Indiana Coaches, Players React To Social Media Recruiting Changes

Depending on the time of day you opened this article, there’s a solid chance you’ve checked your social media account at least once – in fact, you might have even found this story on it.

There’s also a good chance the college coaches from your favorite team are scrolling through their timeline with you.

Nearly two weeks have passed now since new recruiting rules affecting communication between college football coaches and prospects went into effect, and so far the results seem to be mixed.

One of those guidelines thought to be a game-changer was NCAA Proposal 2015-48, which allows coaches to “retweet,” “like” or “favorite” a recruit’s social media posts. Coaches are not allowed to add their own thoughts to posts, however – so the easy way to summarize the rule is “click, not comment."

On Aug. 3 – just two days after the rules went into effect - Indiana safeties coach and defensive recruiting coordinator Noah Joseph noted that his Twitter timeline had “flooded” with coaches sharing prospects’ posts.

“I don’t know my thoughts on it right now,” Joseph said. “You used to follow a bunch of coaches just to see what they’re doing and where they’re at, so you kind of stalk them a little bit and monitor them – but now everybody’s retweeting stuff and it’s like ‘holy smokes.'

“We have recruiting people in place that can like and share and favorite. If a young man is going to base his decision on how many followers a university gives him on Twitter, or if every coach is favoriting his stuff, honestly he’s probably not going to be successful as a football player at a major university.

“Does it help us to do it? Yeah, so we need to do it. But if that’s the deciding factor, we need to recruit another individual.”

“Like” it or not, though, the sharing could become a necessary evil for recruiters going forward. The rise of social media isn’t going anywhere soon, as each recruiting cycle passes with more prospects that have now grown up with the technology and don’t understand what life was like without it.

Senior offensive lineman Dimitric Camiel – who graduated in the class of 2012 from Houston (Texas) Westfield High – has observed changes in the incoming kids just in his time in college.

“Now kids want to project it more so,” Camiel said. “I see Bleacher Report, I see guys jumping out of planes [for commitment videos].

“There was a cornfield or something that was spray painted with the team. That was cool. Whatever they feel, I guess they feel like it should be more projected and they’re taking pride in their school, so that’s cool.

“But it’s a big change. When I got here [senior lineman] Dan Feeney didn’t even have an Instagram. I don’t even know if Snapchat was invented. A lot of people were still on Facebook.”

Both Camiel and senior wide receiver Ricky Jones agreed if such a rule was passed in their recruiting process, it wouldn’t have affected their decision making. It’s important to note, though, as Camiel did say – the kids coming into college now are different.

It might be hard to imagine, but Camiel and Jones as just seniors in college could represent an “old guard” with a shift in the popularity of social media and the different apps.

“That’s never been my thing,” the lineman said. “I see it [recruiting] as dating.

“I hope not too many people go and try to date someone just by social media – go up to them, have a conversation. The whole social media thing, I feel like it’s more for everybody else to see instead of your own personal thing. So having coaches call me, that was better for me than social media shoutouts.”

“At the end of the day it was who was calling the most and who was interested in you and how you kept a connection,” Jones added. “If a coach retweets you, maybe it’s not even him on social media.

“But if a coach is calling you and texting you, that shows that they care about you.”

While the social media rule change received all the buzz from media members, it’s another adjustment – NCAA Proposal 2015-51 – that early on seems to be a success.

That rule eliminated any restrictions on electronic communication between recruits and their parents or legal guardians. In essence, coaches now have unlimited texting rights with prospects and their parents.

Defensive coordinator Tom Allen noted previously he sometimes tried to communicate with prospects via Twitter direct messages, and if a kid didn’t have a great Wi-Fi signal at his house, that limited their ability to connect – thus, making the new texting change a positive one.

Joseph sided with Allen’s assessment there.

“All we’re doing here at Indiana with social media is, it’s now a tool for us to market and brand our program and what we do,” Joseph said. “Whereas in the past, it was a big tool for communication.

“Now with the texting rule, I know I rarely use Twitter to communicate because you can text back and forth, which personally for me I like a lot better.”

All the constant rules adjustments might seem like a lot to juggle, and an added workload for a profession that already demands a ton of hours. Joseph concluded, though, that some things in life really never change.

Even with the social media wave.

“One of my mentors [college coach] Dan McCarney told me when I was a young GA [at Iowa State] – and he was a great recruiter as an assistant and as a head coach – he told me recruiting is like shaving; you miss a day and you look like a bum," Joseph said. “I think it’s always been that way, but now it’s just more out there instead of behind the scenes.

"The volume and what you have to do to be a good recruiter, I don’t think that’s changed.”