It seems that wherever you look, there always seems to be a new Sports PR Nightmare! I was looking on ESPN today, and I noticed this article that appeared on their College Sports web site saying that at least 23 student-athletes at Florida State are accused of cheating on tests that they did online. It seemed that there were some incidents where a tutor was writing papers for some of the students and there would be others taking online tests for athletes.
Yesh! Where to begin! This is just absolutely amazing– can we say “PR Nightmare?” I have said this time and time again, these student-athletes have to realize that they are attending the university to get an education, not to breeze right through without doing the work. These students are only cheating themselves, but this is also going to impact the academic reputation of Florida State. What are people going to say? Gee, you guys have an athletic program, but what about your academic program for your athletes?
If you were FSU’s PR director, what would you do? Well, there are actions that they can do immediately, and then there are some that will be more long-term. Here are some of the things that FSU can do in the short-term to handle this crisis among internal (ex. athletes, staff, coaches, etc.) and external audiences (fans, community, boosters, etc):
- Make a statement to the FSU Community acknowledging the event and how the athletic department will cooperate with the university in this investigation. Also, it is key for all of the coaches to also be represented in this statement as well to be unified on this decision. What is amazing to me is that they don’t even have a statement on their athletic web site or academic web site! Hmmmm– they need to do this!
- Have a meeting with all of the coaches to explain the situation and let them know which athletes were involved in this crisis. Discuss consequences with the coaches.
- Communicate with the staff and others that work within the athletic department about the situation so they know what is going on, and how FSU will be handling it
- Have a meeting with the academic center— find out all of the details and who was overseeing the tutors. Also, it is important to establish a timetable for the events that has the specific details of the crisis.
- Meet with all FSU athletes: Explain the situation, and talk about what the athletic department and academic team is going to do to address this and make sure that this situation does not happen again.
- Make a statement about new and stricter academic guidelines, so that this does not happen again.
These are just some of the things that I think will be key for the PR director and the athletic department in this crisis situation. It’s sad to see these athletes do this and is a hard lesson to learn, but cheating is wrong– plain and simple– and these athletes have to face the consequences of it.
Best Wishes,
Karen 🙂
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