Be Careful With Your - Northwest Middle School Library ...



College recruiters take social mediabehavior seriouslyright190500STATE?COLLEGE,?Pa.?—?College football coaches are paying attention to what high school players are saying on Twitter these days.Some players are even losing out on scholarship offers. Coaches say they drop these recruits for bad online behavior.At St. Paul's Episcopal School in Alabama, football players have a new preseason task: the social media talk.It's about more than minding their manners. Coach Steve Mask warns players not to post about injuries. That can scare away recruiters. Players are also told not to announce on Twitter what college they'll?play for. One recent former player posted that he would play for four different schools."He came across as being not reliable," Mask said. "He gets a little joy out of the attention, but it's not worth it."Be Careful With Your?CommentsThis season, Mask is taking his players' online personalities very seriously. He even assigned an assistant to monitor their accounts. College programs are increasingly using social media accounts to?make decisions about a player's character. One wrong comment can cost a scholarship offer.That was the case recently at Penn State University. One of the coaches, Herb Hand, tweeted his frustration about a player. He tweeted that he had dropped another player because of his behavior on social media.College teams want "guys with strong character," he tweeted.Hand and other coaches say they can usually tell if a post should worry them.The coach said posting bad things about women or messages about drug use are worrying. So is online bullying."There's certain things you don't want to be part of your program," Hand said.Players And Their Online MannersHand is not alone in cutting off a player because of the player's use of social media.Duke coach David Cutcliffe said he did the same this year."It's just insane what some of them think is OK," he said.NCAA rules have made it?tougher for coaches to contact a high school player in recent years. Coaches cannot text players and there are fewer chances to meet face to face. Social media have helped coaches fill the information gap in recruiting.Bret Bielema is the football coach at Arkansas. Social media are now part of what he looks at with high school players. He puts it up there with grades and test scores.Bielema said he was interested in one player, but the player's Twitter name was "something I can't repeat here. I just kind of said, what are we doing here? This is about as obvious as it gets about what kind of thing we're dealing with here, so we backed out altogether."Hand said he tries to educate high school coaches. He also tells players how to avoid social media missteps.A player who does not change his social media activity when you talk to him about it can be a problem, he said. "If they're not going to take coaching on this," will they listen to coaching about playing football?Some Things Are Just Not Cool To SayBruce Rollinson is starting his 26th season as coach of Southern California powerhouse Mater Dei High School. He said he started giving the social media talk to players three years ago. He borrowed some of the dos and don'ts the University of Southern California gives its athletes.Some of the don'ts are bringing up race, religion and physical conditions, he said.Freshman football player Chris Lammons said he got the message in high school. He cleaned up his Twitter act, even if his friends did not. He said it was part of becoming a man."When you're growing up, you?probably want to get a big time job somewhere," he said. "They look back at your Twitter account and they?see the things?you're?putting out." ................
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