Interesting article on tweeting and other social media contacts with recruits. You automaticall become a "booster" and the contact is deemed impermissible. Be careful in contacting recruits.....
http://www.ocolly.com/mobile/sports/soc ... -1.2848929Social media allowing fans access to recruits
Fans become boosters when tweeting at a player to commit to their favorite school
By James Poling
Sports Editor
Published: Monday, April 16, 2012
Updated: Sunday, April 15, 2012
Kylie McMains/O'Collegian
Mike Gundy said he can't get concerned about fans contacting recruits via social media because it is not going away.
With social media allowing direct contact with prospective high school recruits, fans of colleges across the country continue to commit NCAA violations on a daily basis.
If signing day is approaching, particularly in football and men’s basketball, a quick scroll through a recruit’s mentions on Twitter can see fans of schools he or she is considering encouraging the recruit to commit to their school.
This contact is impermissible according to NCAA rules, said Ben Dyson, Oklahoma State’s assistant athletic director of compliance.
“As soon as you contact a recruit and try to persuade them to come to your school, you automatically become a booster because you are helping a recruit come to a specific institution,” Dyson said. “Boosters aren’t allowed to recruit prospective student-athletes.
“As soon as you’ve done anything to reach out to them, you’ve already crossed the line.”
An example of impermissible contact between fans and recruits occurred with Keon Hatcher, a wide receiver at Owasso High School and an Arkansas signee. Hatcher committed to Arkansas in August 2011, but took official visits to Oklahoma State and Arkansas in January, a month before signing day on Feb. 1.
Hatcher said he joined Twitter last year because Facebook was getting boring at the time.
He has tweeted more than 9,000 times and often retweets tweets sent to him from his 2,941 followers.
During January when he was taking visits, Hatcher’s retweets consisted of Oklahoma State fans begging him to switch his commitment and Arkansas fans pleading him to cancel his visit to Stillwater and remain committed to the Razorbacks.
Hatcher made his final decision after talking to his family and coaches. He said the fans tweeting at him had no effect on his school choice, but he wanted to retweet what they told him.
“I had to show them my appreciation to them for talking to me and wanting me to be at their school to play for their team,” Hatcher said. “At the end of the day, it was my decision. My parents were behind me, (and) my coaches were behind me.”
Little did these fans tweeting at Hatcher and other recruits know they were committing NCAA violations with their tweets.
Not only were these tweets impermissible, some were also morally questionable.
Extremist fans from both schools tweeted rude comments at Hatcher, calling him expletive names for considering the other school.
These comments left by disrespectful fans did not both Hatcher, but had advice for potential upcoming high school recruits who would not like the attention received.
“If they can’t handle it, don’t respond to it or don’t have a Twitter account,” Hatcher said. “It’s going to come. It’s part of the recruiting process.”
The unawareness of NCAA rules with social media and recruits is something Dyson said bothers him, especially knowing his department will not be able to contact every violator.
“It’s definitely a concern, but there is not a whole lot we can do about it unfortunately,” Dyson said. “We try to take the education route where we educate our fans as much as we can, and hopefully they know what the limits are.”
Despite the mass amount of violations, the NCAA understands the difficulty of monitoring social media.
“They aren’t going to hit you with the death penalty or with major infractions,” Dyson said. “In this case, it’s a minor secondary violation. As long as we’re doing the best that we can and trying to make an effort and monitoring those sites, then they are going to work with us.”
A university’s compliance office is unable to work directly with prospective recruits until after the recruit signs, so it can be difficult for recruits to understand how to handle contact from fans (officially defined as boosters by the NCAA).
A way to help prospective recruits is educating their coaches and parents. Kevin DeShazo, founder of Fieldhouse Media and an Oklahoma State graduate, created his company to provide social media education and monitoring services for student-athletes at the collegiate and prep level.
DeShazo has worked with the Edmond school district as well as other schools in Oklahoma on creating a social media policy and educating high school athletes.
“We try to get parents involved in these sessions at high schools,” DeShazo said. “My deal with kids and social media is most of their coaches don’t have a clue how to use it unless they are a really young coach. Most parents don’t know how to use it, so who’s teaching these kids?”
DeShazo has a theory that high school coaches are the key in educating their athletes, particularly during recruiting.
“Coaches play a significant role to the recruitment process,” DeShazo said. “Many times they may be the middle-man. The college coaches are contacting the high school coaches trying to get to a kid.
“We can help the coaches understand that kind of stuff and the parents as well to make sure they are dealing with those things appropriately.”
Although the NCAA’s rule forbidding fans from contacting recruits through social media is clear, other NCAA rules regarding social media can be vague or not updated with recent technology.
Dyson said the NCAA is evaluating changes to the rules regarding social media to update them to modern times. He expects to know what changes will take place when the NCAA’s Board of Directors meet later this month.
“They are going through different working groups looking at the model they have in place and whether or not it is realistic,” Dyson said. “I think they need to look at it and find a workable solution where we’re not inundating the prospects with boosters contacting them.”
Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State’s football coach, said there are positives to social media use, but it can also be harmful to an individual if not used correctly.
Gundy agreed that, for good or for worse, social media use is not going away.
“We’ve had young men who have showed up on recruiting list late in recruiting in January, and he gets 500 hits that night on Twitter, ‘Come to Oklahoma State,’ or whatever,” Gundy said. “There is not anything to concern ourselves about because there is nothing you can do about it. You can’t stop people from posting on Twitter.”
