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Why you don't go negative on recruits after they commit elsewhere

Buffnik

Real name isn't Nik
Club Member
Junta Member
The recruits, their parents and their coaches talk. This isn't limited to the current year's recruiting class. They have relationships that will impact the recruiting for the next few years.

And while most everyone realizes that fans will over-react and get emotional, when it's over the top and seems to be a majority of a team's fans, it leaves a lasting impression.

As an example this year, Washington is struggling with in-state recruiting. The way their fans are behaving makes it likely, imo, that they'll struggle again next year.

Here's what Walker Williams said on Facebook in response to Keivarae Russell posting about how UDub fans turned on him after he committed to Notre Dame:

"Those UW fans on the blogs and everything are ridiculas. 1st I'm garbage and they don't need me, then josh is weak cause he's not goin either, not u aren't a good player cause u ain't goin to UW. I wonder if they realize how much bein jerks to UW recruits who decide not to go there hurts washingtons recruitment. I don't think they realize that all the in state guys know each other and lots of them are friends. They can dig their own graves tho!"

http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=147&f=1361&t=8503365&p=1

The majority of the reactions from Husky fans in that thread would embarrass me if they came from Buff fans.

For the most part, I think we CU fans are pretty good about this kind of stuff. We tend to blast the school a kid chose rather than turning on the kid. Much better approach.
 
All very true, people don't think past the emotions of the moment.

On a side note, this highlights another part of why I was so dissapointed when Walker Williams decided to go to Wiscy instead of us.

In addition to thinking that he is going to become a dominant college football player which we could have really used the way he and his family handled themselves throughout the process you have to believe that he is going to be a huge leader for them in the locker room and in dealing with future recruits (not just from Washington.) I still secretly harbor some hope that WW will change his mind and become a Buff but when you look at how he handles himself it is very hard not to like the kid even when he picks someone else. That character and personality will carry him far both in football and in his life outside of football.
 
Why would recruits commit to the school of choice then visit the message boards of the schools they did not choose? Nothing good can come of that for the recruit. You can't make everyone happy so why try and get all bent out of shape about it.
 
Why would recruits commit to the school of choice then visit the message boards of the schools they did not choose? Nothing good can come of that for the recruit. You can't make everyone happy so why try and get all bent out of shape about it.

Even if they never visit the message boards, in this age of social media the information gets around.

Bashing a kid for choosing a school where he wants to spend the next 4 or 5 years of his life is simply stupid, no matter how passionate you are.
 
Why would recruits commit to the school of choice then visit the message boards of the schools they did not choose? Nothing good can come of that for the recruit. You can't make everyone happy so why try and get all bent out of shape about it.

They do.

Some want to see what the reaction is from the school(s) they turned down. Some still aren't completely 100% sure of their decision and still want to keep a little bit of their options open, at least in their own mind. Others are still interested based on friends they have played for or against or kids they met while on recruiting trips or at camps.

The nature of things is that when a kid picks a different school the fans who lost out are going to be upset and go negative. In this respect you are right, they should look at the reaction in context. On the other hand these are still 17-18 year old kids and this may be the first time they have ever had to deal with this kind of reaction to their decisions. Their parents as well are going to be sensitive to responses, what parent is purely unbiased and logical in relation to their kid?

It is one thing to express dissapointment in a kid when they pick another school. Each year I see a number of kids who commit to schools and I honestly think to myself that they got lied to, believed it, and made a big mistake in their lives. In most cases they can still go on and have a good experience but could have done better in the big picture with a different choice.

At the same time it is ridiculous to be all excited about a kid, wanting him to come to our program and all of a sudden he is a worthless idiot who can't play because he picked X school.
 
Something similar happened with a quasi-USC recruit yesterday via Twitter. He rejected the school based on the fans.
 
Even if they never visit the message boards, in this age of social media the information gets around.

Bashing a kid for choosing a school where he wants to spend the next 4 or 5 years of his life is simply stupid, no matter how passionate you are.

I agree with that but there are morons everywhere. Kids need to distance themselves from that. If they read everything that people post about them(media, posters) they would go crazy.
 
I agree with that but there are morons everywhere. Kids need to distance themselves from that. If they read everything that people post about them(media, posters) they would go crazy.

You're asking a 17 year-old to avoid going out and seeing what's written about him? Sorry but that's totally unrealistic.
 
Have UW fans always been as classless as they've shown themselves to be at various times over the past year, or is it a recent phenomena that has arisen from trying to compete with Oregon (and subsequently acting as awful as Duck fans)?
 
So the advice is not to post that a small-town school is not worthy if one of its players goes somewhere other than CU? Good advice.
 
I'd love to hear from Ann Henry and moett. I bet they've encountered some whackos and have heard their fair share of uber-fandom comments.
 
I'm all about instituting a strict policy against the standard "we didn't need him anyways cause he sucks" posts after a guy goes to another school. However, I'm all about trashing said school. We don't have to be classy, but we do need to have limits.
 
I agree with that but there are morons everywhere. Kids need to distance themselves from that. If they read everything that people post about them(media, posters) they would go crazy.
You're asking a 17-year old with a Twitter following to put down their phone.
 
I'm all about instituting a strict policy against the standard "we didn't need him anyways cause he sucks" posts after a guy goes to another school. However, I'm all about trashing said school. We don't have to be classy, but we do need to have limits.

Exactly. Trash the decision, not the kid. Ripping the school he chose, its coaches, its community, and its fans is fair game. We have a reputation to uphold.
 
You're asking a 17-year old with a Twitter following to put down their phone.

If you can't handle the the fair, unfair or dumb-ass comments then maybe you should put down the phone. I don't approve of bashing a recruit for picking a different school other than CU but creating a twitter following then expecting all of the followers to be supportive and understanding is unrealistic. You have to take the good with the bad.

