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NCAA Adds Strange Social Media Legislation That Could Change Recruiting Forever

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The NCAA adds new legislation every year. Most of which goes entirely unnoticed, until they go drop a bomb like banning satellite camps. But on Wednesday, one specific legislation was proposed that may have a big impact on social media and the recruiting world as we know it.

On social media (mostly Twitter), coaches are allowed to follow and DM (direct message) recruits. However, due to previous NCAA rules, coaches could not interact with their personal twitter feed in the form of “liking” or “retweeting” a recruits content – that is until they officially signed their national letter of intent.

But now the NCAA has changed their stance. A new rule that will go into effect in August will allow ANY athletics department staff member to take actions on a recruits social media platform.

For a visual: This would have allowed Mike Holder (who doesn’t have a twitter) to retweet and like Mason Rudolph’s twitter commitment on social media. Weird, right?

So what the heck was the reasoning behind the change?

The long story short: The NCAA had absolutely zero way of enforcing the current social media policies that were in place. This new legislation will “establish exceptions to the prohibitions on endorsements of events that primarily involve prospective student-athletes.”

So rather than getting the same ol’ “Pistols Firing from my barn!” tweet from Mike Gundy after a commitment, he’ll now be able to share a players commitment – or any tweet for that matter – on his page by retweeting or liking through that interaction.

I could go on for awhile about the topic because there’s many implications behind it. But two topics I see as potential sticking points for me are as follows:

  1. As of now according to 247sports, Oklahoma State has offered 81 prospects in the 2017 class. Does Mike Gundy retweet each time a player announces they’ve been offered – or how does he filter out which he does/doesn’t? (Aside – he probably SHOULD re-tweet that interaction, it would be dumb not to share with 50,000 plus if it isn’t a NCAA violation.)
  2. How big of a raise will Gundy’s executive assistant (or whoever runs his page) get once August comes around?!

Kidding aside, in the new age of social media, I anticipate this new rule could forever change the game when it comes to recruiting prospects. Not only will coaches need to be good coaches, but they’ll also need to be somewhat tech savvy in order to adapt to the new form of communication being allowed by the NCAA. By allowing this type of interaction on social media, it will be difficult for coaches to try and filter which tweets to share and which not to share. Which could make it a competition among recruits and the whole “he retweeted this guy but didn’t retweet me” argument. As weird as it sounds, it exists. Trust me.

Once August rolls around and these interactions are allowed, social media may have a whole new look to it with coaches interacting with players in a way that has never been allowed before.

Like I said, this new rule could change the recruiting game forever.

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