It’s all about me…Social media has created a perfect storm in combination with recruiting attention, but today’s kids are ill prepared with the maturity to handle it. We have to recognize that our program has been down since that Motorcycle wreck on an infamous day in April. Today’s kids were in JR High when our Hogs meant something on a National level. Today’s kids want to play for winners and brag about it worse than any I have seen. Today’s kids have very little loyalty except to themselves in many cases.
Our program needs to recover enough to be considered a top program, but that is almost impossible in the SEC West.
Yep before we blamed ESPN for all the recruiting hype bestowed on young cocky immature teenagers. Now with all of the other social outlets letting the recruits and anyone else add to their hype, it’s a wonder they haven’t filed suit for marketing rights exempt from NCAA sanctions.
I will agree that kids and adults can get narcissistic because of Twitter and Facebook. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Both forums give some people the chance to talk about their favorite subject. Themselves.
As far as some of kids, the drama gets old but at the same time they’re making the biggest decision in their young lives so I can understand the back and forth on schools.
Yea In all fairness its probably a good thing I didn’t have access to such outlets back in the 70’s when I was a cocky brash 17-18 year old Stud<at least in my mind, that would have allowed me to brag, spew, & vent all across the social media world.
It is greatly more prestigious (among his peers, family and friends, etc…) for a student athlete to sign with a Top 10 or big name University than with a team that can’t remember the last time it finished in the Top 10. Or a team that suffered a historic (Auburn) loss or historic collapses (Missouri & VT) in its last two games. It takes a lot of courage and mental toughness for a young person to sign with Arkansas after this past season. It’s not their fault for changing to a more successful program.
CBB and his staff will have to move mountains and work their butts off to have any decent signing class after this season.
There are probably many kids who probably want to benefit from the notoriety of being in a successful program, but hopefully there are others who want to be linked with building the success. Some say many are concerned about playing early, so it is less certain that happens at the top programs.
I worked for Rivals off and on for a bit, interviewing kids here and there and feeding bits to writers for follow up. Rarely a kid who had the Hogs in the mix, the only one I can remember was Lonnie Davis.
I’d say 95% of the kids I talked to were humble and respectful when I spoke with them I think the same is true of the kids today, and to top it off they seem to be smarter and savvier than ever. I had an exchange with Kellen Mond a while back, I expected him to be an arrogant pain because we disagreed on something but he wasn’t at all.
Twitter especially is how these kids communicate and get noticed, for every Big school tweet there are 50 from kids mentioning their D-II offers.
Regardless, I don’t think these kids are any different than the narcissisim you see displayed from the rest of your social media contacts daily.
Let’s not overlook the role of the adult male recruiting board hiney smoocher. Oh Mitchie we just have to have you. Our program will die without you. Please Mitchie Please Mitchie Please Mitchie Please. And bring all of your buddies with you. Still one of the most repulsive things I’ve seen on the Inner Web. And I don’t blame Mitchie.