If you aren't familiar with the new NCAA social media rules that went into effect the night before last, here's a quick rundown from FOX Sports:
...[A] new NCAA rule went into place which, of every NCAA rule, might be the most bizarre and confusing one yet.
What is it? Well, it’s about how coaches can now interact with recruits on Twitter. You see, back in the old days (like say, 24 hours ago) coaches weren’t allowed to interact with recruits at all on social media, until they had signed a letter of intent.
Now however, they are allowed to ‘like’ and ‘retweet’ the tweets of the players they’re recruiting, but still aren’t allowed to respond or comment to them.
It's a rule that's garnered a lot of attention, mostly because it's the logical equivalent of "Gremlins make great pets as long as you actively ignore everything about them and only feed them at highly specific times."
Anyway, ESPN kept track of how many times SEC coaches retweeted recruits on the first day of the new rule being in effect, which is only really notable because Butch Jones is trying really, really hard not to lose his job. Still, we at Eleven Warriors thought it might be instructive to see how coaches in the Big Ten adapted to the new rule, so I've made up a handy graph to help you out. A few caveats before, though; this only factors in the personal accounts for the head coaches.
While many of these coaches didn't even bother with making a kid's day brighter though a simple retweet, you can rest assured that one of their assistant coaches or various other staff probably did at some point during the day. So it's important to understand that this graph is more about how these coaches interact with social media in general, rather than how much their program is willing to kowtow to teens.
| Coach | 1st Day Retweets | Social Media Awareness Level |
|---|---|---|
| PAT FITZGERALD (NW) | 17 | Super-freaking high. Maybe too high. |
| MIKE RILEY (NEB) | 14 | Higher than pretty much anyone expected. |
| LOVIE SMITH (ILL) | 7 | As high as it needs to be for him to look like he's attacking a new job with gusto. |
| JIM HARBAUGH (MICH) | 5 | Thirsty, but with the attention span of a month-old kitten. |
| MARK DANTONIO (MSU) | 1 | He got one off, but hated every minute of it. |
| KEVIN WILSON (IND) | 1 | He logged in, at least. |
| CHRIS ASH (RUTG) | 0 | Paper trails are frowned upon in New Jersey. |
| JAMES FRANKLIN (PSU) | 0 | Surprisingly low. |
| URBAN MEYER (OSU) | 0 | Like Saban, prefers to let brand speak for itself. |
| PAUL CHRYST (WISC) | N/A | No Twitter account. |
| TRACY CLAEYS (MINN) | N/A | No Twitter account. |
| D.J. DURKIN (MD) | N/A | No Twitter account. |
| KIRK FERENTZ (IOWA) | N/A | No Twitter account (has punter.com account, though). |
| DARRELL HAZELL (PUR) | N/A | No Twitter account. |
A few quick observations:
- I love that Mark Dantonio did it once and said "Screw this, Hallmark Channel's got a Columbo rerun on."
- Pat Fitzgerald says that he's going to try and keep the RTs to a minimum and then goes ahead and does it more than anyone else in the conference.
- This whole thing makes Harbaugh's feed considerably less entertaining and therefore he needs to knock it off.
- Ferentz needs to get a Twitter account just so he can do absolutely nothing with it. Egg avatar and everything.
Finally, what's telling about this is that there appears to be at least some kind of limit to the kind of advantages that coaches will try and take advantage of when it comes to recruiting. At least, until Jim Harbaugh puts a little too much Red Bull in his milk at dinner and ends up retweeting something from every high school football player in the country. Then all bets are off.
