Digital Media and the New York Giants
By Ed Roberts
The Super Bowl has come and gone with a New York Giants win and a victory parade that took the city of New York by storm.
Even though the main celebrations are done, it does not necessarily mean that the party has to stop there.
Before the invention of Twitter or blogs, fans got their player scoop from newspapers or the television. Now if you simply log on to your Twitter account, you can live the experience with the players through their own photos and comments.
The Giants were one of the most active teams on Twitter for this past year. The rookies such as Mark Herzlich (@MarkHerzlich), Tyler Sash (@TSash), Spencer Paysinger (@SpittyP), Prince Amukamara (@PrinceAmukamara) and Henry Hynoski (@HenryHynoski) provided comic relief throughout the season by cracking jokes on each other and tweeting about the rookie life.
Veterans such as Justin Tuck (@JustinTuckNYG91), Chris Canty (@ChrisCanty99), Bear Pascoe (@BearPascoe), Jake Ballard (@NYG_J_Ballard85), 2nd year standouts Jason Pierre-Paul (@DatBoyJPP) and Victor Cruz (@TeamVic) provided insightful quotes and assurance when the season was beginning to look bleak.
But, the Twitter MVP of the season would go to the eccentric punter of the New York Giants, Steve Weatherford (@Weatherford5). Weatherford made use of the hashtag revolution that has taken over Twitter by making up (#WeatherfordWednesday) that would “trend” in New York every Wednesday. He also snapped pictures of unsuspecting teammates on the team bus or plane and posted them for the twitter world to see. His most famous target was Super Bowl MVP, Eli Manning.
These players also took the time to respond to fans tweets every day. When the mantra “All In” became the slogan for the Giants playoff run, the players and fans alike used it as a Twitter battle cry before each game (#ALLin).
Tweets, hashtags, and trending may seem like nonsense to a non-twitter user, but it is how the Twitter community interacts with each other. Mark Herzlich posted a video on the plane home from Indianapolis of teammate Andre Brown singing “I Got A Ring”; the video became viral in minutes thanks to Twitter, YouTube, and Blogs.
Digital media is here to stay and for those pushing it aside you are surely missing out. You get a feel of how an athlete truly is and get exclusive content available at your fingertips. It is nothing short of a miracle for sports fans.
To all the Giants fans basking in the championship sunlight, be grateful that this wonderful technology is available for all of us throughout these next few months. The wait until the draft will not seem as bad with it.
With all this talk on Twitter, you can follow me as well for news, updates, and analysis (@ERobertsNY):