My colleague Douglas Sanders with The Sports Link introduced me to the new service, which strives to make it easier for athletes to connect with their fans by providing “text only once, but update fans everywhere” convenience.  If an athlete sends a text message to MogoTXT, MogoTXT can automatically forward that message to the athlete’s fans on MogoTXT, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and all other websites.

Terrell Owens, Shane Battier, Chris “Beanie” Wells, Santonio Holmes, Jordan Farmar, and even Mr. Holdout, Michael Crabtree, are on board, along with many more athletes and rising journalists.  Some entities use the service more than others.  T.O. is updating the world on his life almost every second of the day…Beanie Wells, not so much.

In addition to providing ease and convenience to athletes, MogoTXT is able to aggregate the fans of an athlete that are located on several different websites into a single large audience to enable the athlete to achieve critical mass much faster for purposes of fan relations, marketing, advertising, etc.  The theory is that the service will empower athletes and their agents to strike better endorsement deals by enhancing athletes’ reach and providing marketing data.

MogoTXT can also facilitate revenue generation for athletes and their selected charities by working with athletes and their agents to feature desirable ads and clickable links to additional content and ads at the bottom of the athletes’ text messages before these messages are displayed on MogoTXT and also distributed to fans on all of the major social networks.

And for the Yao Mings and Kobe Bryants with huge international appeal, MogoTXT can also translate the messages into foreign languages on a near real-time basis.

Best of all, the service is free for its clients and their fans.

Here is a brief re-cap of Santonio’s legal problems since being drafted.  In May 2006, Holmes was arrested for disorderly conduct in Miami, but the charges were later dropped.  The following month he was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, for domestic violence and assault.  The charges were later dropped in this case as well.  Then his record remained quiet for two years, until Holmes was arrested for possession of marijuana in October 2008.  Even with these blemishes on his rap sheet, Holmes has come a long way from being the teenager who sold drugs in Belle Glade, Florida.  I think the star receiver is making a legitimate attempt to clean up his image.  A Los Angeles Times article from Tuesday noted that Holmes’ goal is to become a better example for the kids that now look up to him.

Holmes is represented by Joel Segal, President of BEST’s football division.  I’m sure Segal is up to the task of figuring out how to handle this sticky situation.  He was able to overcome the bad press Reggie Bush received after the accusation that he and his family had taken gifts during his tenure at USC, surfaced in the week leading up to the NFL Draft.  Besides, Holmes wouldn’t be the first troublesome athlete that sponsors invested in.  Just look at this week’s news and you’ll see that most of Michael Phelps’ sponsors are still backing him even after photos surfaced of the Olympic star smoking marijuana.  As far as I’m concerned football is America’s sport, and Santonio Holmes just earned one of the most coveted awards in the game.  I’m confident that some companies will jump at the chance to sponsor the MVP.