For every page of recruit bashing out there you can find 20 pages of posters who are excited to have them as a part of its incoming class. Those are the people who are going to support you during your college career so that's who you need to be concerned with.
 
**** Texas! (It had to be said)

Can we change that to Longhorns or Baylor? We are finally starting to get some recruits out of Texas so the State of Texas is not that bad. Except for the Cowboys, **** the Cowboys!
 
If you can't handle the the fair, unfair or dumb-ass comments then maybe you should put down the phone. I don't approve of bashing a recruit for picking a different school other than CU but creating a twitter following then expecting all of the followers to be supportive and understanding is unrealistic. You have to take the good with the bad.

For every page of recruit bashing out there you can find 20 pages of posters who are excited to have them as a part of its incoming class. Those are the people who are going to support you during your college career so that's who you need to be concerned with.

You're not wrong.

The problem is that you're arguing philosophy instead of reality. It is what it is. Maybe it shouldn't be that way. Maybe we shouldn't like it. But we need to live in the world that is.

So, being pragmatic, how do Buff fans best position CU with our recruits?
 
If you can't handle the the fair, unfair or dumb-ass comments then maybe you should put down the phone. I don't approve of bashing a recruit for picking a different school other than CU but creating a twitter following then expecting all of the followers to be supportive and understanding is unrealistic. You have to take the good with the bad.

For every page of recruit bashing out there you can find 20 pages of posters who are excited to have them as a part of its incoming class. Those are the people who are going to support you during your college career so that's who you need to be concerned with.

I guess I'm not sure what your point is. Should kids learn to filter the information they see on recruiting websites? Or, better yet, once they make their choice should they not go looking for the negative crap that's going to start flying? Sure but that's simply not reality.

As fans, however, we do not have any control over what the kids do and the fact is that they will see all of this stuff or hear about it from their friends. We do have control over how we conduct ourselves on AB and act accordingly.

You make a valid point but it's irrelevant.
 
I can't wait for someone to dump on a recruit. I'm going to come down on them like a ******* ton of bricks!!! :thumbsup:
 
Even if a kid did turn of his phone and never look (which is never going to happen) he would still hear about it from other kids who he knows who are still involved in the process. These kids know each other and talk/text a lot. To imagine that ripping a kid isn't going to get back to him even if he doesn't look himself is not realistic.

To imagine that a teenager is going to brush off getting ripped on the webs, no matter the source, is also unrealistic.
 
Also think of a kid who is looking into CU. His friend already committed elsewhere and we rip his friend apart. Does that kid still hold CU as high as he did before?
 
To be fair...while I've seen the occasional idiotic post about players on some of the CU boards...in general we're at least decent at policing our own (well except maybe over on Netbuffs), and the mods on most of the sites are fairly aggressive about not letting crap stay out there. This is not an isolated incident on UW boards, it's happened several times this year with other players. That includes some comments that not only were personal attacks but had some fairly racist overtones, and stayed out there for a while, not what I would have expected from UW fans.
 
To be fair...while I've seen the occasional idiotic post about players on some of the CU boards...in general we're at least decent at policing our own (well except maybe over on Netbuffs), and the mods on most of the sites are fairly aggressive about not letting crap stay out there. This is not an isolated incident on UW boards, it's happened several times this year with other players. That includes some comments that not only were personal attacks but had some fairly racist overtones, and stayed out there for a while, not what I would have expected from UW fans.


**** ass is not racist.
 
Not to mention it's not very becoming of a grown ass man to become emotionally volatile over some teenagers college of choice. There's also that.
 
Recruiting in the future will continue to change with social media. I think it's interesting watching it unfold. We'll see and hear more about Twitter and Facebook playing roles for years to come I'm sure.

For starters, Dawgman's free boards are horrible. The paid or premium boards are fantastic, a world of difference. The free boards are overrun by trolls and posters who claim to be UW fans but aren't. The problem with free internet boards is that they're free and there is no intelligence test that needs passing prior to posting. It's a problem on all free sites... That said, most UW fans are not ripping PSAs personally although they may be upset with the decision to leave state. Everyone can have their opinion...

I'm not sure what all the fuss is about though. WW is entitled to his opinion, and I think he's just trying to rip a school that he's not going to. People (to my knowledge) have never ripped about J.Garnett as a player, but I'm not sure what reaction he was thinking that UW fans would have toward in-state players who shun the school. His internet comments will not have any influence on recruiting. The recruiting coaches will. The school will. It's almost funny that a trivial thing can be blown up because of a bunch of anonymous internet and twitter posters... Not sure this world likes to be so connected:lol:

I do think UW dropped the ball big time with the in-staters this year. I have no idea what the issue was, but hopefully with the new recruiting staff in place mistakes won't continue to be made.

All that said, it's always stupid to make personal attacks on people. On anyone, even PSAs. It's easy to attack an idea or thought but anytime you start personally attacking it's overboard. No need to see it ever IMO... Even dumber when directed at a PSA...
 
Husky fans have always been known to be brutal to in state recruits who decide not to attend UW. It is nothing new, but with the internet age and twitter it is a bit easier to reach out to attack the recruits. While every fan base has their fair share of idiots who attack recruits it is sad that people are so pissed over an 18 year old decision. The sad thing about that thread is that clearly those UW fans did not understand where the recruit was coming from and continued to attack him anyways. I find it odd because recruiting is the one thing where grown men will attack an 17/18 year old kid for not choosing their school in what probably is the hardest decision of his life.

Although I will give UW fans a slight break because there are good UW fans, but most of that free board is trash. Kim (the sites mod) has always allowed a lot of scumbags who rile up posters just for more internet hits. So that board is not always a true representation of UW fans or at least I hope not.
 
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