With more and more players using Twitter, the National Football League released their policy on social media to NFL teams Monday.

Along with this new policy, the NFL has a current policy in place that bans cell phones, PDA’s, and computers on the sidelines, in the locker rooms, and coach’s booths/press box.  This new policy applies to all players, coaches, officials, and football operations personnel.

“League policy allows for the use of social media or networking sites (including Twitter and Facebook) by players, coaches and football operations personnel up to 90 minutes before kickoff and after the game following media interviews.”  (Source: Associated Press)

For those that  follow Twitter and the NFL knows that Chad OchoCinco is no stranger to tweeting his mind.  A few weeks ago, Chad announced that he will be tweeting during the Bengals games.  Regardless of the new NFL social media policy, number 85 said that he will not stop tweeting.

Furthermore the league states:

“Longstanding policies prohibiting play-by-play descriptions of NFL games in progress apply fully to Twitter and other social media platforms. Internet sites may not post detailed information that approximates play-by-play during a game. While a game is in progress, any forms of accounts of the game must be sufficiently time-delayed and limited in amount (e.g., score updates with detail given only in quarterly game updates) so that the accredited organization’s game coverage cannot be used as a substitute for, or otherwise approximate, authorized play-by-play accounts.”  (Source: Associated Press)

With not only NFL players joining the Twitter scene, but MLB, NHL, and NBA players getting involved, it is only a matter of time until the other sports organizations start implementing their own social media policies.  Sites like Twitter and Facebook have also been helping by cracking down on users who pose as a professional athlete by creating a profile using their name, team, or jersey number.  These impostors have been gaining thousands of fans this way and have been leveraging players fame to promote products or companies.