Peer Blogs

After looking through the blog’s of my classmates this week, I found many that I enjoyed reading but today I chose to focus on two.  Caryn’s blog focuses on technology and PR and this post specifically focused on social media and how it’s changing the field of PR.  I felt that this topic was relevant to my blog because in today’s sports society many sports organizations rely on social media in order to get the message out.  For example, on Twitter, I follow the NHL and the Boston Bruins hockey team.  Every time I log on to my Twitter account, I see numerous posts from each organization daily.  The posts vary from updates to the roster to drawing attention to popular teams at the time to photos from team practices and press conferences.  In particular, the Bruins do a great job at keeping their Twitter and Facebook pages updated as to the latest scores, stats, contest and news.  This new method of communication to publics helps sports teams engage their fans in events and keeps them in tuned of what is going on.

Another post that I found interesting was Whitney’s post about deceptive advertising among pharmaceutical companies.  One fact from her blog that struck me was that the Food and Drug Administration does not have to approve ads for pharmaceuticals.  That means that deceptive advertising can make its way into the market and wrongfully lead a consumer into purchasing the drug.  The fact that there is not a more intense regulation for these ads surprised me very much.

MLB Message Board Usage

Sports public relations practitioners are now able to focus on a more interactive form of social media: message boards.  Through these message boards, Sports PR people are able to easily and efficiently survey the wants and needs of their publics in an organized environment.  The message boards also help to get the message from a PR person across to its publics.  I feel that this form of two way communication between a sports organization and its fans should be utilized through more often.

For this week’s blog, I came across a study that was conducted in 2006 by Chang Wan Woo, Seon-Kyoung An, and Seung Ho Cho about the usage of message boards on eight Major League Baseball Sites.  The study focused on what motivates internet users to write on the team message boards, the topics that are brought up, and the amount of topics for high winning teams and low winning teams.  The data from the research can help sports public relations practitioners connect with their publics and adopt a two-way communications system with message board users.

The results of the study showed that the amount of posts on a message board positively correlated with how well the team was doing, and that the frequent reason for using this medium was for cognitive reasons (furthering ones understanding and knowledge of a team).  This information can help sports PR people because those teams that are doing well relative to other in the league can direct organization information with their publics through message boards.  Also, they can expect heavier traffic (comments, concerns, complaints) on their message boards and will have to address controversial situations if they are brought up.

Messages boards could be considered a growing social medium and with the help of its publics, sports organizations can strengthen their community relations with such a medium.

Click Here to view a write up of the study.

Ethics in Sports Public Relations

Ethics can be defined as a system of moral principles shared among a common group.  These ethics, or rules, should be followed on a day to day basis in order to uphold the integrity and standards of said group.  In today’s society of modern sports, a popular ethical topic is cheating.  Cheating can be seen as breaking the rules in a game, using others to get ahead and even something as simple as steroid use.  One athlete recently found himself tied up in a web of lies and accusations that he found hard to defend and the athlete, as well as a distinguished college football program, found themselves on the edge of such an ethical issue.

On July 22, 2010, ESPN Los Angeles wrote a story about the Heisman Trophy Trust’s consideration of stripping Reggie Bush of his 2005 Heisman Trophy, the most prestigious honor in college football.  This article discusses the possible repercussions the University of Southern California, where Bush played, would face if it was found that Bush was ineligible to win the award in 2005.  It was reported that Bush was ineligible for the Heisman trophy because he left his career at USC for the NFL before 2005.  Bush has repeatedly said that he and his family did not receive any lavish gifts while he was at USC.  Newsydotcom posted a video on YouTube regarding the facts surrounding the case and that is where I found out that Bush actually forfeited his 2005 Heisman Trophy to the Heisman Trophy Trust.  After the pressure from a number of dignitaries, the media and the denial of any wrong doing, the trophy was given back.

However, I think that some of the social pressure that was placed on Bush came from the fact that USC pretty much seemed to throw him under the bus and made the issue seem as if Bush was the only party at fault.  USC’s president, C.L. Nikias, ordered the school’s athletic department to return their copy of Bush’s Heisman Trophy to the Heisman Trophy Trust.  He also ordered the school to remove all references of the Super Bowl Champion and disassociate the school with the athlete.

According to the College Sports Information Directors of America Code of Ethics, an ethical issue that could have played a factor in this event was the role of the public relations person in keeping his loyalty to the program.  It is an ethical principle to hold loyalties to the program and its athletes.  As much as it was not a hard position to back USC and its program, it was probably hard for the PR person to see that the right thing to do was put Bush under the bus in the situation and not handle the situation in a crisis management manner.  Bush was considered a member of the USC community and was one of their star athletes while playing there but when it came to upholding their own brand image, they let go of all they wanted and went for what they thought was an easy way out.

Blog Focus

Growing up, I was always involved with sports. Not only did I play numerous sports for the first 17 years of my life but I was also an avid viewer and attendee. I would watch classic Red Sox games with my grandfather, football games with my dad and attend Bruins games with my uncle. As I got older, I developed a liking for not only professional sports, but college sports as well. My friends never understood why I liked sports so much. Now that I look back, I realized that I loved them because they created lasting memories along with entertainment. The fast-paced lifestyle and never knowing what would happen next in the game was so thrilling to me. That is why I want to join and follow the world of sports public relations.


The individuals who are in the sports PR profession work almost seven days a week during season. They are responsible for setting up press conferences, answering the media’s and other’s requests, managing public crises with individual players or teams, making a team name known and bringing spectators in and keeping them hooked. There never seems to be a dull moment in this field of public relations and to me that is one of the most exciting aspects to me.