The Measure of Commitment

Many ways to gauge it -- did you make some social media posts here on Christmas Day? Easy enough, and somewhat natural.

How about Christmas Eve? OK, fine. Did you have to issue statements regarding your men's basketball team on the holidays? Miss State AD Scott Stricklin did. Not a pleasant trip to the Aloha State, resulting in a photographs and videos -- of course, posted by bystanders -- of two Bulldog basketball players fighting at Stan Sheriff Arena.

One of my fav SID lines is this: They don't pay us for the good days, they pay us for the bad ones. Stricklin's Xmas Eve is about as bad as they get, and it would have been really easy to retreat from his Twitter feed and other social media. He didn't, and instead, issued some of his key messaging statements via Twitter.

There wasn't going to be any missing the event -- aside from fans info on the incident, his beat reporter Brandon Marcello was in Honolulu. Members of the team Tweeted info and apologies that day. Same for the team's SID, Gregg Ellis. Stricklin had a quick statement on Christmas Eve, then followed up with the details of the suspensions as well as a statement from head coach Rick Stansbury.

Now, would we have learned about this with the level of detail or as fast as we did without real-time reporting and social media? No. Did it contribute to the spread and knowledge? Absolutely. Could it be avoided? Perhaps if the tournament was in Siberia.

I've said in the space before that Stricklin gets the world he lives in and embraces the chance to get the word out about his institution beyond the sleepy corner of Mississippi (no offense intended, but StarkVegas is not, well say, Las Vegas). As noted earlier, public universities -- especially those in the BCS leagues -- live in glass houses. The best way to manage is to build strategies to surf that wave.

If you've got time this holiday weekend, thread your way through the involved feeds and you be the judge.