Recruiting: Have We Gone Too Far?

Recruiting is a grueling, yet necessary, process in college football. Every coach wants the best. Every team needs the best. And every player wants to be the best. From the last second of the National Championship game to the first letter of intent on National Signing Day, all eyes are focused on the next rising star. Keeping up with all of the latest and greatest prospects is a tough task. And somehow, we manage.

But have we managed to let it go too far?

Knowing the names of every high school athlete hoping to make an impact on the collegiate level is quite a feat in itself. Knowing their individual stats is impressive. Knowing the name of the girl they’re dating… That’s borderline insane. With today’s social media, it’s easy to gain access to any and all of the information these players choose to publically share. Sites like Twitter and Instagram virtually eliminate privacy in any capacity. And for the majority of high school students, privacy is rarely thought about.

Since coaches, teams and fans place so much emphasis on recruiting nowadays, technology is making it much easier to keep up with. From the 3 stars and up, we watch every tweet or photo posted by these talented players in delusional hopes that we can influence them somehow. Television programs, like ESPN, frequently use social media to stay up to date on major recruits and their decisions. They paste it all over Sports Center for the world to see. Instead of a coach/player recruiting relationship, it has now become a relationship that involves the coach, the player and the rest of the sports nation. But don’t blame ESPN. We, as fans, beg for it.

After all, media fails to exist without an audience.

The attention that these players receive for making one fairly simple decision doesn’t go unnoticed by future recruits. As if one announcement to the collegiate football world wasn’t enough, we now have announcements about future announcements. Kids (yes, they are kids) now have rankings for the universities they are interested in, narrowing their list as National Signing Day gets closer. Every time a school doesn’t make the cut, we hear about it. Not only do we hear about the schools that fell short, we also receive word on every step of the process. Announcements are made about time frames concerning other announcements that lead to the final announcement.

Confused yet?

So am I.

With the spotlight comes the fame, but it’s not always a glorious transition from hometown hero to nationally focused superstar. After all, there are quite a few schools battling for one player, but only one school that will come out on top. Fans can take a recruit’s decision as a personal attack on their institution. When this happens, anger and disappointment flood social media. The most recent (and extreme) example is Rashaan Evans choosing Alabama over Auburn. According to Chip Patterson of CBSsports.com (via Rivals.com), Evans felt the wrath of what Tigers fans deemed as betrayal:

“It’s getting worse,” Evans said on Monday evening. “Someone actually put out an article about my family’s business telling all Auburn fans not to go there. We are going to eventually start losing money. People are telling restaurants in the town not to serve us. 

“It’s hard for me to go out and chill with my friends like I have always done because people keep coming up to me telling me I made a bad decision. It’s grown men. They are asking me why I did this to them. I told them I had to do what is best for me.” 

When the result of a kid’s choice turns into threats made by bitter and enraged fans, can we now admit that this is a problem?