#AskEmmert: An Epic Fail of a Twitter Q&A

NCAA President Mark Emmert

This is Mark Emmert, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, better known as the NCAA. In case you have not heard, the NCAA has been in some hot water lately as more facts are brought up on the amount of money the NCAA makes while the student-athletes who play the games see none of the cash. Student-athletes recently have said that they sometimes go to bed hungry (maybe that's just Shabazz Napier though) and are trying to unionize, which could be dangerous for the future of the NCAA.

On Friday, Emmert joined ESPN's Mike & Mike in the Morning morning show, and someone (whether it was the NCAA or ESPN is unclear) thought it would be a good idea to have people on Twitter asks questions of the NCAA President by tweeting using the hashtag #AskEmmert.
This is an excellent idea in theory. But, Twitter, for the most part, vehemently sides with the student-athletes against the NCAA and are not big fans of Emmert and the NCAA. As the Social Sideline has previously examined, Twitter has given people a new confidence to say whatever they want, whenever they want. Let's just say that the Twitterverse did not take kindly to #AskEmmert.
It started simply enough, with fans asking straight-forward questions.

Then it started getting a little more personal.

Then it just started getting ridiculous.

A list of more responses can be found here, while the original tweet can be found here.

Whoever thought of #AskEmmert had the right idea in trying to incorporate and interact with fans, but should have realized the high chance of a Twitter revolt like this. If Twitter and the NCAA were political parties, Twitter would be Democratic (young and liberal) and the NCAA would be Republican (older and conservative). #AskEmmert gave the Twitterverse a chance to vent frustration that had been building for months or years even.

There are two lessons to be learned here: 

1. As stated in the Tom Crean's Backfiring Tweet post, you need to know your audience. If you are going to post something like this on Twitter, you have to be prepared for potential trolls. But, if you think that you will get more negative responses than positive ones, you probably should not post it. Even before all the negative tweets came flooding, many people's initial reaction to hearing about #AskEmmert was 'this will end well...' 
2. At the same time, fans need to be more open to the NCAA's mindset. Kyle Kensing, a friend of mine, brought up a very good point on Twitter.
   
   People (myself included) need to work on being more open-minded, both in the real world and on social media. No progress will ever be made if two sides just yell at one another. Perhaps student-athletes should be paid. Perhaps the NCAA is right in trying to enforce the amateur status of their student-athletes. But nothing is going to change if both sides just continue to argue with one another and refuse to change their mindsets on a topic.