With the ever-growing presence of social media in today’s society, fans can connect with top recruits like never before. It makes it that much easier to see which schools they’re interested in, which ones they are visiting, and how they feel about the schools recruiting them. With nearly every recruit being on Twitter, fans from schools across the nation are taking this grand opportunity to become a prime recruiter for their school. If you ask me, it’s starting to get a little out of hand.
I totally understand fans keeping up with the players that their school is recruiting. After all, the players you bring in now pretty much tells you how your school’s football team is going to be in the near future. It isn’t a coincidence that Alabama has won three of the last four national championships while consistently bringing in top five recruiting classes.
When it starts to go too far is when random fans start contacting the recruits telling them all the great things their school has to offer. Not once, not twice, but just about everyday. What do you think you can tell the player that the coaches haven’t already been telling them? I see tweets to recruits like this all the time, “With your skill set at defensive back and our outgoing seniors, you’re going to be able to come in here and compete for playing time right away!” Even though that may very well be true, if it were, the coaches would have already made sure he knew that, especially if early playing time was something important to him. Believe it or not, even if you are the biggest fan out there, you get absolutely zero input input into who plays and who doesn’t. Anything coming from a coach, who does determine who plays and who doesn’t, holds much more weight than anything you could say to a recruit.
The other way the contact between fans and recruits is getting out of hand is what some fans, though not necessarily the same ones, are saying to recruits when they choose to attend another school. It’s sad when you have people sitting behind their computer calling juniors and seniors in high school idiots because they decided not to play for the team you wanted them to. Does it hurt to see a future All-American decommit from your school at the position they need help at the most? Of course it does, and yes, that was completely directed towards Stephon Tuitt. As much as it may hurt, there is no need to call them names and tell them how terrible their decision was. After all, they’re making the decision for themselves, not for you.
Like I said, I completely understand keeping up with recruiting and wanting your school to land the best players. I also understand doing whatever you think will help the cause. I’d give up just about anything for Tech football to be successful, both on the field and in recruiting. I just find the constant contact between fans and recruits to be useless, and sometimes it may even be harmful. It is definitely tempting to try to convince the recruits to see things the way you see it, but please, let’s just keep the recruiting to the coaching staff.