Loudoun County, Va. — Twitter is the way high school student-athletes and college coaches communicate. Limitations placed on phone calls and text messages and expenses incurred and time spent on face-to-face meetings have created a shift in traditional recruiting measures to new-school recruiting tactics headlined by the use of Twitter’s direct message feature.
Direct messages, like text messages, push notifications to a mobile phone’s homepage, but for some reason the former is still legal under NCAA regulations.
Face-to-face meetings allow coaches and prospective student-athletes to learn basic personality characteristics about each other, but every coach, athlete and recruiter interviewed in the research argued that Twitter offers a similar enough insight into one’s character and self-presentation. Twitter is legal, cheaper, faster and, now, the most common way for PSAs and college coaches to connect and initiate the recruitment process.
Twitter as a Pre-Screening Tool
An early hypothesis in my research was that Twitter would prove to be a bigger hindrance in the recruitment process than an aid. However, that hypothesis is outdated and much less relevant now than in the early 2010s when Twitter was popularized.
Prospective student-athletes are smarter online now than they were then, and while some recruits continue to get athletically dooced, high school student-athletes have a basic understanding of the consequences they will face for tweeting red flag topics and tend to avoid the taboo in order to stay in the good graces of college coaches.
College coaches still actively pre-screen recruits before moving deeper into the recruitment process because of Twitter’s effectiveness in reflecting a PSA’s offline self-presentation, character and attitude, but mistakes by student-athletes in the past have opened up the eyes of current and future recruits into making smarter decisions about what kinds of things they tweet and what they like and retweet.
The recruits understand the impact their tweets can have if they end up in front of the wrong people, thus self-present in a way they feel is appropriate in front of even the most damning nightmare reader.
Character Improvement is Key to College Coaches
College athletics in the United States is such a money-driven industry that coaches have to heavily weigh the pros and cons of each decision they make because university athletic departments have to report to a board of directors and financial donors, about their budgeting decisions. This means doing the small things like scrolling through a prospective student-athlete’s Twitter account looking for red flags and making sure the student-athlete is not going to embarrass himself, his coach, his team, or his university when he steps foot on campus.
The college coaches have a job and obligation to put together a team of student-athletes who accurately represent the community and university whose colors they don. The fastest way for a coach’s, team’s, and university’s reputation to be tarnished by a student-athlete is for that athlete to post something negative on Twitter for the Twitterverse to see, retweet, converse about, and judge.
An initial Twitter screening does not erase the necessity of a face-to-face meeting with a PSA and college coach, but it is an effective way to narrow down a school’s list of potential recruits. College coaches can and do eliminate the recruits where red flags on Twitter constantly pop up, but just because a red flag does not pop up on Twitter, does not mean the PSA has good character. Similarly, just because one red flag does pop up on Twitter, does not mean the prospective student-athlete has bad character.
A PSA’s good character on Twitter is only important if it effectively reflects the character of the recruit offline. College coaches have always sought student-athletes with good character and social media has not changed, but simply amplified, the expectations.
College coaches understand teenagers will make mistakes. But what is important is keeping the mistake from a world audience and making sure the student-athlete is taking the time to learn from the mistake. College coaches are not oblivious to the actions of a stereotypical high school student – illegally drinking alcohol underage, throwing house parties when parents are out of town – but college coaches do expect a level of maturity and awareness to keep certain actions offline.
Prospective Student-Athletes Should Avoid Micro-Celebrity Status
Unless a student-athlete makes it big time as a collegiate athlete, he can assume he will never reach celebrity status, and even as the big man on campus, his micro-celebrity1 is more likely to hurt than help him. College coaches want to get to know who you are, but they do not want to know, nor do they want the whole world to know, every single detail of your life. Being a micro-celebrity means you have to keep up a certain reputation and self-presentation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and with academics and athletics taking up the majority of a collegiate student-athlete’s schedule, there is little to no time to remain a micro-celebrity.
Prospective Student-Athletes Must Remain Public on Twitter
At the time of this research, college coaches can not follow recruits on Twitter, so they cannot access the Twitter account of a private recruit. However, college coaches enjoy the ability to pre-screen recruits on Twitter early in the recruitment process, so by privatizing his Twitter handle, a PSA could be hindering his chances of even making a college coach’s list of potential recruits.
Prospective Student-Athletes are More Than Self-Presenters
Erving Goffman hit the nail on the head when he suggested individuals present themselves differently based on the social situations they face; Twitter is just another social situation.
In front of his friends, a PSA will act like a friend. In front of his family, a PSA will act like a son and brother. In front of a college coach, a PSA will act like a teammate, student and upstanding member of his community. But on Twitter, the PSA is in front of the world.
This context collapse2 means the prospective student-athlete must juggle being a friend, family member and recruit all at the same time. And the student-athlete never gets a break from his self-presentation as Twitter is an endless social situation. The student-athlete might delete his Twitter account or unretweet a red flag, but at the end of the day, if the wrong person saw the wrong tweet at the wrong time, a college coach might have to athletically dooce him.
If you want to join the conversation, use #SocialMediaRecruits on Twitter or Facebook.
This blog is the last 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
Works Cited
1Marwick, A. (2013). Status Update: Celebrity, publicity, and branding in the social media age. London: Yale University Press.
2Marwick, A. and boyd, d. (2010). “I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience.” New Media & Society, 13(1), pp. 114-133.
