META: Knock It Off (or how I learned to stop worrying and avoid the Twitter)

Submitted by BiSB on

 

[WARNING: Mod abuse of power and unrequested opinion contained herein. Consider yourself warned]

Stop it. 

Twitter is great. Facebook is swell. MySpace is... maybe still a thing? But for the love of all things holy, and in the name of all that is non-douchy, I beg of you... Leave. Recruits. Alone. 

That's Me

This is about David Dawson, but it's not about David Dawson. It's about Kyle Kalis. It's about Shane Morris and Kyle Bosch and Yuri Wright. It's about 17-year-old kids. They're trying to decide where to go to college. They're deciding on a group of people with whom they want to spend 5000 hours per week for the next four to five years. (Attn: Mike Rosenberg, that's called 'hyperbole.' Put the pen down). This is a big-ass decision.

Remember when you debated this for 10 minutes? Yeah. Kind of like that.

The good news? You don't have to be involved. The recruits can do this ALL by themselves. In fact, your involvement is not welcomed. You're not helping. You're making it worse.

So, with that, I would like to propose that we come up with a few ground rules. 

  1. No tweeting @ recruits: It may be an NCAA violation, though I tend to think it's not. But it's creepy as hell. It does no good, and it can cause huge harm. 
  2. No Facebook friending recruits: They are not your friends.
  3. No commenting on recruits' Facebook walls: See #2 above
  4. No tweeting @ recruits: still no. 
  5. No following recruits on Twitter: This is a gray area, but the bottom line is that these are kids, so err on the side of not being creepy.
  6. No talking shit about recruits on the internet (MGoBlog or otherwise): what part of "these are kids" did you not get.
  7. No obsessing about recruits' every tweet: This is the toughest one, because even if you don't follow recruits, stuff gets retweeted or posted to MGoBlog. I struggle with this one as much as the next guy. But yeah.
  8. NO TWEETING @ RECRUITS: HOLY HELL STOP TWEETING RECRUITS.

/Rant

Comments

Derek

July 10th, 2012 at 6:05 PM ^

That's not a very Clay Davis thing for you to say. You think he has time to check who the tweets come from? You think he has time to think about where they got the material? Sheeeeeit.

E.T.A: Holy hell, I'm five days late to the party. Oops.

Magnus

July 6th, 2012 at 4:30 PM ^

I got a Twitter account to promote my blog because I thought it might make "business sense," but there are often times when I regret signing up in the first place.

Leaders And Best

July 6th, 2012 at 4:45 PM ^

I use mine to get real time news from reporters, opinion from columnists you trust, features from journalists, and humor from comedians you want to follow. I barely ever send out a tweet unless I am commenting on their work or asking questions.

If you use it like Facebook, well you still have no reason for following a 17 yo high school kid.

Leaders And Best

July 6th, 2012 at 4:29 PM ^

But I also suggest adding another:

Out the people who violate these rules. Unfortunately, there are overzealous fans who need to be put in their place, and even worse, rival fans trying to pose as Michigan fans to stir up trouble. These people should be exposed.

CRex

July 6th, 2012 at 4:28 PM ^

Despite the fact every football program out there suffers attrition every year, I firmly believe this year the class of 18 year olds we have recruited will not.  Yes I know that we suffer attrition from enrolled athletes.  Guys who see the coaches everyday to talk about their issues, guys who have to sit a year of they go elsewhere, they leave.  However 18 year olds who do not see the coaches very often and do not have to sit when they decommit are sure to never ever ever leave.  We will never have another Demar Dorsey failure to qualify or a Caleb Stacey deciding to go elsewhere.  

If we ever do, this decommit or even rumors of a decommit on Twitter will RUIN EVERYTHING.  I will be forced to run naked down the street in July because of this rumor and the destruction it has wrought upon the team.  It's July and signing day is just around the corner on Febraury.  We shall never have time to recover from this terrible blow of one possible decommit to our 80 person plus roster.  

