Jelisa Castrodale

The English Football Association handbook is available on their website, 564 PDF-ed pages of rules, regulations and words with more vowels than they require. The FA decorates its nouns with excess e’s and extra u’s but it doesn't put any illustrations between the “programmes” and “colours” and “favours.” Or at least they didn’t until Saturday, when “Players should not make unflattering Photoshops of the referees” became an unofficial addition to the General Behaviour section.

Liverpool winger Ryan Babel had a bad day in his 8,816 square yard office. His Reds had been beaten 1-0 by Manchester United during Round 3 of the FA Cup, so he decided to vent 140 characters worth of frustration to 174,000 of his closest friends. He logged into his Twitter account and posted “And they call him one of the best referees? That’s a joke. SMH.”

When he finished SHH—shaking his head—Babel shared a Photoshopped picture that showed match referee Howard Webb wearing a Manchester United jersey. “My apology if they take my posted pic seriously,” he tweeted. “This is just a emotional reaction after losing an important game.

The FA didn’t exactly click the “Favorite” star on his emotional reaction. Instead, Babel became the first player to earn an Improper Conduct charge by using his iPhone. Yeah, there’s an app for that, too.

Babel’s Webb-shot violated Rule E3 of the league’s General Behaviour section because his “comment or” — and here’s where they added two words to their handbook— “posted image constitutes improper conduct and/or brings the game into disrepute.” Babel has until Thursday to respond — hopefully in person instead of through his Twitter timeline—but could still face a one-match ban and a $12,481 fine.

Gordon Taylor, the head of the Player’s Union, has spoken out on Babel’s right to, um, babble. “Players sometimes get accused of not being prepared to give their thoughts in public and now Ryan Babel has got into trouble for having an opinion.”

Even if the FA doesn’t cash Babel’s next game check, their decision to charge him for his online activity sets a precedent that they may not be prepared to handle — or capable of enforcing. Going forward, they’re going to have to decide where the pitch ends and where the “public” begins and ensure that the players know where those virtual white lines have been painted.

Slideshow   Who's hot on Twitter? Check out which of your favorite athletes have the best pages and most followers! NBCSports.com

Would Babel have been punished if he’d emailed the shot of Webb as a Red Devil? If he’d sent it via text? If he’d printed it out and taped it on his freezer door? These kinds of discussions should be on the next to-do list written on an FA logo notepad.

Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets have smeared, trampled and occasionally erased the lines between the work athletes do on the field and the lives they live away from it. For fans, it’s all kinds of awesome. We have the chance to see a different side of the players.

For players, they can show what they’re like when they’re not wearing sweat-wicking fabrics, sharing thoughts that haven’t been carefully crafted by a team issued PR rep.

LeBron James has done that, slagging off his former team in 104 characters. “Crazy. Karma is a b****.. Gets you every time. Its not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything!” he tweeted after Cleveland’s 112-57 loss to Los Angeles, an all-time franchise low for the Cavs. Not to be outdone, Karma might’ve helped LeBron roll his ankle in the Heat’s own loss Wednesday night.

That’s the problem, one that can’t — and won’t be — addressed until the non-existent rules are broken. Trying to write sweeping guidelines for social media is like installing an invisible fence for your border collies; you don’t know where the boundaries should be until they’ve already blown past them.

"We don't want to stop players doing what they like within reason in their spare time," a Manchester United spokesperson told BBC News last January. "But we do advise our players —especially the young lads — to be careful." Two days later, the club banned Facebook, Twitter and anything else that required a keyboard and a personality.

On our side of the Atlantic, no team has put either application in a red circle with a slash through it. Not yet, anyway. The NBA and NFL both have policies that require their players to log off 45 minutes before a game and during the games; postgame, they have to wait 45 minutes until posting, because they think changing your Facebook status is like eating a sandwich before you swim.

Policy violators are subject to fines — oh hey, Marc Cuban! — so why would athletes risk losing five-figures to share five sentences? Because it seems like a lot of them genuinely enjoy having virtual conversations with the people who wear their replica jerseys.

In the most recent issue of the International Journal of Sport Communication, researchers analyzed more than 1,900 tweets from professional athletes and discovered that the largest percentage of their tweets (34 percent) were interactions with their fans and followers. Diversions and topics unrelated to sports were the second largest category (28 percent), followed by “players discussing their own teams or sports” (15 percent).

The Journal eventually came to the conclusion that “Twitter is a powerful tool for increasing fan-athlete interaction.” Well, yeah. Even less-than-powerful tools — like Jose Canseco — realize that. On Twitter, for every reputation-wrecking misstep (See: Johnson, Larry) and midseason punchline (See: Johnson, Steve) there’s an athlete who has figured it out, one who is doing it right. (See: The Artist Formerly Known as Johnson, Chad).

Slideshow   The Week in Sports Pictures A kayaker flips out, a racehorse eyes the Triple Crown and more. more photos

In less than two years online, Chad Ochocinco has collected 1,577,586 followers. He’s tweeted 23,507 times — an average of 38 times a day — which is more than enough to choke Twitter’s whale logo.

On Ochocinco’s timeline, a solid one-third of his tweets are replies to other users who have contacted him (“My boots are suede D&G, very comfy in the cold out here” he told one woman.) The rest of his keyboard-only workout is a mix of his random thoughts (“Greatest player to me is Peter Warrick”) and pictures of what he’s doing which, without fail, kills US Weekly’s credibility; Stars are NOT at all like us.

Ochocinco has spent the week in Europe watching The Kind of Football That Doesn’t Require Hands (which shouldn’t be confused with what the Carolina Panthers do). On Tuesday, he left parts of Spain littered with @-replies as he posted details about his day, including cameraphone pics of FC Barcelona’s practice and players. He shared some shots of all the Audis in the team parking lot and, literally one tweet later, he’d scored a team jersey and his own Audi from the local rep.

“how in the f_ck do I get this car all the way to the states?” he asked this afternoon from his reserved seat at the Barcelona game.

Ochocinco posted a picture and got a free car. Ryan Babel Photoshopped one and got an FA violation. Somewhere in Liverpool, he has to be shaking his head—SHH—again.

 

Jelisa Castrodale has learned a lot about life by making a mess of her own.  Read more at jelisacastrodale.com , follow her on twitter at twitter.com/gordonshumway, or contact her at