Notre Dame football: Irish recruits and coaches react to new rules

Notre Dame football coaches and recruits are taking advantage of new rules implemented by the NCAA that take the recruiting process into the 21st century.

Ladies and gentlemen, a new era has dawned. As of 12 a.m., Aug. 1, 2016, college football coaches can now officially like, retweet and tag recruits on social media. For the full rundown of all the changes, click here and here.

But if all you want is the Cliffnotes version, here’s what’s going on: Before today, coaches could follow recruits and privately message them, but could not publicly acknowledge them online. That led to a lot of subtweeting and not-so-subtle messages, including Brian Kelly’s standard tweet whenever a recruit committed to Notre Dame.

That’s done. Basically, the NCAA threw its hands up and admitted it couldn’t possibly monitor everyone, and so now coaches and players will be interacting all the time on social media. But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t some insanely specific rules.

Notre Dame’s recruiting department has been pushing social media for quite some time with the hashtag #IRISHEL17E and #IrishBouND18, but even still, things are definitely different now.

Mike Elston, ND’s linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator, has gone wild on Twitter, RT’ing just about anything from recruits in the past two months or so. Be sure to check out his feed, but here’s just a sampling of the stuff he’s retweeting.

https://twitter.com/markese_stepp/status/744586314419421184

And it’s not just the coaches who are getting in on the fun either.

It also doesn’t help that today was the day when the Irish sent out their official written scholarship offers to all members of the class of 2017, leading to an onslaught of tweets such as this.

https://twitter.com/Carter_Fame/status/760146674874392576

All of which has been liked and retweeted by Elston and other recruiting coordinators. We’ve entered a new age of recruiting.

In all seriousness though, there seems to be a great deal of nervousness regarding this change among analysts and pundits, who think these new rules will make recruiting even crazier and more all-encompassing than it already is.

That’s a legitimate fear in my book. The intensity and year-round nature of recruiting has increased more and more with each passing year, to the point that programs are offering kids in middle school and securing commitments before their junior prep season even begins. It’s objectively unusual for a 16-year-old to be picking a college, or for a college to be courting a 13-year-old.

Next: Notre Dame football: Sunday recruiting roundup

But unfortunately, I cannot fault the NCAA for its decision. Social media is such an integral part of young people’s lives, it was a bit silly to exclude it almost completely from the process. While oversight and regulation will be necessary, the world of recruiting is essentially dictated by the whims and desires of the recruits themselves, and this is clearly what they wanted.