The Philly Wings of the NLL Network will be reinforcing the importance of social media for sports teams in a fairly clever and most likely effective manner.  The team announced today that the team will be using jerseys for their game on February 2nd 2012 which will have the players Twitter handles printed on the back where their last names would usually be.

According to the NLL’s official website:

Every player on the Wings roster will have his Twitter handle stitched onto the back of his jersey, in place of traditional last names, as an effort to help increase engagement and awareness for use of the social media tool. The Wings front office staff will require each player on the team to create and/or maintain a Twitter account and will be holding a formal Twitter training session prior to the start of the season.

The Wings will be the first American professional sports team to use Twitter handles in place of last names on their jerseys. Following the game, the one-of-a-kind, game-worn jerseys will be auctioned off to fans, with proceeds benefitting @AmericanCancer.

I have to admit that first I was skeptical, but for one game only it will be a pretty good test run to see what effect it can bring to the team’s social media efforts.

Story via The Post Game