As Ohio baseball coach Joe Carbone returned from practice Monday afternoon, he sat down at his desk, pulled out his phone and read an email from a player in Panama.
Every day, messages from high-school athletes flow into the inboxes of Ohio University’s various athletic coaches.
The minute a message hits Carbone’s inbox, the sender’s information is stored in the recruiting system Scoutware among hundreds of similar pitches.
With the emergence of technology in the sporting world, it’s no secret that self-promotion is easy. High-school highlight tapes rule the YouTube universe, and ESPN periodically fills its airways with high-school basketball games.
Even though recruits can establish a flattering online presence easier than ever, coaches are quite possibly underutilizing technology.
Recruiting standards are clearly outlined by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, but what is not as clear, however, is how social media fits into that picture.
Fine lines on Facebook
Although it’s potentially the most popular form of communication among students, text messaging between coaches and recruits is banned by the NCAA rulebook.
Texting is typically thought to be confined to mobile devices, but coaches still have to be careful about how they interact with potential recruits on the Web.
Being educated on what constitutes acceptable online communication is important for coaches, said Tricia Turley Brandenburg, OU’s senior associate athletic director for compliance and student services — especially since NCAA standards are not as concrete.
Anything that can be considered a chat is impermissible. However, as Facebook’s chat and messaging functions have evolved, the line separating a text chat from an email — which is acceptable by NCAA standards — has blurred.
“They have not given us an official interpretation since that Facebook change has been in place,” Turley Brandenburg said. “Three or four years ago, when coaches first started to use Facebook, we had conversations about ‘The message feature is an email, and the chat is a chat.’?”
Although the social network’s messages and chats go to the same place — a message tab in Facebook’s top left corner — coaches have to tread carefully on the chat-email boundary.
Recruiters cannot interact with a potential recruit using the social network’s pop-up chat tab. Also, coaches must cease communicating with a prospect that gets messages forwarded to his or her mobile phone via text message if they find out that is the case.
Athletic employees cannot communicate with prospects in public mediums such as mentioning them on Twitter or posting on their Facebook walls.
In fact, in December 2009, OU committed a Level II NCAA offense when a member of the men’s basketball staff sent out Twitter messages naming three prospects playing in a high-school game broadcast on ESPN. None of the prospects had signed letters of intent, making the tweets a violation of NCAA rules.
Face-to-face online
The prospect of videoconferencing adds an entirely new layer of communication to a coach’s repertoire.
Using technology such as Skype is especially helpful when contacting recruits who are unreasonably far away, such as those living overseas.
“Some of our coaches that do international recruiting do Skype a lot because it saves them money in phone calls but allows them to see the prospect,” Turley Brandenburg said.
A typical videoconference conversation consisting of both video and sound counts as a phone call as per NCAA regulations. However, a rule that seems cut and dry is anything, but when coaches decide to let their fingers do the talking instead.
If a coach opts to use the text function instead of sound, he or she can still look the recruit in the eye when exchanging messages that are considered email.
Both Ohio head basketball coaches John Groce and Semeka Randall said their recruiting tactics involve social media.
“I probably use more Facebook than anything with my recruits,” Randall said. “I’m still kind of an old school coach though. I love the conversation on the telephone. I wouldn’t be opposed to (social media), but I guess time is just passing me by just a tad bit.”
Groce said Facebook is also his go-to social medium but that he is also active on Twitter. However, much of the interaction with prospects is run through Aaron Fuss, OU’s director of basketball operations.
Carbone said his sport is unique in the respect that players’ high-school statistics might not be indicative of skill level, as baseball numbers can be more ambiguous, especially at lower levels. He describes his recruiting approach as very hands-on, emphasizing watching recruits in person.
“I’m one of the dinosaurs where you went to ballgames and you wrote the guys’ names down here and you had what position he played, his address and what’s good about him,” Carbone said. “Now you get a plethora of names, but the scouting service does not give you the value of the player.”
From the Web to the roster
The value of getting a leg-up on opposing schools in today’s market is paramount. With the emergence of technology that can go essentially unchecked by the NCAA, players are more available than ever, making for more competition.
Mastering the social-media landscape can give a program a significant leg up over its rivals, said B. David Ridpath, an assistant professor of sports administration and a former OU assistant wrestling coach.
“It’s one of those things where I’m so old school. We were still discovering the Internet when I was in coaching. The whole social-media aspect that’s gone on, it could be an advantage,” he said.
jr882810@ohiou.edu
