UDiligence

Why Use UDiligence?

Provides Ongoing Mentoring Opportunities

UDiligence searches student-athlete's social network profiles for profanity, racial slurs, sexual connotations, and mentions of weapons, drugs and alcohol -- alerting the student-athlete and your department, hopefully before it is publicly exposed by the media.  Each school can customize their own keyword list.  The photo captions and comments are also searched to help identify potentially troubling photos and videos.  Schools use UDiligence to provide ongoing mentoring for student-athletes, all of whom are teenagers and young adults, about the consequences of posting something that might be problematic to their reputations and digital legacies.

The links above are just a few high-profile examples of news stories that have exposed, embarrassed and damaged the reputations/digital legacies of the student-athletes involved.  In some cases, the coach then banned the team from using social media.  In other cases, the student-athlete was punished and forced to remove the offending posts and/or delete their social media account.  In all cases the student-athlete's reputation/digital legacy was damaged when the media publicized their social networking posts. 

Prepares for Life After Sports

Whether it's the NFL, NBA or a Fortune 500 company, many employers want to hire former student-athletes because they like the characteristics developed by being part of a collegiate athletic program.  This advantage can be immediately nullified when employers Google the athlete and find stories about inappropriate social media posts or screen social network pages during the hiring process.  UDiligence finds and reports these issues to the student-athlete and the school, giving them the opportunity to prepare for life after college.

Serves as an Early Warning Radar

The media is following/friending student-athletes on social media to get material for articles.  It is an unfiltered funnel from the inexperienced and unwitting student-athlete's thumbs directly to reporters' phones and computers.  Whether from a public or private account, the media's use of student-athlete's social network posts in their stories is protected by freedom of the press.

While it is a reporter's job to ask coaches and athletic departments for reaction to student-athlete's social media posts, it is also clear that the controversial stories reporters write result in more hits on their websites, increases in numbers of followers on Twitter and fans on their Facebook pages. 

The unfortunate result leaves the student-athlete publicly embarrassed in the short term and their reputation permanently damaged.  The student-athletes are often suspended or punished as the coach/department deals with the aftermath and distractions that follow.

The only entity that benefits from stories about student-athlete's social media indiscretions is the media.  Everyone else loses: the student-athlete, the coach, the athletic department and sometimes even the university.  Student-athletes and the schools they represent have the right and a vested interest to protect their reputations.  UDiligence provides an early warning radar for potential issues before they become major distractions.