I must go now because the nice nurse is here to give me more pills and I have drooled quite heavily on the keyboard.  However I wished to make my opinion known and let you know your attempts to instill calm are neither logical nor welcome.  

Hugs and kisses (and remember I know all your email addresses),

CRex

BiSB

July 6th, 2012 at 4:46 PM ^

I will be forced to run naked down the street in July because of this rumor and the destruction it has wrought upon the team

That's just crazy. It's way too hot to run outside.

AA2Denver

July 6th, 2012 at 4:44 PM ^

It's magnus's fault. He got everybody upset in the other thread now he's all like whatever. /JK

BTW, I've been railing on about not following kids twitter accounts since I've been on here and finally it seems the board is coming around. If your job isn't recruiting and they don't follow you back, don't follow them. It's creeper.

Twitter is cool though as it helps me keep up on research trends in my field. Being the sole analyst where I work, I connect to others doing interesting stuff. I love it. 

Also. Really? Is anybody seriously upset about a rumor? 

LSAClassOf2000

July 6th, 2012 at 4:50 PM ^

I completely agree with these ground rules, and thank you for formalizing them.

The only thing I would suggest is that you make it into a formal video proclamation. Here is some inspiration:

 

 

As for the exit sign, KFC orginal recipe and some biscuits.

 

MilkSteak

July 6th, 2012 at 4:46 PM ^

I don't have a problem with people following recruits on twitter. I personally don't, mostly because high school kids are ridiculously annoying on twitter, but if they leave their feeds unlocked and encourage people to follow them, go for it.

That being said, do not tweet at them, do not read into their tweets, and above all, do not judge them for what they say on there. If twitter was around when I was 17 I would have some really embarrassing things on there. 17 year olds don't have the same sort of restraint and impulse control as they will when they are adults, or even in a year.

Callahan

July 6th, 2012 at 4:47 PM ^

Why don't you just remove all board posts that begin with a recruit's tweet? (OPs only. Obviously, you can't patrol all posts. Or can you?)

The obsession with recruit tweets is crazy. However, many of the recruiting reporters are as guilty as anyone for fanning the flames. I won't mention the name of the reporter who best handled himself today, but let's just say he used to work here and is now on a pay site for a large network based in Bristol, Connecticut. All he did was call Tom Wilcher for a comment when the thing started. There's a lesson to be learned about professionalism.

BiSB

July 6th, 2012 at 4:55 PM ^

Some stuff recruits tweet is actually news. If Kyle Bosch tweets, "I'm enrolling early," that's actual news and worth discussion. But if he tweets "damn, that sucks," we don't need a thread to discuss whether or not that tweet meant that he has decided to give up football and take up needlepoint.

BiSB

July 6th, 2012 at 5:00 PM ^

Another example of a recruiting guy who has done things correctly, I point you to Aquman/Tremendous/Steve Lorenz/Batman (oops, I've said too much), who of late has had several scoops that he has not shared publicly because they weren't the kind of things that were for public consumption. Case in point: 

http://www.michigantremendous.com/2012/06/shaky-commitment.html

Those who speak don't know, and those who know don't speak.

Callahan

July 6th, 2012 at 5:48 PM ^

No doubt. Steve Aquamendous did a, uh, Tremendous job of not adding to the controversy to get some cheap site hits. He deserves a mention. If only the same could be said for guys like MSpeedKills and Kyle Meinke.

LB

July 6th, 2012 at 6:45 PM ^

There was a long series of tweets from a lot of people who typically don't do anything but repackage something they have learned elsewhere. Every one of them walked their comments back, without any thought to an apology to young Mr. Dawson. I am happy that the folks around here were not part of that.

Many of the comments I saw seemed to assume that the coaching staff locks the doors and pulls the shades after the last game. In short, those people have demonstrated a lack of faith in the staff, and by extension the athletic department and the university. I would submit that the fact that the staff isn't bleating on twitter or a blog doesn't mean they are not on top of their game.