In the “Live” feature on Instagram, users can broadcast themselves in real time and receive questions from followers in a built-in comments section on the video. Earlier this season, “going live” was an occasional nighttime hobby for Syracuse players including Tyler Lydon, John Gillon and Matthew Moyer. Their responses, both quippy and measured, came in a casual apartment setting while making themselves more relatable to fans.

Who would win in one-on-one, you or Tyus (Battle)?

What’s wrong with Tyler Roberson?

What’s your favorite type of music?

Instagram Live presents one of an increasing number of ways college basketball players provide mass followers insight into their lives. Tweets, individual Snapchats, Snapchat stories, Instagram posts and more outlets force players to delicately balance entertainment with professionalism. An audience can both praise and critique every step.

In the Atlantic Coast Conference, head coaches hold varying opinions on the value of social media and how to handle their players’ usage of it during the season. Syracuse (16-11, 8-6 ACC) players have different preferences for which they use three popular social media outlets among current college students: Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. Coaches now find themselves tasked with finding a healthy balance between granting their players freedom and preventing reputation-damaging mishaps.

“It can be a great tool, social media,” Georgia Tech head coach Josh Pastner said. “It can also be a tool that can get you in trouble if you’re not careful. But … it’s the way the world is moving.”

Some SU players don’t even have, or don’t currently use, social media. Taurean Thompson doesn’t have a Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Lydon doesn’t use Twitter during the season to avoid distractions.

Teammates Andrew White, Tyus Battle and Gillon have Twitter accounts but don’t tweet often. Players are more active on Instagram than Twitter, like when a handful posted pictures of or with Battle after he hit a buzzer-beating 3-pointer on Feb. 7 to give Syracuse an 82-81 win over Clemson.

At Syracuse, Jim Boeheim and his staff allow players to use social media, as long as they do it responsibly. “It’s an important part of growing up,” he said. “We guide them to be aware of what they’re saying and how they’re saying it, … but we don’t monitor it just like no one monitors the students at Syracuse University, I don’t think.”

Jessica Sheldon | Staff Photographer

At other schools around the ACC, methods of monitoring social media usage are different. Roy Williams has two staffers who monitor player accounts at North Carolina. Mark Gottfried brings in a social media expert to North Carolina State at the beginning of the year to educate his players. Rick Pitino doesn’t allow his players to use Twitter at Louisville, as current redshirt freshman guard Ryan McMahon found out two years ago.

“I think to try to keep the guys from acting like social media doesn’t exist is impossible as well,” Virginia Tech head coach Buzz Williams said. “I try to explain to our guys, you want it to be helpful. You don’t want it to be egotistical, you don’t want it to be about yourself … if it’s only beneficial to you, then it needs to have more depth to it than that.”

Syracuse players occasionally use Instagram as Williams prefers, to promote their teammates’ accounts. They also tweet about movies they saw (Battle held “Split” in high regard), Instagram about sibling birthdays (White congratulated his younger brother Andrien, a Charlotte guard, on a 19-point birthday performance) and Snapchat videos of car jam sessions (Moyer, a lot).

These promotions, especially on Twitter, also provide fans an opportunity to respond. Sometimes those responses don’t go unnoticed by players as humans, as Gillon detailed earlier in the season with prior instances of fan trash talk directed at him on Twitter. That’s why some choose to ignore comments as best they can.

“I don’t really pay attention to what people say,” Battle said, “even about me or about my teammates or stuff like that … You just gotta worry about the games and worry about what’s going on in your life.”

“I actually did delete my Twitter after a bad game,” Gillon said, “not that I was afraid of what people were saying, but I was like, kind of trying to avoid any distractions or any negativity. (Then) I was like, ‘No, that’s the coward approach. That’s not even me.’”

Pastner noted how he’s stripped “a player or two” of social media privileges because of content they’ve posted. None of the seven ACC coaches asked by The Daily Orange noted concrete social media rules within the program. But there was a consensus when it comes to the general guidelines within each team.

Jim Larranaga’s staff at Miami doesn’t spend an exhaustive amount of time on monitoring players, instead educating them to not post anything vulgar or damaging.

Buzz Williams reminds his players of ripple effects of everything they post. Gottfried discusses the dangers with his team regularly. Pastner and his staff educate their players “ a lot” on how to properly represent themselves. Pitino and his staff monitor players’ Facebook and Instagram accounts with a watchful eye, reminding them that professional scouts factor off-court activities visible on social media into their draft picks. And Roy Williams, who tries to downplay the hype of social media because he doesn’t understand the appeal of it, doesn’t care “what kind of toothpaste you used this morning” as long as it’s not a problem he has to fix.

“I try to tell ‘em these are all ego devices, and you get caught up in ego devices. It stifles your potential,” Pitino said. “So it’s something I call, ‘Ego edging greatness out.’”

At Louisville, Syracuse or other ACC programs, one thing is clear: There’s no exact science to monitor a player’s social media usage. All a coach can hope for is that combining education and common sense helps players to uphold a program’s reputation.

Published on February 14, 2017 at 10:56 pm

Contact Matt: mcschnei@syr.edu | @matt_schneidman