NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

This blog has followed the social media craze in college recruiting from its start.  It’s my opinion that Twitter and other forms of social media have the ability to revolutionize the way college coaches contact recruits.  The medium creates a very open way for college coaches to communicate with recruits in a convenient and timely manner.  ESPN launched a four part series this week to help explain the trend.  Below are some of the top excerpts.

Part 1 – Coaches Exploring the New Frontier:

Unlike Calipari, who said he’d probably limit his tweeting during the season and even have guest tweeters fill in for weeks at a time — University of Kentucky president Dr. Lee T. Todd Jr. has already been a guest tweeter — Beckman said it’s even more important to keep a Twitter regimen during the year so as not to lose any recruiting edge he might have built.

“You have to find time for it,” Beckman said. “It’s just like anything in recruiting. You better find time for it. If that means getting up 30 minutes early or an hour earlier then you better do it, because you have to stay on top of the recruiting stuff.”

“The one thing I like is that it’s a little bit of an unobstructed view,” Calipari said. “They get to know what you are and how you are and how you think without someone telling them who you are, what you are and how you think.

“There’s something there, and Twitter doesn’t even know what it is. No one knows what it is. You know what I’m doing? I’m having fun with it.”

Part 2 – Pushing the NCAA Limits:

Rather than rush legislation to monitor what coaches can and can’t do on Twitter and Facebook, the NCAA decided to apply the rules it already had in place to the new fads.

Just as they can’t speak about recruits, coaches can’t tweet about them. Just like they can’t send them unsolicited text messages, they can’t write unsolicited messages on Facebook walls.

They can, however, send direct messages on either Twitter or Facebook.

Because recruits have to accept friend requests on Facebook or choose to follow someone on Twitter, the NCAA treats private communications on both social networking sites as an e-mail, not a text message.

That’s a huge difference. Text messaging isn’t allowed; e-mailing is.

“The main thing is, the recipient is in control of what they will and will not receive,” said Matt Baysinger, the chair of the National Student-Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC), whose group came down against text messaging. “There has been some frustration from coaches and athletic departments because we’ve gone against text messaging but have said OK to Facebook and Twitter. To us, it’s because the prospective student-athlete is in control. No matter what the recruiting tool is, we want it to remain in the control of the student-athlete.”

Already, though, some coaches are posting clever tweets about their plans for the day: generic plans that will take them to a generic state where one of the top recruits in the country just happens to be playing.

The series will continue with two more parts that I will excerpt later this week, but I want to remind recruits that this medium is continuing to gain steam and there are ways they can use it their advantage.

Recruits can set up recruiting specific Facebook and Twitter pages.  You can update those pages with your latest recruiting information.  You can post a video.  Then you should actively reach out to coaches who are also using the social tools.  If you are already in contact with a coach on a site you can pass along your contact information.

One new hidden trick is the introduction of Facebook vanity url’s (they already exist for Twitter).  The shorter URL structure ex.) facebook.com/recruitBrianDavidson or Twitter.com/recruitBrianDavidson, allows athletes to add their recruiting specific page to their current athletic resume.

Remember any way to pro-actively contact college coaches is a good way!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 10:45 am and is filed under Athletic Scholarships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.