College football excitement is through the roof right now as the season is set to begin this Thursday (September 3rd, 2015). If you're working with more than a Motorola Razr flip-phone, you are seeing all of the hype in the form of hashtags, countdowns, hype videos, etc. The season for college football is roughly six months of the year, but the social media element of the game is a never-ceasing cycle. One of the lesser known aspects in college football's social media is the recruiting aspect. Social media provides so many more channels to reach recruits and therefore coaches, fan-bases, and recruits can't get enough of it.
Social media provides coaches with more of an ability to collect and/or destroy "street cred." It also allows recruits to see into the lives of coaches. Obviously, all coaches want to seem cool and trendy with prospective high school athletes interested in the their schools. This leads coaches to tweet about relevant happenings and also talk indirectly about players that they want (NCAA rules are strict about how much and what kind of contact coaches can give to high school players).
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| Tennessee Vols' head coach, Butch Jones, seen showing off some swagger as Tennessee was transitioning from Adidas to Nike. |
Recruits absolutely love the added communication from social media followers. People from all parts of the country are now able to follow them and increase their stardom from local to national. Recruits seemingly eat up all of the attention and enjoy the interactions they have with followers. As the followers begin to try and recruit the high school athletes towards their favorite schools, recruits normally play along and throw fans bones about where they may end up. Recruits now update the nation about who their top schools are and most of them actually wind up making their verbal commitments via their Twitter page.
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| Elijah Holyfield, son of boxing great Evander Holyfield, keeps his followers in the know about his recruiting process. |
As previously stated, die-hard fans love the ability to feel more connected to players and the program. With social media platforms readily available for them, fans feel as though they can actually make a difference in the recruiting process. These folks are constantly tweeting at players, talking about their Friday night performances, and making edited photos of the players to try and win them over for their favorite program. Because of social media, we now have fifty year old men communicating with high school athletes; we also have six year old children reaching out to athletes that they dream of being like one day. Call it what you want, but social media has brought fan bases and recruits closer together than ever before and it does not look like it's going to change anytime soon.
Whether or not social media actually affects the choice made by an athlete, I am uncertain. I do believe that kids want to play for people that want them and I believe that kids love when they are the talk of Twitter. At the end of the day though -- even if they don't choose the right school according to a given fan, we should hope that the athlete chooses the school for more important reasons such as the coaches, education, and parent's opinions.
