Must read about recruiting

[Stampede]

This is a good article supporting my earlier post:


This column was originally published in the September 18th edition of the Osceola. Gene Williams' recruiting columns appear every week in the Osceola.


For most college football fanatics, the combination of the Internet and recruiting is the perfect marriage. Now, fans can gather just about every tidbit of information on a recruit you can imagine. Rivals.com, which partners with the Osceola to produce Warchant.com, boasts a database with full biographical information on more than a thousand prospects with photos, heights, weights, 40-times, quotes from coaches, and high school statistics.

With the advent of broadband (high speed) access fans can even view video clips of the top prospects. Rivals.com currently has several hundred videos available for subscribers, with several hundred more available by signing day. So instead of having to rely on one of the many so-called recruiting experts, fans can now judge for themselves whether a recruit is worth the hype.

As good as the Internet-recruiting marriage is for fans, most college coaches, and even some high school coaches, wouldn’t mind seeing a divorce. With the popularity of recruiting, combined with the demand for instant information, the number of reporters calling recruits has exploded over the last few years. That means top recruits often receive multiple phone calls every evening from people trying to get the latest scoop.

The massive attention given to a recruit, who is typically only 16 or 17 years old, is sometimes beyond what he can reasonably handle.

“The truth is that most kids are ill-equipped to deal with a lot of the notoriety and a lot of the media that is placed upon them at that age,” Tallahassee Lincoln head coach Dave Wilson said.
Sometimes the bigger problem with recruiting and the Internet isn’t so much the new age reporters and media attention, but overzealous fans. Just about every sports website has message boards where fans can interact and make comments on a variety of topics. Most of these boards allow their users to post anonymously.

With the ability to hide your true identity, some users post messages with impunity. That can become a problem when somebody purporting to be a fan of a certain school makes negative comments regarding the ability or character of a recruit.

“It certainly doesn’t help the process much from our standpoint,” FSU recruiting coordinator John Lilly said. “Regardless of what somebody’s opinion is, these are 17-year old kids that have parents, brothers, sisters, parents and friends so you shouldn’t write or say anything bad about them anyway.

“It doesn’t help our cause because so many people are a little bit naive about the Internet and how it works. A lot of times they are going to think that’s our opinion. They see it on a Florida State website and they are going to think it is something Florida State’s coaches said. They don’t realize it could be anybody, could even be somebody from another school for that matter.”

In this day and age of computers, just about every high school athlete has some access to the Internet. If the recruit doesn’t have direct access, you can bet that a friend of relative does. When a school is actively recruiting them, it’s only human nature for them to want to know what fans of that school are saying. Because of that, when a fan makes a caustic remark about a recruit, you can bet it finds its way back to the player and his family.

“I see things that adults will say about kids on the Internet and I think it’s just a travesty the things they say about 16 and 17-year old kids,” Wilson said. “They just don’t realize they are just kids. It hurts the kids and it’s embarrassing for the adults in my mind.

“On these Internet sites, I wish that people would have to identify themselves. I don’t think they should be able to hide behind the anonymity on those sites. I think they wouldn’t get on there and say things, and I think it’s just too easy. It shows a lack of courage to get on there and trash kids just because they choose to go somewhere or because they say things.”
A prime example of how negative comments by fans on message boards can have an impact on recruiting took place late last year with Seminole freshman Aaron Jones. Florida State and Miami were in an intense battle for the services of the Orlando Edgewater standout. He went back and forth between the two schools but it may have been how fans behaved on message boards that made the difference.

“My mom got a (subscription) to Warchant and one for CaneSport and I look occasionally, but she's primarily on there,” Jones said. “She was reading all this stuff on CaneSport and they just had no loyalty to the players. And then at Florida State even when I was leaning towards Miami they never really had one negative thing to say about me. When I was leaning to Florida State they were like that 'something, something - that little punk - and this and that'. I can't be dealing with people like that. Say I miss a tackle at Miami are they going to be dogging me? I don't really need that.”

Regulating what people say on a public message board is easier said than done. In fact, because of the anonymous nature of the Internet, sometimes the person making the negative remark is a rival fan purposefully trying to sew the seeds of discontent. When that happens, it is very unlikely the recruit will ever know the truth.

Even when a message appears harmless on the surface, it can sometimes cause problems. When inaccurate or misleading statements are made on a message board, even in cases where the person making the comment means well, college coaches often have deal with damage control.

“Sometimes it’s more like ‘we don’t need receivers this year’ when it might be that we need three or four wide receivers,” Lilly said. “That’s a hard thing because again they may think it’s representative of the opinions of everybody at Florida State.”

The moral of the story is a simple one. Think before you post, and if you wouldn’t make a negative comment about an innocent teenage kid in public why make them on a message board?