced that kind of awkward moment when you think you’ve been misunderstood and have to explain yourself for days on end, I invite you to try texting with your players. You’ll soon write about your own Musburger moment. Yes, “big fella,” texting can be a dangerous to your coaching health. In a sense, texting is to coaching, like gasoline is to fire, like Musburger is to broadcasting — on his bad days.

Last spring, I attended a local high school graduation ceremony. One of the speakers was a distinguished local businessman who was also an alumnus of the school. During the course of his speech, he said something like, “Let’s never forget that texting will never replace a handshake.”  This line was met with a thunderous ovation from the crowd of both students and parents. I swear I heard Musburger whsipering “touchdown” before the statement was complete.  It was the line that got the most applause that night. I was surprised at the reaction. It’s not that I didn’t agree with the statement; rather, I really didn’t think the statement was any great revelation.

Over the next few days, I asked myself what caused this audience made up of many texters (both parents and students alike) to have such a reaction. I think the audience was acknowledging the shortcomings of texting and voting for human contact instead. We are social beings and so much can be lost or misinterpreted when communication becomes less and less human.  According to what expert you are talking to, body language is thought to account for anywhere between 50 % to 70% of our communication efforts.  That gets totally lost in texting.

Consider for a moment that the audience for the Alabama and Notre Dame game did not view Brent Musburger’s body language when he was making his comments.  Would that have hurt Brent? I’m not sure how it could have made things worse, but who knows for sure. It’s sometimes a “footrace” to disaster for Brent with his production crew pointing him towards the finish line.

I understand that teens like to text and, like anything else, texting can be done to excess. As a coach, my recommendation is to stay away from it as much as possible. You could communicate scheduling information like practice or game times, or rain delays or cancellations,  but I wouldn’t recommend texting much of anything else.  Otherwise, you might create your own Brent Musburger moment.

We had a local coach who decided to try to do some team management through texting .  This decision lead to a misunderstanding between some players and the coach. The coach tried to clear up the misunderstanding through more texting which only made things worse.  He then had to spend days on end doing damage control. This coach had a Musburger moment that cast a shadow on the entire season.

In defense of coaches, teens have made it difficult to communicate with them. There are many who don’t pick up their voicemails, don’t return calls or don’t read their emails regularly if at all. (Note to teens: you guys need to change your ways when dealing with adults in a real world setting). It seems that most if not all of their friends communicate via text and that is really their entire world outside of their parents. As a result, they might expect you as a coach to be a part of their texting network.

Don’t do it.  You don’t want to be Brent Musburger. You don’t want to be “THAT man” as Brent would say.

At the beginning of the season, inform the players of what you as a coach expect on the communication front.  Develop your own means of communication as a coach and tell your players about your expectations. During that conversation, I also recommend addressing the issue of social media in general. Do you want to air your team’s dirty laundry hung out in a tweet or a facebook post?  Do you want players commenting on the pitcher’s girlfriend like Brent?

By covering all the communication and social media bases in a pre-season meeting, there won’t be the opportunity for you to be “looking live” at a Musburger moment with Brent.

I know this lost opportunity may come to a disappointment to some readers. But come on now “folks.” Look, “my man,” this is Brent’s  “dandy” moment.  It’s named after him. You have no right to share his limelight and be made a “pard-ner” to it. Now please leave him alone on stage and let him savor his fame.  To quote Brent: “You are watching what greatness is all about.”