Loudoun County, Va. — The recruitment process for prospective student-athletes is like a dance between two sides: the high school recruit and the college coach. High school recruits are trying to sell their skills to colleges coaches, while college coaches are trying to sell their programs to high school recruits. Since both sides must come to a mutual agreement if the PSA is to land at the school, both sides must do their homework in screening the other.
I sat down with student-athletes during my research, and according to them, Twitter is the easiest way for college coaches to pre-screen a PSA’s character and attitude before even taking a serious look at the student-athlete’s academic or athletic success.
High School Student-Athletes Use Twitter to Build Relationships
The NCAA currently limits the use of text messaging, phone calls and both on and off campus visits between prospective student-athletes and college coaches, yet the NCAA has been slow to catch up with the incredible rise in popularity of Twitter, so direct messaging between the two parties is currently limitless.
Since mobile phones are so popular among high school student-athletes and since direct messages can appear as notifications on a cell phone’s home page, just like a text message, Twitter has become the new it tool for communication between high school student-athletes and college coaches.
One of the recruits I spoke with followed a team’s coaches and exchanged a few preliminary direct messages with them after attending a camp at their school. Within 24 hours one coach – of a perennial FBS football powerhouse – responded to him which told the student-athlete the coach was actually interested in recruiting him. Throughout the two years of his recruitment by this university, he never waited more than 48 hours for a response from the coach through direct message on Twitter.
This instant gratification is the new necessity according to the four student-athletes I talked to. Each one of them said they would have dropped a college off their interest list if the coach did not respond to one of their direct messages within four days. Just five years ago, PSAs were sending college coaches handwritten letters and waiting weeks for a possible reply letter. Now, college coaches have less than 100 hours to hit send to their response message on Twitter. This means college teams must educate their coaches – some who have been coaching since before the introduction of the computer into homes much less the internet or social media – on how to quickly and effectively communicate with recruits on Twitter.
#LT “Most importantly, apart from not posting anything dumb, use Twitter as a tool to build relationships with coaches” #SocialMediaRecruits
— Owen Gotimer (@BigO_Gotimer) June 10, 2016
High School Student-Athletes Market Themselves Through Twitter
Rather than passively sitting back hoping college coaches notice them, today’s prospective student-athletes go out of their ways to “market themselves” to the schools they are interested in. They tweet about their athletic and academic success and about their personal lives so that college coaches can get a better picture of who they are – not only as students and athletes but – as people, as well.
This means college coaches can use Twitter as a way to pre-screen PSAs from the comfort of their homes. If a student-athlete is willing to put his true self online – which all of my interviewees agreed is the case – a college coach can learn about his character and whether or not he will fit in with the current team at the click of a button.
The recruitment process is as much about who these student-athletes are as people as it is about what skills they possess on the field. This instant background check means college coaches can better avoid dealing with problems caused by their recruits in the future.
#LT “College coaches will either like you more or less once they see you online. So be authentic, but be positive.” #SocialMediaRecruits
— Owen Gotimer (@BigO_Gotimer) June 9, 2016
Red Flags on Twitter Lead to Athletic Doocing
While student-athletes can take their self-presentation into their own hands more easily on Twitter now than through handwritten letters then, the immediacy and widespread nature of Twitter means recruits can create their own collegiate athletic opportunities as quickly and as easily as they can ruin them. Through conversations with student-athletes, a number of red flags emerged which they felt would lead to a college coach dropping them, or athletically doocing them, off the college’s recruitment list.
References and pictures of alcohol are the biggest issue for a PSA online. It does not even have to be a picture of the recruit drinking, but simply a picture of alcohol that the recruit is tagged in when the recruit is underage. The recruit might not have even been at the party where the picture was taken. Simply being affiliated with underage drinking – and even excessive legal drinking – is, in the eyes of these student-athletes, enough to get athletically dooced.
This is because college coaches fear the actions of the high school student-athletes will not change once they arrive on campus and that pictures of their student-athletes – in team apparel, drinking or abusing drugs on campus – will spread through the Twitterverse, even just at the local level, which could negatively affect the presentation of the coach’s team.
#LT “If you’re going to be a S-A you have to think hard about your choices online & how they could affect your team” #SocialMediaRecruits
— Owen Gotimer (@BigO_Gotimer) July 5, 2016
If you want to join the conversation, use #SocialMediaRecruits on Twitter or Facebook.
This blog is the second of a five-part series on the effect of social media on the recruitment of high school student-athletes. While the series hopes to explain certain aspects of social media use in college recruitment, it is not an inclusive study of everything everyone must know about the process and issues faced in online recruiting:
- Introduction: Social Media Has Changed the Recruiting Landscape
- How Do Athletes Use Social Media During Recruitment?
- How Do Bridge Builders Use Social Media During Recruitment?
- How Do College Coaches Use Social Media During Recruitment?
- Conclusion: Pros of Social Media Use Outweigh the Cons
