The football offseason is in full-swing and the attention has, once again, turned back to recruiting as coaches begin making verbal offers at a breakneck pace. This is the time of year where the first commitments start rolling in, and recruitment picks up, building toward next February. It's also a great time for a reminder about social media.
We've preached this many times before, but it deserves to be mentioned one more time. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to contact, pursued or creep on recruits. Be better than that. Let the coaches do the work and trust that everything will work out. Hitting up recruits on Facebook, Twitter or whatever else just doesn't help, and makes everyone look bad.
I bring this up now because we had a "holy crap" moment last night. It's unlikely you've been paying attention to what's going on at Ohio State, but they had a little problem earlier this week -- and that's understating it. And there's a connection to one of our blogs.
On Monday, Luke Zimmerman, manager of Land Grant Holy Land, chastised an apparent Ohio State fan on Twitter for essentially begging for retweets from recruits and players. The man apologized and some even defended him. That probably would've been the end of it under normal circumstances.
Read Luke's breakdown of what followed to get a better understanding of what's going on here. Just a few days after the encounter, Ohio State sent out a mass text to all student athletes warning them about @Bdubstriviaguru, the man Luke had chastised a few days earlier. The school warned athletes and gave them instructions for blocking him on Twitter and Facebook, taking a proactive approach to it all.
Except the problem had nothing to do with compliance or a potential violation; @Bdubstriviaguru is a convicted sex offender. Not only had he been tweeting to recruits and athletes, as well as leaving them notes on their Facebook wall, he'd traveled to the Ohio State spring game, met some of them, then stayed to meet a few potential student athletes the next day.
There's photos, tweets and the like from all this, documented by Luke at our new Ohio State blog. It's an eye-opening event, and an extreme example of someone contacting recruits and athletes. As Luke mentioned, we all know about shady boosters or those labeled as street agents. This, however, is something different -- and something I hadn't seen before.
So, once again, we ask that nobody contacts recruits in an attempt to sway their decision. Yes, it's a potential NCAA violation -- even if the governing body doesn't place an importance on policing it. The practice is also creepy as hell.
Let Mike Leach and his capable staff do the work and follow along from afar. Injecting yourself into the process doesn't do anyone any good.