Cletus take the wheel / From our coaches’ hands / Cause they can’t do this on their own.
National Signing Day is within a stone’s throw (that’s six throws if you’re LSU) and it’s your job to steer blue chip recruits to the right school. Twitter serves as an ideal platform for bombarding high school athletes with promises of effortless sex and immediate playing time. You’ve gathered critical intelligence by hanging on every cryptic word a 17-year-old has tweeted since his sophomore year. Just last Wednesday you learned that "avi" is not just a Windows 3.1 video format. Now it’s time to put your obsession to work.
Hypothetical Example
Consider young prospect Yuri Wright who tweeted, "I’m starving and I want some pussy right now." Would replying with a testimony of your campus’ superior dining facilities and soaring stray cat population influence his school choice? The answer is yes, but don’t get too excited yet. All things that don’t print money for the NCAA must come to an end. Noncompliance threats have made things contentious. Fan bases are divided into factions of helpful tweeters and self-righteous pricks. This guide is intended to resolve the conflict and ferry boosters through murky social networks.
Rule of thumb: You are a booster if you’ve ever watched ESPNU on purpose.
Let’s first settle the basic issue of whether a fan should ever tweet a recruit. Assume that everyone is better off if no one tweets recruits because that’s true. Now assume that so long as T1 lines snake through the Deep South, some guy with a Harvey Updyke Fathead puttied to the wall of his doublewide will tweet recruits anyway. This "hucklebuck effect" complicates matters because while your prized recruit is feeling the love of your hated rival, your fan base is self-policing for improbable NCAA sanctions. This fear-induced position is untenable because a quick survey of the Twitter landscape reveals wholesale disregard for NCAA rules. Athletes will be linking Twitter accounts directly to Paypal any day now. Enforcement against your school would be incredibly bad luck and you’d be licensed to whine about unfairness using publicly available data. I’m not giving you carte blanche to tweet whatever you want, so please use the following real examples to inform your behavior.
The 140-character handshake
@sb_joedavidson @ItsShaqThompson sure does fit the #UCLA mold! Lets hope he makes the right decision and becomes a #Bruin
Freddy Ortiz
Fredd_e_o
Your happiness is inseparably linked to this kid signing with your school. Even though you’ve never seen him play and don’t know his position, he has 5 stars. Your favorite movie Road House only got 2 stars on Rotten Tomatoes. With stakes this high, you should have related to this kid by mimicking his Twitter vernacular. A more effective tweet would have been "@ItsShaqThompson bruh u gon shine wit #UCLA! smdh if u don’t rep blue n gold #GoBruins" It also wouldn't hurt to change your avatar to a believably hot girl and offer fellatio.
5 seconds of fame
@DorialGB5 hey man. I wish u the best luck at your college selection. U r the best WR prospect since Calvin Johnson. Can I get a RT!!
Cory
dacubs13
Few things are more important than college football, but your reputation is one of them. Remember how you felt when you won the Watermelon Seed-Spitting Contest on Field Day in third grade? Well, getting retweeted by your favorite high school athlete will be nearly as glorious. There are a couple of components to catching an elusive RT. First, make sure the recruit has tweeted recently so that you know he’s checking Twitter. This way, you can call him out if he doesn’t RT you within 15 minutes or so. Second, include some information about a hardship in your life. He’s not going to be able to sense how horrible your life is unless you tell him explicitly. For instance, "@DorialGB5 Prayin 4 u even tho I got a hemorrhoidectomy tomm. My grandma said u play like Calvin Johnson right b4 she died. Can I get a RT!!"
It’s a sabotaaaaage
@AzizShittu I hope you get arrested when you go to LA you thug #fighton
Fightin' Irish
IrishEyesND
There’s nothing more nefarious than pretending you’re a fan of another team and taking them down from the inside. I can tell you’re a Lakers fan. You sit in your computer chair stroking the hairs on your pot-belly pig, plotting the downfall of other teams. The fatal mistake here is that you haven’t fully embedded yourself in your rival school’s fan base. You need an entire season of tweets and a premium membership on one of their message boards. You’ve got a handful of tweets and they’re all bashing recruits. It’s pretty obvious what’s happening, even to a kid with a 15 ACT score. You’ll have to work harder to pull off a Hitchcockian masterpiece next year.
Sour grapes
@KeonHatcher4 damn you a straight fool aren't you! Just take your raggedy a$$ to Ok State. We don't need you! #flake
Jeff Ferguson
CallinDemHawgs
If you ignore this guide and the recruit doesn't pick your school, you’ve got to go down swinging. This recruit has personally wronged you by making decisions about his own future. Don’t be afraid to get racist here or say something that would get you fired at work. You have to let this imbecile know that he made a colossal mistake, but you’re happy he did because he sucks. And don’t forget to mention that the 2-star committed to your school is way better than this overrated douche.
I hope the analyses above give you some ideas about how to violate NCAA rules on your own. Make each tweet count, because you could be the one who flips that key inside linebacker. With some persistence you may end up with a 3-minute spot on Finebaum or a statue in that shady area of campus they hide on recruiting visits.
Disclaimer: I wrote this article for the sole purpose of media classification since every person with a WordPress account claims to be press. Now I can tweet recruits freely. You can follow me: @cuppycup