Twitter Usage

[javadoc]

You do realize he is our director of recruiting, right? He's not a GA. I believe he is considered part of the recruiting class.

By current NCAA rules there are only 10 people on the staff who can recruit by contacting prospects in writing, and he is not one of them.

 

[javadoc]

Im going to buy season tickets to buttgers this year, register at their rvls site, put an R sticker on my truck and will start tweeting every recruit under the sun. Maybe I can get them in trouble.

That would almost work, except that fans sometimes buy opponents' season tickets simply to get a seat at a game, a la ND when they played at the Dome last time. So there would have to be some analysis of your intent, which might not be too hard to someone who is experienced in crawling the web programmatically and linking up social media information.

In fact, that might be a business idea. Yeah. Kind of a Spokeo for sports affiliation. NCAA submits requests for info on various people/handles and you send back a profile gleaned from public sources.

 

[supp]

The crowd chant example is a good one. I'm not sure it is exactly analogous, but it comes close. The difference there may be that everyone was already going to be at the game, and the recruit happening to be there is more of a coincidence, from a rules standpoint. It's not like everyone went to the game to see so-and-so prospect.

But I agree with you completely on the distasteful aspect of it all.

Except that at least some members of the crowd go to the game knowing full well that the recruit( or recruits) is going to be there. They are often informed indirectly by the coaching staff of the presence of recruits at the game. And the coaches provide this information with the hope of boosting the crowd noise and numbers to make an impression on them and most likely with the hope that members of the crowd will call out those recruits by way of chants and signs.

The staff doesn't name the recruits at the game but the enterprising fan can find out and can tell others of the importance of attending this particular event and making themselves known to certain members of the crowd. I would imagine that some fans do show up at least in part for the recruits. It's not purely coincidental.

 

[CuseLegacy]

#dontcare

"Don't care didn't care.
Don't care was wild.
Don't care stole a plum and pear like any beggars child.
Don't care was made to care.
Don't care was hung.
Don't care was put in a pot and boiled til he was done."

Or in this case the powers that be will simply make you disappear.

 

[PhatOrange]

First, are you going to stand up in the NCAA "court" and say, "But everyone else is doing it." It is irrelevant whether you expect ever to end up in court - are you hanging your hat on that as your defense should the day ever come?

One of the articles I read stated that by contacting a recruit via social media and saying, "Come to Syracuse!" you become a booster at that very moment, regardless of whatever else you have done. There is a very broad catch-all clause dealing with promoting the school's athletics interests, or some such, that would certainly seem to apply to targeted activities like recruiting a prospect via social media. So it may not be difficult to identify who is a booster for this one specific area of the rulebook - if you pitch your school through social media, you are a booster, by definition.

Finally, why did Eric White post a photo of an apple on our field? Didn't mention a recruit by name, after all. Then why did he do it? Too much idle time on his hands from his paid job? That was recruiting, plain and simple, and recruiting of a specific prospect easily identifiable through the content of the post. Mr. White thinks of Applefield, posts a picture of an apple on a field, and the viewer construes "Applefield" from it. It is no defense to say, "Well, he didn't technically spell out the guy's name in writing." He is not a coach, and until the NCAA decides what to do about the proposed rule to allow some recruiting activities by non-coaches, he broke the rules.

Java if the NCAA called me up I'd tell them to go pound salt. They have no authority to ask me questions and I'm not legally obligated to answer them.

You cant punish one school without punishing them all. As Supp mentions below it could be inviting a lawsuit

 

[PhatOrange]

That would almost work, except that fans sometimes buy opponents' season tickets simply to get a seat at a game, a la ND when they played at the Dome last time. So there would have to be some analysis of your intent, which might not be too hard to someone who is experienced in crawling the web programmatically and linking up social media information.

In fact, that might be a business idea. Yeah. Kind of a Spokeo for sports affiliation. NCAA submits requests for info on various people/handles and you send back a profile gleaned from public sources.

The NCAA isn't going to crawl the web and try to find my real name and then analyze my intent? That’s reaching because who’s to say where my fandom lies? I’ll buy some t-shirts and donate a $100 to their athletic booster club.

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

Except that the contact is not accidental, it's willful. A better analogy would be going to a gym where a kid is known to work out so that you can say hello, and pitch your school.

Or just happening to bump into recruit in the hallways of his l school, which by the way is totally legal

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[Capt. Tuttle]

Or just happening to bump into recruit in the hallways of his l school, which by the way is totally legal

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Syracuse athletics has a lot more to worry about with the NCAA then Twitter. However I'm sure this for everyday a North Carolina had a rental s_u_v, some school will pay dearly for Twitter contact

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[VaSaltine]

Is this same topic thread on any SEC school forum?

 

[OttoinGrotto]

First, are you going to stand up in the NCAA "court" and say, "But everyone else is doing it." It is irrelevant whether you expect ever to end up in court - are you hanging your hat on that as your defense should the day ever come?

Yes, and it's actually a great defense because a) it's easy to demonstrate and b) is completely true.

