Texas Tech football college football staffers are spying on their players’ social media accounts by setting up fake profiles to “heavily monitor” players’ internet presence. Staff regularly ask players to take down anything they deem to be questionable posts immediately.
NFL teams do the same kind of internet surveillance, according to one report.
Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury told The HawkCast that his staff uses pictures of “cute girls” to spy on both what players do online as well as what others say to the players.
The harsh criticism student athletes can receive online can be “a lot for a young person to take on,” Kingsbury said. “I’m glad I never had to face that.”
For some perspective, these are multimillionaire coaches spying on unpaid students who—in many cases—keep private social media accounts meant to keep prying eyes out. But, hey, they’re somewhat upfront about it.
“We have fake accounts with cute girls that they add right now so we can see what’s going on, who’s tweeting what. Those are heavily monitored, for sure,” Kingsbury said.
The players probably know, Kingsbury said, but “a friend request from a cute girl is an automatic follow. They can’t resist that.”
There’s no such thing as private on the internet, apparently—and especially at Texas Tech, where the entire coaching staff is tasking with breaching that privacy.
“Once a year, we’ll capture the most absurd posts our team makes and we make a big presentation and have a lot of fun with it,” Kingsbury said.
H/T CBSSports