BleedGopher
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per the Chicago Tribune:
Minnesota football coach P.J. Fleck has a dream request for the NCAA: Let him hire a P.I.
“You’d love to be able to have a private investigator on staff and be able to do background checks on every player you have, (on) everything.” Alas, Fleck said, “you’re not allowed to do that.”
So coaches and their support staffs are left to become amateur detectives, especially during recruiting, which now includes the essential task of mining players’ social media accounts looking for bombshells.
It has become a new frontier of recruiting in the last decade or so.
There are cautionary tales everywhere in sports in which an online sleuth uncovers an embarrassing, questionable or disturbing post by scrolling through years of a player’s account and then reposts it. Draft night in the NFL and NBA has become particularly uncomfortable for some players and teams.
The topic is especially on coaches’ minds after Brewers pitcher Josh Hader had tweets from 2011 and 2012 unearthed during last week’s All-Star Game that included racial slurs, “white power” and “KKK.”
College football coaches have cautionary tales in their sport too.
In 2012, defensive back Yuri Wright was a four-star, top-100 national recruit being courted by powerhouse programs such as Michigan when his New Jersey high school expelled him after sexually graphic tweets surfaced on his account. He became a recruiting pariah before eventually signing with Colorado.
Old Dominion dropped running back Shedrick McCall III when it found a YouTube video of him discussing a trespassing incident and using profane language. He wound up at Norfolk State and now shares his experience to educate young athletes. In 2014, then-Georgia coach Mark Richt said he dropped a recruit for inappropriate tweets. Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen had racially offensive tweets from 2012 and 2013 revealed before this year’s NFL draft.
College coaches frequently emphasize their efforts to educate players on social media etiquette. But before they get on campus, coaches must monitor recruits’ online lives closer than ever.
It’s common to hear coaches talk about attempting to avoid recruits with poor character, but they also don’t want a public-relations disaster damaging the university’s reputation.
“People will find something about a kid that happened in his freshman year and you didn’t know that as a head coach,” Fleck said, “and you’re like: ‘I was never told that by the counselor or the coach or the principal or the mom or dad. How was I supposed to know that?’
“We have someone on staff who really checks the social media, Facebook, Twitter, keeping up on all the recent stuff that they have.”
https://chippewa.com/dunnconnect/sp...cle_d5502b43-4af6-5698-91db-81121ff72a81.html
Go Gophers!!
Minnesota football coach P.J. Fleck has a dream request for the NCAA: Let him hire a P.I.
“You’d love to be able to have a private investigator on staff and be able to do background checks on every player you have, (on) everything.” Alas, Fleck said, “you’re not allowed to do that.”
So coaches and their support staffs are left to become amateur detectives, especially during recruiting, which now includes the essential task of mining players’ social media accounts looking for bombshells.
It has become a new frontier of recruiting in the last decade or so.
There are cautionary tales everywhere in sports in which an online sleuth uncovers an embarrassing, questionable or disturbing post by scrolling through years of a player’s account and then reposts it. Draft night in the NFL and NBA has become particularly uncomfortable for some players and teams.
The topic is especially on coaches’ minds after Brewers pitcher Josh Hader had tweets from 2011 and 2012 unearthed during last week’s All-Star Game that included racial slurs, “white power” and “KKK.”
College football coaches have cautionary tales in their sport too.
In 2012, defensive back Yuri Wright was a four-star, top-100 national recruit being courted by powerhouse programs such as Michigan when his New Jersey high school expelled him after sexually graphic tweets surfaced on his account. He became a recruiting pariah before eventually signing with Colorado.
Old Dominion dropped running back Shedrick McCall III when it found a YouTube video of him discussing a trespassing incident and using profane language. He wound up at Norfolk State and now shares his experience to educate young athletes. In 2014, then-Georgia coach Mark Richt said he dropped a recruit for inappropriate tweets. Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen had racially offensive tweets from 2012 and 2013 revealed before this year’s NFL draft.
College coaches frequently emphasize their efforts to educate players on social media etiquette. But before they get on campus, coaches must monitor recruits’ online lives closer than ever.
It’s common to hear coaches talk about attempting to avoid recruits with poor character, but they also don’t want a public-relations disaster damaging the university’s reputation.
“People will find something about a kid that happened in his freshman year and you didn’t know that as a head coach,” Fleck said, “and you’re like: ‘I was never told that by the counselor or the coach or the principal or the mom or dad. How was I supposed to know that?’
“We have someone on staff who really checks the social media, Facebook, Twitter, keeping up on all the recent stuff that they have.”
https://chippewa.com/dunnconnect/sp...cle_d5502b43-4af6-5698-91db-81121ff72a81.html
Go Gophers!!
