Pre-tweeting NFL Picks: It’s Not Just For the Media

Dan Levy alluded to it in his Press Coverage piece this morning, but people who were multitasking with Twitter while watching the NFL Draft had many picks “spoiled” by various media members well before they were actually announced by the commish on TV.↵↵It turns out, the working media wasn’t alone in trying to jump the gun. The No. 19 pick -- Sean Witherspoon -- tweeted that he’d be an Atlanta Falcon well before the pick was announced on TV.↵

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↵↵You can understand a little youthful overzealousness on the part of Witherspoon. He’s about to get paid, so of course he’d like to announce it to the world. Somewhat more puzzling was the tweet from the Cincinnati Bengals official account, almost immediately after Witherspoon’s.↵

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↵↵The thing is, the Bengals were picking No. 21, and that tweet actually came before pick No. 20 was even announced on TV.↵

↵↵This isn’t a new phenomenon in sports drafts. The NBA actually took a proactive approach to this problem and warned teams to not tweet their picks ahead of time prior to last year’s draft. For what it’s worth, the NFL is kind of embracing the real-time nature of Twitter, as NFL PR guru Brian McCarthy: “Teams can tweet, post after they called pick into league,” he told me via Twitter.↵

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