The Southeastern Conference (SEC) in NCAA college football is run, I'm guessing, by some good 'ol boys in linen suits who split their time equally between mint juleps and spitting contests. They've tried to ban fans at any SEC football game from using Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media during the game. They also want to ban cell phone pictures or videos. It's no surprise what's going on here – the SEC has a ginormous ($3 billion) contract with CBS and ESPN, and the guys with the cee-gars are getting nervous.

But that was yesterday. Today, someone pulled those guys' heads out of their asses, and they've done a (partial) about face. Tweet away, but still no cell phone video. I'm sure that many words have been spent talking about how backwards and out of touch these guys are. Social media doesn't replace traditional media. Embrace social media, and it can enhance traditional media. The notion that fans with cell phones are the competition, the enemy, the revenue-killers doesn't have much of a future.

What I wonder is: who's giving these guys advice? Or rather than bad advice, are they just getting no advice at all? This is hardly the first time a large corporate entity or conservative institution has utterly failed to grasp what social media is for. Has no on realized that, at the very least, they need to talk to a consultant who was born after 1975? If an idea (social media) is a technology, then I suppose we'll just call these guys the laggards. But it's hard to believe that anyone in the big business of football has missed the last two years so completely that they still revert to a protectionist attitude. Huge market for new consultancy!