#7 Recruiting Corner: Universities Monitoring Facebook, NCAA DII Changes

Video Transcript

Joshua: Welcome back to another round of The Recruiting Corner. Joshua
Zimmerman, David Frank, going to run you through this week’s latest news in
recruiting. How are you doing?

David: Doing good. Glad to be back another week.

Joshua: Another week. Sad weekend, sad weekend for us in the Bay Area.
But it’s okay, there’s always next year.

David: Yeah, the 49ers lost, but onwards and upwards. Got a good coach
in Harbaugh, so I’m looking forward to next year already. All
right. Let’s jump right to it. Lots of news this week coming
down on signing day, February 1st, so a lot of moving and
shaking.

Joshua: Next Wednesday.

David: Wednesday. Get started with this big news coming from Georgia
Tech. So, Georgia Tech pulled a scholarship offer from three
star defensive end recruit Junior Gnonkonde, I think.

Joshua: Sorry for the mispronunciation.

David: This is big news, because this guy committed over 11 months
ago, was committed to Georgia Tech, assumed that he was in. Him
and his coach tried to make sure he met the academic
eligibility. Junior by the way, 3.2 GPA and solid test scores.
It still wasn’t enough to get into Georgia Tech. What’s the
takeaway for our recruits?

Joshua: The tough part is even though you have a great GPA, and his
coach said it best when he said, “Well I thought, looking at the
sliding score, he was eligible to play Division 1. Is that not
good enough for Georgia Tech?” And the answer is it’s not. Just
because you have a great GPA doesn’t mean that you’re going to
get into that particular institution. So as a recruit you have
to understand, make sure you understand the academic
requirements of getting into the school. You can be an athlete,
but you also have to be that student. So really understand what
it’s going to take to attend Georgia Tech, Florida, University
of Georgia, anything like that.

David: Excellent, excellent. News coming from Villanova. So over on
Flotrack.org, great running website by the way, somebody was
upset. A Villanova athlete was asked to friend a monitoring
software by the university. So basically, they want to be able
to monitor his Facebook account for any foul language or
keywords or something they need to know about. This is not the
first time that a company has been asked to monitor student
athletes. But it’s an important topic to cover, so let’s kind of
go over some of what athletes should expect in terms of social
media while they are at a university.

Joshua: Definitely. So the software is Varsity Monitor, and you’re
going to start seeing a lot of different institutions do this. A
lot of them already do. More of them are going towards it. What
you have to understand as a recruit, you’re an employee. You’re
an employee of that school, and just as an employer would want
to know that you are keeping their company in the best graces,
you represent that company as a student athlete. You represent
that school as a student athlete. So these universities want to
know that you are making them look as good as possible at all
points in time. I don’t disagree with the fact that schools are
wanting to monitor these students, because social media is out
there, it’s very easily accessible, and unfortunately some
student athletes don’t think before they post. And so if you
were thinking before you post, then even though a site is
monitoring your situation, you shouldn’t be getting yourself
into too much trouble.

David: Right, and this all boils down to last year University of North
Carolina got in trouble from the NCAA for specifically they
said, “Failure to monitor social media.” So get used to it if
you want to be an NCAA athlete or even NAIA, get used to your
social media being monitored and get comfortable with that.

Joshua: Start thinking.

David: All right. Out of last week. So last week we covered a lot of
news from the NCAA. One topic we didn’t get to and I want to get
to this week is the changes to Division II recruiting. Big news
coming out of Division II recruiting. Josh, why don’t you give
us a rundown.

Joshua: So basically Division II, all the presidents met, AD’s and they
decided that students are able to start thinking about schools
and start selecting schools as juniors. They want to be able to
start recruiting those athletes as well. So now, June 15, after
your sophomore year, schools can start recruiting you. Coaches
can start contacting you. And that June 15 date is a set date
for all sports. Where it used to kind of switch around,
different sports had different dates, they went to a set date
for all sports. The other side of that with the contacting is
there is an unlimited amount of contact that coaches can have.
Normally when you deal with Division I, it’s very strict on when
coaches can and can’t contact you as an athlete. Now completely
unlimited. If a coach wants to call you ten times a day, they’re
allowed.

