The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Social media has changed recruiting game
STORRS — Nearly 15 years ago when Aaron Smith and Jon Wholley were UConn football teammates, they never could have envisioned how the sport that has brought them such joy would be changed 140 or 280 characters at a time.
Smith and Wholley were members of an 8-4 team that culminated the 2004 season by rolling past Toledo in the Motor City Bowl. Around that time social media began the transformation from being a novelty, especially around college football programs, to becoming a necessary form of communication.
“We’ve kind of grown up in it,” said Wholley, who has tweeted more than 8,000 times since 2012. “I remember in college when Facebook started, so it is a cool way to spread messages and positive energy toward the program.”
UConn coach Randy Edsall has also gotten into the act, posting inspirational quotes, the names of the game captains and scout team players of the week on Twitter. When UConn gets a commitment, he posts an image of the “Bat Signal” on his Twitter feed.
Smith, the receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at UConn, isn’t nearly as prolific on Twitter as Wholley or even Edsall, but that doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate the positive impact of social media.
“I think it does a couple of things, UConn football gets the name out there and it is how young people communicate, they communicate through the internet so that is how they are accessible,” Smith said. “I enjoy seeing Coach Wholley’s tweets about UConn football, it is just showing your personality a little bit and recruits have access to who you are as a person which is just as important as who you are as a coach.”
When Corey Edsall, UConn’s tight ends coach, was in college, Twitter became all the rage and it is used by college programs nationwide to spread the word. Social media has become such a part of the recruiting process that the NCAA deems it necessary to adjust the rules of what is acceptable seemingly on an annual basis.
Not long ago it was a no no for a college coach to have any sort of interaction on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with a prospective student athlete. But realizing that was a losing battle, the NCAA rules were adjusted to allow coaches to react when a high school athlete posts on social media.
“It has completely changed it,” Corey Edsall said. “When I was back in high school it was kind of the start of Twitter and all that kind of stuff. No one really used it, but now you can pretty much get in touch with anybody. It is easier to find guys because pretty much everybody uses Twitter to post out stuff. It makes you go on your phone more which is frustrating at times, but it has completely changed it into something you definitely have to look at and follow.”
There is a down side to the social media craze, however.
UConn has backed off of recruits who made some less than stellar decisions of what to post on social media.
“If the stuff that they are retweeting or saying which doesn’t align with what Coach (Randy Edsall) and the program stands for, we are not going to mess with that,” Corey Edsall said. “You kind of see who they are in a sense and see what their likes are and what they are all about and it gives you kind of a public view of it.
“We talk about it all the time and say you guys have a right to say what you want but just know that whatever you say is probably going to have some sort of reaction whether it is good or bad. They know they have to represent themselves, this program and everybody else the right way and it is something we harp on with them all the time.”
Social media has also made it more difficult to keep under the radar prospects from being noticed by some other programs.
“There are very few secrets out there because 90 percent of these kids are on Twitter,” Wholley said. “Once the kid gets a scholarship from UConn and (he posts that) he is blessed to be offered by UConn or blessed to be offered by ..., 30 other coaches look, watch his tape, find out if he is good and contact the kid. It shortens the network.”