While celebrities have always been popular fodder for the gossip sites, athletes who act like celebrities, especially those that hang out with celebrities have now been grabbing some of the attention.  Recently pictures of Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart hanging out with ever present friend Nick Lachey earned him some flack- mainly concerning his evident encouragement of underage drinking.  While it’s hard to blame him given the physique of some of his friends, it is also behavior that a franchise would rather not see their starting quarterback participating in.  It was only through some intense investigating (and potential stalking) that the site determined the women were underage.  And it is not too likely that this issue will be pursued much further than a public admonition and a stern glare in his direction.

I’m sure most college students have heard the nightmarish stories of students getting in trouble because of pictures posted on an online profile, or through any number of internet venues that publish personal information.  Be it a parent warning you to keep your name out of the paper or a friendly RA looking out for your best interests, the tales of undergraduates getting caught because of the internet are rampant.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.  For every student getting a slap on the wrist for some harmless underage drinking, there is a story of someone recovering stolen property, or police solving a petty crime because of an overconfident Facebook posting or careless heed of the reach of the web.  And the web’s reach has now made its way to college athletics.

The website that posted the Leinart photos is actually not primarily devoted to exposing celebrities or even athletes.  It’s a self proclaimed “reality” site with the intent of exposing “ordinary” people.  Apparently there are web surfers so hungry for internet gossip that they are willing to pore through photos of some stranger from Nebraska who got a little to inebriated. 

In any case, they stumbled onto a little nugget while covering a boozefest at the University of Arizona.  They put up a video of a Wildcat football player committing a sexual act on an obviously inebriated woman.  An act that is too crude to even write about.  A few days later, the Tucson Citizen reported that the player, Josh Lewis, had been dismissed from the team.  While the specific reason wasn’t sited, it can be assumed that it had something to do with the player’s delinquent promiscuity.  But even more illuminating is the fact that it’s obvious that the internet is going to have a profound effect on the future of college sports.

These days, everyone has a camera phone, most have a digital camera, and the devoted gawkers have video cameras, too.  It seems that, as a society, we are trying to make sure that every conceivable captivating event (and some that aren’t that interesting at all) can be saved, uploaded and shared with millions of your closest friends.  While anybody getting caught in the act of something wrong or illegal cannot blame anyone but themselves, they will have to be especially careful given this newfound scrutiny.  Just attending a simple house party will require the covertness the equivalent to Lindsay Lohan attempting to go to a bar.