If you want to see the NCAA get blown up, Twitter might be the thing to do it.

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[upperdeck]

lest we forget the rules the NCAA is trying to enforce are created by the schools and the school voluntarily joined it to abide by those rules.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

lest we forget the rules the NCAA is trying to enforce are created by the schools and the school voluntarily joined it to abide by those rules.

That's one way to look at it.

Another way is to view the NCAA as a governing body that now serves its own interests above those of its members, and as such all motivations and actions are suspect.

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[TheCusian]

Bad analogy, unless you knew that the prospect was going to be at the party, so you went there because of that. The whole point of accidental vs. intentional contact is that you seek out a prospect to make contact, be that by going to a party, or going to a gym, or finding out what a prospect's social media handle is, so that you can go to his site and say something. Twitter isn't a giant room that everyone is sitting in simultaneously and you "overhear" everything. You need to go find someone in a room where he is known to be, more or less.

Truly incidental and random contact has never been a problem, and is not the subject of NCAA regulation, I think.

Twitter IS a big room that everyone is sitting in. I follow AJ Long. He tweets about a couple of guys that he is friends with about Syracuse. It shows up in my timeline. I didn't seek out anyone. It's very much like being in a party of loose connections and conversations.

The day the NCAA says that fans can't be in "the big room or party" is the day the NCAA implodes in on itself. There are no rules to govern this properly without being so restrictive that the student athletes, fans, coaches and administrations don't turn it into a free speech issue.

I think that the real problems would arrive though DM in Twitter - a secretive, closed door conversation. Only bad things would come from that, I think.

 

[TheCusian]

lest we forget the rules the NCAA is trying to enforce are created by the schools and the school voluntarily joined it to abide by those rules.

Another way to look at it is that the NCAA predates computers, the internet, and certainly twitter.

If you had said 20 years ago that we could all communicate at once, out loud, publicly - unrestricted? What rules could have been written to combat that effectively?

 

[TheCusian]

Also related - I can see how someone would say that "following" a recruit on Twitter is seeking him out. The problem is that just following PS twitter or Scooouts twitter would put you one click away from their timeline. That's where it gets very problematic, enforcement-wise.

 

[money3189]

Except that the contact is not accidental, it's willful. A better analogy would be going to a gym where a kid is known to work out so that you can say hello, and pitch your school.

yeah but the gym has everyone else in world there, not just you and him. Thats a big difference

 

[UticaCuse]

Is this same topic thread on any SEC school forum?

Or on just about every recruiting thread we have right now...

 

[Rocco]

White never specifically mentions recruits by name. He skates around it. If the NCAA wants to go tweet by tweet and try to decide who is a booster and not, what accounts are real people associated with whatever school, etc etc, more power to them. At the end of the day this is the online version of a person on the street yelling to a recruit "hey you should come to Syracuse" or wherever. Random townie high schooler X isn't paying KJ Williams or buying AJ Long's cousin a car.

Great post BK. Exactly my thoughts.

If the NCAA ever had to come up with the resources to ONLY monitor twitter accounts, determine if they are real or not, determine if they are breaking any "gray area" rules, then they would not be able to monitor anything else outside of the Twitter scope. It is virtually impossible to truly watch all of these. It takes about 3 clicks to create a new Twitter account, so the problem goes into perpetuity.

 

[Libero2]

Yes, and it's actually a great defense because a) it's easy to demonstrate and b) is completely true.

If you want to see the NCAA get blown up, Twitter might be the thing to do it.

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Well to play devils advocate, just because other people do it, doesn't make you doing it acceptable.

I mean what if the NCAA decides to actually crack down on it, and punishes every school in the country according to the number of people in their twitter army. Then what would be your defense for your actions?

Please be advised I assume that the above scenario is absolutely never going to happen. But in the extremely unlikely event that it does, what does one say?

 

[DownTheField]

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2011/07/what_to_do_about_social_media.html

Quote from article: "A new era of NCAA enforcement was ushered in last month. The NCAA has mined the social media accounts of athletes in recent years for potential violations, but only now has the clear message been sent that schools must really pay attention, too."


http://www.ibleedcrimsonred.com/2011/07/ncaa-tries-tackling-twitter-and.html
That one is from 2011, but most of the provisions spoken of would still be in effect, methinks.


http://michiganhockey.net/compliance/
Don't see a date on that one, but it says many of the same things.


And a good summary article with future recommendations:
http://harvardjsel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Blohm.pdf


Now, an angle that I have not seen addressed. It seems that earlier this year, the NCAA was prepared to change the rulebook to remove some recruiting proscriptions. The one that interests me is that the NCAA was going to allow some recruiting activities (including contacting recruits) to be performed by non-coaching staff. That is currently forbidden.

The rule changes have hit a snag:

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/05/ncaa_prepares_for_latest_try_a.html

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoo...icially-backs-off-of-two-new-recruiting-rules

So now it comes home. As I read it:

1. Boosters are forbidden from recruiting, via social media or otherwise
2. Non-coaching staff are not permitted to recruit either

Yet we have Mr. White organizing the Twitter Army - encouraging people to becomeboosters according to current NCAA rules, and violate the rules in the process.