David: Yup, that’s big news. That’s just going to bump up the
recruiting timeline for everybody. Division II, Division I,
everything. So if you aren’t starting early, you need to start
earlier now.

Okay, next topic. Shaq Thompson, huge defensive back recruit,
and Kyle Kaylis, really huge offensive lineman recruit . . .

Josh: Very big guy.

David: . . . both had their recruiting process impacted by Twitter in
different ways. Why don’t you go ahead and explain what happened
and kind of the takeaway where you see Twitter impacting
recruiting in the future.

Josh: Definitely. So basically, Shaq Thompson decided that he was going to
release on Twitter his school list. He was looking at a couple
of different schools. He decided to go ahead and add USC into
that mix as well. Unfortunately, the backlash or the fact that
people didn’t take him seriously on Twitter, he automatically
recanted that statement. “Oh, you know, well if people aren’t
going to take me seriously, then, you know, it is what it is.”
The fact is when you put something out there, people are going
to have opinions about it. Again, it’s a public forum. So you
have to be careful with that situation.

With Kyle Kalis, he pretty much committed to Ohio State, de-
committed one Tressel left, went and committed to Michigan,
which obviously there’s a border war there, very, very, very
tough. And he’s taken a lot of flack for it as well for the fact
that he lives in Ohio and you just don’t do that. And so now
he’s getting all sorts of threats and all that. Everything via
social media as well, and he’s huge, 6’5″, 300 plus pounds. He
pretty much gave out his address. Said, “If you have a problem,
here’s my address. Come see me about it.” And from what he says
no one’s taken him up on that offer.

But the situation with the social media again is it’s all about
thinking. You have to understand, if I put my opinion out there,
people are going to say something about it. And when you’re in
the public like that, you’re a little more scrutinized, and so
you have to be even more careful about what you’re doing. Social
medium recruiting is becoming a very, very hot topic.

David: Yup. All right. Wanted to throw some love to our NAIA friends.
Today by the way, NAIA.org is launching their brand new website.
So go check it out. We’ll have the links in the show notes.
Josh, what’s going to be new at the site?

Josh: Basically, the NAIA, and don’t mind I’m going to read these, they’re
basically saying that it’s an increased focus on the NAIA
student athlete experience with character driven athletics.
They’re trying to integrate membership resources with the same
site for better access. They want to enhance the visibility for
each championship. Real time school and conference searches and
Google maps, which is really beneficial to those looking at NAIA
programs. Real time list of participating schools and improved
video and audio capability. So basically an overall user
experience, they’ve really improved it. They spent the last year
developing this website, so it should be pretty neat.

David: Yup, definitely, go check it out. Okay, Facebook question of
the week, coming from Jordan on our Facebook page at Athnet. He
wants to know, I’ve been e-mailing coaches through your
database, which if you don’t know what our database is, find
out, contact us.

Josh: Info@athleticscholarships.net.

David: He’s been contacting coaches, e-mailing them through our
database, and he’s not hearing anything back. What does he do?

Josh: Unfortunately, Jordan, you’re not doing enough. You know we’re glad
that you like the database. We’re glad you’re using the
database. It’s a fantastic tool. But e-mailing a coach one thing
or one e-mail telling him about you isn’t enough. Try following
up with a phone call. Try writing some more e-mails. It’s going
to take more than one e-mail to get a coach’s attention,
especially since you play football and they’re the hardest
coaches to get contact with.

David: Yup, exactly, exactly. All right. That wraps up most of the
topics we want to cover. Josh, what are you doing this weekend?

Josh: I am actually going to be relaxing this weekend, maybe some surfing,
but definitely relaxing. Yourself?

David: Same deal. We’ve got beautiful weather this weekend on the West
Coast. It’s going to be 70 and sunny, not your typical winter.
So I’ll be outside enjoying my weekend.

Josh: All right, guys. Thanks for tuning in. You know as always you can
contact us at @JZimmy67, @DavidRFrank. If you want to talk to
Athnet, @Athnet, Facebook, just Athnet. Have a great one.

Did Shaquille O’Neal get match payments from the Louisiana tigers?

David: Thanks guys.