New England Patriots Deflategate Scandal vs. Gerry Hamilton's Accidental Tweet

By: Sarah Jones

Just this week alone, there have been two instances of crisis communication in the sports community. One has to do with alleged cheating while the other was an accidental tweet. Both are public relations nightmares but what sets them apart is how each entity has handled the mishaps so far.

One of them, now infamously known as 'Deflategate,' is the result of the New England Patriots allegedly not using fully inflated footballs during the AFC Championship game. The situation was brought to the public's attention at the start of this week and there has already been two press releases sent out by the NFL and by Patriots owner, Robert Kraft. 

The NFL was quick to release a statement on the full investigation being conducted and Kraft released a statement today offering the Patriots full cooperation during the investigation. Both of the releases had cooperation and transparency, which means there was probably some internal discussion before the statements were made public. That's a smart move on both sides because if one side said something that the other wasn't aware of then that would cause another PR nightmare. 

On the flip side of this is Gerry Hamilton and his Twitter mishap when he accidentally tweeted a link to a porn website. Which he deleted but not before screenshots were taken because everything is permanent on the Internet. 

Photo from Twitter

Hamilton is a high school football-recruiting analyst for ESPN and while it wasn't tweeted through the ESPN Twitter account, Hamilton's Twitter handle still has ESPN included in it so he is still representing ESPN. This happened Wednesday and as of today there still hasn't been a statement made from ESPN or Hamilton. 

Which I believe needs to change. It needed to happen the day the incident occurred. Hamilton is a high school analyst, meaning high school football players, and their parents probably follow him on Twitter. Those parents might not be so happy about that. Although most people reacting to it did so with humor, and that might be a reason they haven't disclosed anything. 

It would be safe to say the situation has been almost completely forgotten about by now. People have moved on to the next person who flubbed a tweet because it does happen so often and it usually happens to just about everyone. So if anyone were to release a statement now, it would probably just drudge everything up again. That still doesn't mean Hamilton or ESPN should have stayed quiet. I think people appreciate a little owning up from anyone who's made a flub on the Internet; it shows transparency and openness to the people who follow you. 

Although, in some people's eyes, these two situations may vary in the severity of the incident, they really aren't all that different. Both influence the way people see the NFL and ESPN, the reputation of the brands are being jeopardized. Because of the amount of media that picked the stories up, the NFL handled it the best because they spoke out almost immediately and let everyone know about the situation. Even though it seems that not saying anything has worked for Hamilton so far. 

Sources:

ESPN Analyst Gerry Hamilton Accidentally Tweets Link To Porn Account, Pretends It Didn’t Happen. (2015, January 22). Retrieved from http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2015/01/22/espn-analyst-gerry-hamilton-accidentally-tweets-link-to-porn-account-pretends-it-didnt-happen/

Katersky, A. (2015, January 23). Deflate-gate: NFL Says New England Patriots Used Under-Inflated Balls in the First Half. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/deflate-gate-nfl-england-patriots-inflated-balls-half/story?id=28434830

NFL Communications - NFL Statement «. (2015, January 23). Retrieved from http://nflcommunications.com/2015/01/23/nfl-statement-3/

Statement from Patriots Chairman and CEO Robert Kraft. (2015, January 24). Retrieved from http://www.patriots.com/news/article-1/Statement-from-Patriots-Chairman-and-CEO-Robert-Kraft/200d569a-b829-4903-80d2-e097fcab3eab