Now I know that there is the crowd that says "you can't police it" and I am not going to change anyone's mind who is already firm on that position, but I want to reiterate that counting on a rulemaking body not to enforce its own rules is a dumb position to take in any walk of life.

Aren't you even a little bit concerned that we have an Athletic Department representative organizing and encouraging the activity? This is not an amorphous, undirected horde of SEC fanatics. Are other schools doing it this way?

I wonder what our own AD would say if we contacted them. Does the compliance department know what is going on?

I think you're purposely misinterpreting the letter of the rule vs. the spirit of the rule. This rule was created to keep shady boosters away from recruits who might have trouble saying no to a new car or a bag of cash. There is no way the NCAA wrote this rule, or would punish a school for "boosters" saying "go to my school", "no, my school is better" either in person or on twitter. Has the NCAA ever punished a school for something a booster did that didn't include some sort of benefit?

I'm just glad you're not in charge of recruiting for basketball or football.

 

[BlackKnight76]

Well to play devils advocate, just because other people do it, doesn't make you doing it acceptable.

I mean what if the NCAA decides to actually crack down on it, and punishes every school in the country according to the number of people in their twitter army. Then what would be your defense for your actions?

Please be advised I assume that the above scenario is absolutely never going to happen. But in the extremely unlikely event that it does, what does one say?

What makes it "unacceptable"? The fact that a hilariously outdated organization wants to have its hands in everything that goes on with all of its student athletes at all times? I don't want the school getting sanctioned or punished either, but I save my sanctimony for things that are actually "unacceptable", like fixing grades and playing criminals and the stuff that happens elsewhere. Some random dude who lives in Camillus tweeting "hey, you'd look good in Orange, we could use a safety like you!!!!one #cusenation" is hardly 'unacceptable', to me at least, especially if that is somehow going to help us in a recruit's mind.

 

[Libero2]

What makes it "unacceptable"? The fact that a hilariously outdated organization wants to have its hands in everything that goes on with all of its student athletes at all times? I don't want the school getting sanctioned or punished either, but I save my sanctimony for things that are actually "unacceptable", like fixing grades and playing criminals and the stuff that happens elsewhere. Some random dude who lives in Camillus tweeting "hey, you'd look good in Orange, we could use a safety like you!!!!one #cusenation" is hardly 'unacceptable', to me at least, especially if that is somehow going to help us in a recruit's mind.

Well I mean it's also "unacceptable" to drive 56 mph in a 55 mph zone. I'm not arguing against you here, just playing devils advocate. I think it's obviously an outdated policy that needs reworking in a twitter based world.

I also think there should be guidelines of "acceptable" types of twitter contact, and "unacceptable" ones.

A simple "Come to SU we will love you here!" Would be acceptable, and a tweet more along the lines "Come up to SU for a visit and lunch is on us!" From Varsity Pizzas twitter (do they have one?) would be considered unacceptable.

How long before something of that nature exists, IDK. But it will happen eventually, because I'm sure message boards across the country have this conversation, and so do universities and coaching staffs. Sooner or later the NCAA will be forced to address it.

 

[javadoc]

I think you're purposely misinterpreting the letter of the rule vs. the spirit of the rule. This rule was created to keep shady boosters away from recruits who might have trouble saying no to a new car or a bag of cash. There is no way the NCAA wrote this rule, or would punish a school for "boosters" saying "go to my school", "no, my school is better" either in person or on twitter. Has the NCAA ever punished a school for something a booster did that didn't include some sort of benefit?

I'm just glad you're not in charge of recruiting for basketball or football.

And the rule that restricts recruiting contact to full coaches was created partly to "even the field" so that all teams had the same number of resources recruiting. They specifically did not want the factory schools to hire 100 people to flood kids with recruiting contact. 10 coaches only, who can do what they can in the allowable time windows. They are revisiting that issue right now, but their simple proposal to loosen that rule is on hold due to some pushback from member schools - UGA in particular, if I recall.

It's not boosters offering cash, but there was a rationale behind that rule, and a horde of laymen pestering a prospect with recruiting contact absolutely flies in the face of both the letter and the spirit of that regulation.

I'm just glad that you are not our director of compliance!

 

[SUFaninNJ]

How did the SU punish the SU students who put on Nerlens Noel flat top haircuts when he went to the Cuse game on his visit? They obviously dressed the part knowing he'd be there and willfully tried to sway him to Syracuse.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Well to play devils advocate, just because other people do it, doesn't make you doing it acceptable.

I mean what if the NCAA decides to actually crack down on it, and punishes every school in the country according to the number of people in their twitter army. Then what would be your defense for your actions?

Please be advised I assume that the above scenario is absolutely never going to happen. But in the extremely unlikely event that it does, what does one say?

I'd say that we got caught along with everyone else, and it was a good gamble.

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