Available/preferred: Microsoft Word, text messages to small group of friends, telephone call, Notes app on phone, internal thought, screaming pillow.
Discouraged/unwise: social media post only “friends” can see, message board posts (depending on content, these could fall in the next bucket).
Self-destructively dumb: open social media posts.
Your wife should leave you or kill you in your sleep: social media posts directed at/tagging recruits by name.
I was married with a kid on the way when this recruiting class was born. I would not want my kids to handle themselves the way some recruits do. But those recruits aren’t my kids and they aren’t receiving my counsel. They might not have grown up in households anything like the one my kids live in or I grew up in. And no one outside of my family cared where I went to college, let alone actively and publicly inundated me with enticements.
I applied to schools. They either accepted me or rejected me. Their word was final. Notre Dame didn’t later write to tell me they found someone smarter, so I should maybe visit Boston College. No one transferred in my junior year, pushing me out of my major.
Sports have gone mad. The pressure of competing for scholarships already drives “travel sports” environments to insanity. Now the crazy parents have personal paydays to motivate them. Enjoy that, parent of well-adjusted yet average 12U athlete.
Some of these recruits, maybe most of them, come from situations much different than our own. They can legally be paid money they need. They might not live in two-parent homes. In some cases, recruitment can become a new battleground between parents. Try adding that pressure to the existing pressure of the situation. Indecision and an unwillingness to disappoint can easily become default settings.
We all act differently under stress, and that’s with decades of experience. I wish I hadn’t posted a single thing about any recruit’s course of conduct. I don’t see what he’s going through. He’s a year older than my oldest kid, who can barely get himself to school on time in the morning and doesn’t understand why I don’t “just buy” him a pickup truck. Pickup trucks are cool. Fuck you, kid. 2011 Ford Focuses are cool enough.
Anyway, where the recruiter kid goes to school, or how he decides should be of no moment to me. It’ll work out how it works out. No one cares what we think, and yet even without the pressure of scrutiny, we still regret or should regret how we acted yesterday.
But sweet Jesus, if you’re on Twitter and posting about one of these guys, arguing with other demented fans, and wishing ill on others based on any of this, you need a serious examination of your mental health.