If Lombardi tweeted: Social media lessons from the NFL

The 32 NFL franchises, athletes, and coaching staffs have taken to Twitter as their main outlet for social interaction. According to tweeting-athletes.com, the NFL boasts the most Twitter users amongst any group of professional athletes in the world.

Currently, there are 1,187 NFL football players tweeting (although some are retired or head coaches) and nearly all of them have at least 1,000 followers, while some have a larger following, such as my personal favorite, NY Jets’ Mark Sanchez with more than 487,500 followers. This massive reach allows athletes to interact with fans, coaches to scope competition, and teams to inform the press of injuries, updates and events.

Twitter is no longer solely about fans asking their favorite players to retweet them (although, let’s get real, that will never end). Sports journalists turn to Twitter because they know if they don’t catch an update immediately, in a matter of minutes, it will be old news.

In fact, perhaps the biggest Twitter impact on the league involves a player tweeting a request to Evan Mathis of the Philadelphia Eagles. The fan suggested moving the Eagles’ Todd Herremans to right tackle and replacing his position with Mathis. After this request was retweeted one more time by a reporter, the Eagles agreed and a new line up was announced.