NFL teams have an interesting workaround to the highlight rule

The NFL is sticking to its guns and not allowing team branded Twitter feeds to share highlights, which has created some innovation.

When the NBA allows its highlights to be Vine’d and GIF’d, it does something special. It allows for the audience to become further engaged in things they maybe otherwise wouldn’t be so engaged with. If the Greek Freak hammers home a dunk, non-Bucks fans will care because of the creativity that is cultivated from how the highlight is shared.

The NFL doesn’t believe in this sort of independent thought and is trying to block teams from sharing highlights on social media. This has, ironically, festered creativity among social media accounts for NFL teams that might have otherwise not existed.

To protest not being able to share GIFs, team accounts have taken to showing highlights in the only way they can:

The Browns were up to it as well.

You can’t fault these teams for being a little peeved that they have to dance around in the dark to try and figure out the best way to connect with a millennial audience. The NFL is trying so desperately to get its ratings up, but in doing so is starting to go the way f the baseball dinosaur.

Just like baseball, the NFL is failing to realize that the world has changed and people digest sports differently than they did in five years ago. Social media dominates the way we communicate, and that means we can trade highlights easier and faster than ever.

The NBA gets it. That’s why it’s the fastest growing professional sports league in the world. Adam Silver and company know that they can get away with allowing people to share highlights on social media because it enhances the experience. It’s the old adage that if you pirate a song you won’t want to buy the album. That’s broken logic, and the NFL is subscribing to the old way things were done.

Times have changed, and the league needs to either get with the way things are or accept that they’re going to be what baseball has become.