The MSU football team has been getting attention lately because of some players’ tweets about the U-M football loss to Alabama, but one MSU student-athlete has been making an impression for quite some time — and causing much less trouble along the way.
MSU soccer’s junior keeper Bryce Dobbins — or @BDobbins29, as his Twitter followers know him — might seem like a quiet person at first, but one glance at his Twitter page proves otherwise. Sending multiple tweets per day, Dobbins leaves his about 2,900 followers laughing and wondering, “Where did he come up with that?”
“It’s just things that come to my head,” he said. “When people follow someone on Twitter, they don’t want to hear the same ole, same ole ‘I’m going to practice today.’ They’d rather hear something funny about what happened on my way to practice — something that would get people’s mood up or spark a reply or a retweet.”
And he might be thinking about tweets to release to the world more often than just on his way to practice. On Aug. 19, Dobbins sent out a thoughtful tweet about a certain spot on MSU’s campus: “Sitting on the toilet in (Jenison) Field House perhaps wondering if just maybe @MagicJohnson used the same seat back in the day #vintagedump.”
Dobbins admitted that being an advertising major, he likes to experiment with social media and test his ability to market himself. He said being able to reach so many people is a skill he’ll be able to translate to the real world after leaving MSU.
Despite his openness in releasing information to his followers, Dobbins said he’s only been told to delete certain tweets that contained bad language. Director of Athletic Communications Jamie Baldwin said the athletics department doesn’t set rules or regulations about what athletes are allowed to say, but rather inform them so they have enough information to make the right decisions themselves.
“The coaches set their team regulations,” Baldwin said. “But from an athletic(s) department standpoint, we try to educate them (about) the reach their words have. It’s not something that’s kept inside and is an inside joke. It has the potential to go to hundreds to millions of people if it gets caught up or goes viral. It’s just like YouTube, like Facebook; you have to represent yourself and the university and your team at all times. It’s a 24-hour-a-day job now, and that’s different than it used to be.”
Junior defender and Dobbins’ roommate Kevin Cope said the team always notices the witty comments his roommate makes, but he said Dobbins has an excuse for racking up more than 3,500 tweets.
“He’s an (advertising) major, so that’s always his excuse for some of the things that he does,” Cope said. “He enjoys it, and I think his followers enjoy it. We always laugh at it; we give him a hard time about it.”
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