The Lions' Pride

Good read, thanks for posting the article. I love his list of who he is recruiting.

God, BSD interviewing kids makes me nervous.

lol. Luckily the questions are screened. But I do always worry that too many of our recruitniks are bugging these guys sometimes. It is probably much worse though from teams like Bama/OSU, etc...I also think our recruiting guys at PSU (across all sites) are respectful and can read a recruit that wants to talk vs one who does not want to be talking to much (example would be Foster).

Yes, BSD is a "blog" but its a very respectful and professional-like blog. People do not understand how blogs are becoming mainstream media now with the revolution that is social media. Bloggers are getting more and more access to events and normal PR events than ever before. Yes, they have "free reign" but the respectable blogs (like BSD) have editors in place (even if they are not professionals). It is a fan site, but so is any of the recruiting services though they are getting paid for their reporting.

I have studied social media (blogging is a big part of social media) at PSU in Information Sciences & Technology on the effects of social media on society (among other technologies). I also have a consulting business on social media for business industry (mainly financial) and educational industry. You'd be surprised how many people go to blogs for valuable information now instead of newspapers (online or offline) -- which is a dying industry for those not adapting (the big wigs are, some smaller newspapers are not and many have shutdown because they did not adapt). A lot of mainstream media organizations have been hiring talent from blogs for awhile now.

Overall, I agree with you about fans doing too much on Twitter. So far, Junny and PSUTimm (BSD and VictoryBellRings respectfully - both on this site) have been very respectful to the recruiting process.

Also social media is meant for people to build relationships and communicate where they would not have been able to do so before. If athletes or celebs do not want to communicate with people then dont create a social media account (or just ignore people -- not recommendable for businesses looking to develop relationships and increase sales using social media). I'm a big advocate of privacy and we are losing more and more freedom (hopefully we never see the light of day of SOPA and PIPA) and privacy by the day, but social media is meant to be more transparent. I see no problem with fans interacting with athletes, and many reasons that is why athletes are on social media, for PR purposes (though we have seen where an athlete tweets something stupid and it backfires). I agree about stalking athletes (which celebs like Bieber and Kardashians have much more of a problem with than a HS athlete) and constantly tweeting them and expecting replies back. People do have the option of restricting access to their Twitter accounts and only accepting friends (which some people do use).

I really don't have a problem with this. I don't check out BSD much anymore, but they are part of SB Nation and have some reasonable media cred. I have a feeling hack knew what BSD was before they called for an interview.

That said, I liked the interview, and was VERY intrigued by this comment: "I think kids are going to realize after what happens in the next couple of weeks in terms of commitments that a lot of us don't care about [Sandusky, etc...]

thanks for the read 65.. good kid.. we r lucky to have him.. hope he gets the others on board..