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Strike a pose.

OK, maybe not if you're NFL tight end Brent Celek, or any other football player on the field marketing or promoting a product during a live game.

Celek, posed in front of television cameras, mimicking the Captain Morgan pose from the famous rum's label and televison ad campaign.

Former Oakland Raider player Jeremy Brigham is under investigation by police over a pee-wee football fight that left Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty wearing a neck brace.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports, the scuffle erupted when  accusations that Haggerty - whom ex-NFL tight end had just fired as the assistant coach of his Pleasanton squad of 10- and 11-year-old boys - had leaked plays to an opposing team.

Yesterday we looked at how the Southeastern Conference, the NFL, and professional tennis were attempting to impose limits on the use of social media by pretty much every group associated with sports -- players, team and league employees, media outlets, and even fans. Today, we examine 3 reasons that those policies are a losing effort.

1. Fighting consumer demand for new technology never works. The TV industry has tried fighting TiVo and YouTube. The music industry is coming up on a decade of flailing away against overwhelming consumer demand for digital music downloads. Movies may be starting to feel a "Twitter effect" from near-instantaneous reviews of films.

Add sports to that list of entertainment industries that cannot escape the grip of new media technologies. Social media is here to stay, in one form or another, and its use will only become more widespread. Being a fan is an inherently social experience, and fans have flocked to places like Facebook and Twitter as new means of sharing their joy and heartbreak. It's only a matter of time before someone starts going to Yankees games and tweeting every pitch -- and there will be an audience for it.

The policies seem to be fueled by a number of different concerns. Today we'll look at three recent attempts to address social media use, and tomorrow we will examine why restrictive social media policies in the sports world are doomed to failure.
Southeastern Conference: The SEC wants to be hip to social media (see the prominent links on the SEC homepage to its Twitter and Facebook pages), but stumbled badly this month when it informed its member universities of its planned social media policy. Fresh off signing a new and lucrative deal for CBS to broadcast its football games, the conference aimed to protect CBS' rights by declaring, according to Mashable, that ticketed fans could not "produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event."

Translation: no tweets, blog entries, Flickr photos, or YouTube video of football games. Taken literally, this policy might actually forbid fans from even talking about the game with friends.

The SEC backed off the next day, emphasizing that non-commercial descriptions of games by fans would be fine, as long as they did not act as a substitute for radio, television, or video coverage. Still, it took a real pounding in the blogosphere for the conference to change its mind.

Pro Tennis: Did you know that pro tennis (comprised of the men's and women's pro tours, the International Tennis Federation, and the Grand Slam Committee) has a Tennis Integrity Unit?

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that investigators who seized a list containing the names  of over 100 Major League Baseball players in their probe of the Balco matter overstepped the bounds of their search warrant, which authorized seizure of test results from only 10 players. But the major fallout from that violation -- the ongoing leaking of supposedly-confidential positive results -- is not likely to stop as a result.

The opinion by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated that federal investigators clearly overstepped their bounds when, acting on information received in their probe of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative's steroid dealings, they executed a search warrant at the offices of Comprehensive Drug Testing in Long Beach, California, and seized a list containing names of over 100 baseball players (and many others) who had tested positive for steroids.

The investigators apparently used the information gleaned from the list to further their investigations into people well beyond the ten listed in the search warrant.

Prior Bonus Payment Means He Takes Just a 14% Pay Cut

Cleveland Browns receiver Donte Stallworth has received his penalty from the NFL. Stallworth pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter charges after he struck and killed a man while driving drunk. His guilty plea netted him a 30-day jail sentence, and he also made a financial settlement with the victim's family.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell lacks the authority to send a man to jail, of course, but he struck about as hard as he could on Thursday, suspending Stallworth for the entire 2009 season, without pay. Stallworth cannot participate in any team activities until after the Super Bowl.

Coach Still Faces Potential Dismissal Under "Morals Clause"

It seems it's just about time for another of our monthly updates on the extortion case involving Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino. Stories that Pitino had been the victim of an extortion attempt surfaced back in April, without any details to make sense of them.

This week, the sordid story finally starts to come into focus. Karen Sypher has been indicted for attempted extortion and for lying to the FBI. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, the charges arose out of Sypher's threat to Pitino that, unless he paid her for her silence, she would go public with accusations that Pitino had twice raped her in 2003, that she became pregnant as a result, and that Pitino had given her money to have an abortion.

Pity the poor NBA.

The best, most popular basketball league on the planet was reduced to begging in court for a handout from a lowlife gambler earlier this year, and, with a big assist from the federal government, got its payoff yesterday. Or at least the promise of being entitled to a payoff.

No, money's not that tight for the NBA. There is no cash shortage, and there will probably be plenty of $15-million contracts to go around for some time to come. But the league did go to court to argue that it was a "victim" in the Tim Donaghy betting scandal, and that it was entitled to restitution from the defendants, which it was awarded yesterday.

Last month brought a Forbes report on the influence of the massive debt carried by many top European soccer clubs. Despite worldwide popularity and huge revenues from sponsorships and television licensing, many clubs do not bring in enough to keep up with the huge debts they incur trying to compete in the top leagues in Italy, Spain, and England.

The Forbes story notes that some commentators now expect a major shift in the economic model of top-flight soccer. Sports business expert Sean Hamil maintains that "the current model is reliant on high-net-worth individuals subsidizing premier league clubs as trophy assets," an arrangement he calls "unsustainable." In boom times, billionaires may actually enjoy throwing money away on a high-profile sports franchise, but in today's economic climate even the ultra-rich are thinking twice about money-losing hobbies.

A prime example of the high-debt model: Manchester United, said to be the world's most valuable sports club at $1.7 billion, but carrying an estimated $700 million in debt.

Michael Vick's prison sentence ended today with the removal of an ankle monitor used during his home confinement. He has served about 21 months in federal custody. So what happens now?

Vick has completed the confinement portion of his federal sentence, with 18 months in prison and two more on home confinement. He will now remain on "supervised release" for three years, a condition similar to being on probation, but imposed after a prison sentence. If Vick violates the conditions of his supervised release -- fails a drug test, commits another crime, or the like -- he could be sent back to prison for all or part of those three years.

Vick also pleaded guilty to state charges in Virginia related to the dogfighting operation and was given a suspended sentence of three years. Like supervised release, a suspended sentence is usually conditioned on good behavior by the defendant. Once again, Vick will need to stay out of trouble to avoid facing possible imprisonment in Virginia.