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Update, 2:10 p.mWe caught up with UW president Michael Young and added his comments to this story

When the University of Washington announced the hiring of Chris Petersen as its new head football coach Friday morning, current UW players used Twitter to voice their opinions:

However, if Petersen’s rules while coaching at Boise State for players on Twitter carryover to Seattle, these might be the last few tweets we see from the UW student-athletes.

Back in 2010 when Twitter was gaining popularity, Petersen became one of the first college coaches to ban his players from using Twitter.

twitterIt’s a policy that Petersen, who’s coached at Boise State since 2006, has kept in place. In an interview on The Jim Rome Show this past July, the 49-year-old was asked again about his reasoning behind the Twitter ban.

“It really doesn’t come up around here,” Petersen told Rome. “They get that. I still believe strongly in that just because I think, you know, it can be emotional, and all of a sudden they hit that send button and five minutes later, they’re going, ‘Oh.’ There are so many other forms of media out there.”

Petersen’s ban is only for Twitter — players can use Instagram, Facebook, Vine, etc., all they want.

“The important thing is, there are a lot of other social media out there that our kids do use, and they do know, if they’re not smart and careful with it, well, that may go away as well,” Petersen continued. “Because it’s a privilege to be here, it’s a privilege to play college football, and if you’re not doing it the right way and really representing certainly this university, your family and the rest of your teammates the way they need to be represented, then you don’t need to be on that stuff.”

That’s a stark difference from how former UW head coach Steve Sarkisian, who left Montlake on Monday to become the head coach at USC, handled social media. In fact, like many other coaches, Sarkisian himself used Twitter heavily for recruiting purposes and would commonly tweet out “Woof!” when receiving a commitment from a high school player.

A quick look at Sark’s tweet stream shows the coach even re-tweeting his own player’s tweets.

sarktwitter2

Former UW head football coach Steve Sarkisian was a big Twitter user and didn't keep his players off the social media platform.
Former UW head football coach Steve Sarkisian was a big Twitter user and didn’t keep his players off the social media platform.

Unlike Sarkisian, who at one point ranked in the top 5 for “most popular college football coaches on Twitter,” Petersen does not use the social media platform. However, he does have an account — although the coach has yet to tweet.

Rome asked the new UW head coach about potentially missing recruiting opportunities by not being active on Twitter.

“I pay close attention to this and ask myself: ‘Is this hurting us and our program by me not [tweeting]?” Petersen said. “If I thought it would at all, I would cetainly get on it. But I’m not thinking that it does.”

Rome then followed-up with a question about direct Twitter messages.

“Clearly what you’re doing is working very, very well, but I wonder if a kid were to get a direct message from coach Chris Petersen, I would imagine that would be pretty cool,” Rome asked.

“Well, real shortly he’s going to get a direct phone call from me when it’s legal for me to call,” Petersen said. “I think that’s better than direct messaging.”

We reached out to the UW athletic department to find out how it plans to handle this, but the school wouldn’t comment. Remember, it was the UW that limited the amount of times reporters were allowed to tweet during live games last year.

Michael Young at the Center for Commercialization. UW photo
University Washington president Michael Young says he has “a lot of faith” in new head football coach Chris Petersen. Photo courtesy of UW.

Meanwhile, University of Washington president Michael Young told us that he understands the ban and supports it at a certain level.

“I would support my coach if he thinks that is useful for him to make the young men he wants to make, and teach them what he wants to teach them, yeah, sure,” Young said in a telephone interview today. “But I am not going to second guess my coach.”

Young said that today’s technologies “make it awfully easy to instantly shoot off whatever is on your mind,” and combined with an 18-year-old in a pressure-packed and public environment, it can turn out to be “a recipe for disaster most of the time,” he said.

In any case, Young trusts Petersen to make the right call regarding his players’ Twitter use.

“I have a lot of faith in this guy,” Young said of the new coach. “We don’t just talk to the sportswriters and so forth when we talk about hiring a coach. We talk to former players, and he is incredibly well-regarded by his former players. Whatever he does, he seems to be doing pretty well.”

You can hear Petersen’s thoughts on Twitter starting at the 7:35 mark in the interview with Rome below:

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