Blue White Illustrated

LAST WORD T I M O W E N | O W E N . T I M . B W I @ G M A I L . C O M or this incoming freshman class and all those to come, the student-ath- letes who arrive on campus will be of a generation that only has known a world with a computer at their finger- tips, and their adolescent years will have been shaped by the phenomenon that is social media. When Facebook was first started, they were 7 years old. They were 9 when Twitter launched. For some of the most important socializing years of their lives, it has been a fixture, part of the day-to-day for the large portion of even the current student body. It's especially true for college football recruits. Not only has it become a conduit be- tween coach and prospect, but also every new scholarship offer gets blasted across the Twitter-sphere for all to see – always with a collage of stock photos and a verb like "humbled," "blessed" or "excited" to describe the emotion of the moment. Years ago scholarship offers could remain confidential, verbal com- mitments could stay silent. But these days, information flows and is shared. For better or for worse, most of today's high schoolers have grown accustomed to the expectation that every scrap of information is meant to be public. After all, it's all they've ever known. Take, for instance, Pittsburgh athlete Aaron Mathews, who was once verbally committed to Penn State to play safety before the hometown Panthers changed his mind by offering him a spot at wide receiver. In recalling his favorite part of the recruiting process in a recent inter- view with our colleague Chris Peak at PantherLair.com, Mathews detailed what it's like to be a teenager who is also one of the top recruits in the re- gion. "Honestly, the thing I really enjoyed was tweeting out my offers," Mathews said. "That was always cool. I liked how, say when I got my offer from Maryland, I got like 60 new Maryland followers and a whole bunch of scouts and re- porters and all that [sending me mes- sages], people I didn't know acting like they knew me. I started playing games with it. I would post a picture and [see] which college fans show the most love. I would see who gave the most retweets." For all the positive tweets they've re- ceived – for every "Congratulations! Come play here!" – there's a negative side that can be exponentially worse. Just wait until decision time, and they don't go play there. For the dozens of offers tweeted about but not chosen, certain fans from that school can come out keyboards a- blazin'. It's a fact too familiar for too many recruits, and the vitriol is even more concentrated the more highly ranked you are. For another instance of the duality of social media, let's take Shane Simmons. One of the highest-rated signees in Penn State's Class of 2016, he was the team's flag bearer throughout the cycle. (Sean Clifford is taking that role this year, by the way.) By putting himself at the forefront of the Nittany Lions' re- cruiting efforts, Simmons opened him- self up to criticism from fans of rival schools, especially those who troll on the internet. Said his mother, Jen, "With social media, that has been a constant learning process for all of us." She cites the decision process as an example. Choosing the Nittany Lions meant spurning an offer from Mary- land, the school right down the road from Simmons' high school. Terrapin coaches had coined a phrase – "The Movement" – to use as a battle cry in their efforts to keep all of the top in- state prospects at home in the classes of 2015 and '16. Simmons was supposed to be the bell cow. Instead, he signed with Penn State. That earned him a lot of re- spect from PSU fans, but from Mary- land's, the reaction was just the oppo- site and even stronger. "People say negative things to him on social media, especially the Maryland fans because they really felt like he should have stayed home and repre- sented his state," Jen Simmons said. "He has four of his best friends from De- Matha who are going to play at Mary- land, so he took a lot of pressure from Maryland [fans on social media] be- cause he committed to Penn State. He does better than me because a lot of people say nasty, crazy things, and I want to go back at them and I have to hold my fingers off the keyboard. I'm like, Did you see this? Shane is like, Yeah, I deleted it and blocked him. He's got such a much better attitude." Because for him it's second nature by now, just another way to communicate, but with no limits on who it is. The grandparents of today's recruits had tin cans and strings to play around with when they were young. Their parents had walkie talkies. Text messaging was big when I got to high school. These guys have Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. With that comes the good and bad, and Simmons has figured that out and a way to grace- fully sort through it. The trick, he told me, is to stay true to yourself and ignore the naysayers. "I am who I am," he said. "I really don't care about my ranking or whatev- er, so that's the first step, not really worrying about other people's opin- ions." ■ Socially aware F

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