Here’s a little glossary to help navigate the widgets:
Orange: The Princeton Sports Symposium has asked that everyone attending tweets with the #psports hashtag. This widget is a culmination of everyone using the hashtag.
Gray: Tweets from the @sportssymposium, the official Twitter account from the 2009 Princeton Sports Symposium.
Light Blue: Tweets from Joshua Duboff, the Founder of The Sports Business Exchange.
Brown: Updates that mention @sportssymposium somewhere in their tweet.

Updated 12/10/09: The Twitter searches for @joshuaduboff and @sportssymposium have been disabled

The BCS has taken to social media to state its case.

And at first glance, that doesn’t seem to be a good thing.

College football’s Bowl Championship Series has been debated, criticized, and even termed illegal by frustrated fans since its inception in 1998 as it struggles to produce an undisputed national champion for one of America’s favorite sports. With this week’s decision to hire Bill Hancock as its first executive director, the BCS appears ready to utilize Facebook and Twitter to help convince its detractors that the system is not as flawed as many want to believe.

The series’ official Twitter account, @InsidetheBCS, has especially drawn attention this week.

But again, that’s not necessarily a positive sign.

Since (and including) its first tweet Wednesday, the Twitter feed in question features a grand total of four messages. One is a welcome, two are links to pro-BCS stories, and one is a pro-BCS quote from Florida football coach Urban Meyer, who termed the series “not perfect, but…great for college football”.

One of the reasons the BCS has drawn so much hatred and criticism is its perceived lack of concern for what college football fans have vocally and repeatedly expressed a desire to see: a full-fledged playoff system. Personally, I am an unabashed proponent of the playoff, but I have resigned myself to the fact that the university presidents and other powers-that-be won’t change the system until it’s in their best interests.

I am of the opinion that it would take a complete boycott of college football by fans everywhere: one season worth of not buying tickets, not watching on television, and not attending bowl games. Until fans are willing to make this sacrifice so that their voice can be heard, the decision-makers involved with the BCS have no financial motivation to change.

However, this week’s entrance of the BCS into the world of social media gave me hope that at least the new executive director was interested in an honest dialogue with fans, not just regurgitating PR spin.

And perhaps, the @InsidetheBCS account will be used for exactly that purpose. Unfortunately, the fact that it hasn’t in its first 36 hours of existence may have doomed the social media experiment before it even started.

Let’s face it: football fans aren’t exactly a patient bunch (just look at all the second or third-year coaches who are about to get fired before they’ve even seen their first recruiting class graduate). So when a widely-despised entity sets up an account that only appears to be a public relations mouthpiece, the impatient fans pile on in a hurry.

And pile on they did. Twitter users responded to the Meyer quote with quotes of their own, most notably Yahoo! columnist Dan Wetzel, who referenced sentiments of USC’s Pete Carroll (“I think it stinks”), Penn State’s Joe Paterno (“I think we ought to have a legitimate champion”), and even Meyer himself (“The system is a failure. You’ve got to blow it up and start over”).

Some tweeters were polite: “Please implement a college football playoff system as soon as possible. It’s the right thing to do. Thank you.”

Others were sarcastic: “Can you explain why you continue to ruin College Football in under 140 characters?”

Snarky anagrams (“Inside the BCS= SEC’s Behind It”), one-liners worthy of a late-night comedian (“Isn’t it a bit contradictory for you to have more than two followers on Twitter?”), and wondering amazement (“If the balloon boy dad set up a Twitter account, even he would not draw the level of venom @InsidetheBCS is right now”) ensued as word spread of the series’ Twitter feed.

Meanwhile, replies to the questions of the masses were nowhere to be found. As the hours dragged on (an eternity in social media), tweets began to question why the BCS would subject itself to this kind of criticism and feedback without a strategy for utilizing Twitter to its advantage.

A sampling: “You should have known better than to tangle with social media unprepared,” “worst sports media idea of 2009,” and “The biggest problem…is how they’re using it. It’s like they didn’t think it through at all.”

Those questions continue to this very moment. If the BCS does in fact intend to dialogue with fans, maybe change isn’t as far off as I previously thought. However, dialogue (Facebook Page encourages playoff proponents to submit their suggested models, since “this should be fun”, which doesn’t seem to bode well for serious queries), the whole social media exercise is a waste of time and merely opens Hancock and his organization up to more serious and widespread criticism than they faced previously.

Count me among the hopeful that honest, personalized responses start flowing from @InsidetheBCS to its questioners sooner rather than later, and maybe social media will achieve what undefeated, complaining, excluded football teams like 2004 Auburn, 2007 Hawaii, and 2008 Utah couldn’t as their national title dreams were brutally dashed by—ironically—a computer.