NCAA Asking Fans To Reduce Online Abuse Toward College Players And Officials

80% of the abuse in the study was directed at players who participated in March Madness

The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) and Signify Group surveyed college sports to investigate online harassment. The survey determined that the majority of abuse targeted students who participated in the March Madness tournament. It also showed that women basketball players received about three times the threats than their male counterparts.

According to the NCAA, a study was done with Signify Group using data powered by artificial intelligence regarding public comments directed toward the profiles of players, coaches, and officials throughout the seven NCAA championships and the College Football Playoff National Championship. Based on the results, officials are asking fans and social media companies to reduce online abuse.

“I’ve heard too many student-athletes talk about abusive messages they have received, and for the first time ever, we now have evidence of the scale at which this is occurring. It’s incredibly alarming and completely unacceptable,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a written statement. “Fans have to do better, social media companies have to do more to identify and remove this content, and we all need reminders about responsible social media usage. Student-athletes come to college hoping to fulfill their athletic and academic dreams, and our job at the NCAA is to provide them with the most fulfilling experience possible. We will exhaust all options to reduce the harassment and vitriol student-athletes are experiencing too often today.”

Their AI-based algorithm flagged more than 72,000 messages from a dataset of 1.3 million posts and comments on social media profiles of student-athletes, coaches, and officials involved in the recent events. Over 5,000 of the flagged posts contain abusive, discriminatory, or threatening content.

The report released the following data:

18% of all abuse was sexual, making it the most prevalent type of abuse used to target male and female student-athletes.
12% of all abuse was related to sports betting, with more than 740 instances. As betting markets increased, so did the prevalence of harassment, with 19% rates in men’s basketball and football. Some abuse flagged in other categories indicated that the posts were betting-related.
10% of abuse consisted of racist content.
9% of abuse was homophobic/transphobic.
6% of abuse, approximately 380 instances, was violent.
80% of the abuse in the study was directed at March Madness student-athletes.
- Women’s basketball student-athletes received approximately three times more threats than men’s basketball student-athletes

“I’ve seen firsthand the negative impacts of social media abuse on the mental health of myself and my loved ones,” said Connor McCaffery, men’s basketball assistant coach at Butler. “There must be more done to address this toxic behavior impacting sports at all levels.”