How much has social media affected recruiting? A lot.
Mack Brown turns 70 one week before his nationally ranked Tar Heels open the 2021 season at Virginia Tech. How much has Brown changed since he first coached Carolina in the 1980s and ‘90s? As much as the college game has changed regarding recruiting.
Brown jokes about having to keep up his shoe game, meaning wearing all the different pairs of Air Jordans he gets as part of UNC’s contract with Jumpman and Nike. His players notice which kicks he is wearing every day at practice and tell him what they think.
Sneakers have been important ever since Spike Lee appeared in Nike ads with a jamming Jordan, saying “It must be the shoes!”
Early in Brown’s first stint at Carolina, his program had to purchase the cleats his players wore before a long-gone company named Apex became the Tar Heels’ official football shoe. Basketball, of course, had some kind of shoe deal with Converse until Nike made the school an offer it couldn’t refuse.
Brown may not actually be hip, but he knows how to surround himself and his staff with young people who are. And so much of that for every major college program is promoted through unofficial websites like Inside Carolina that can cover recruiting for fanatics and the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts that most kids have.
So, June is open recruiting month that was moved back because of COVID, and the Tar Heels have dozens of 3-star, 4-star and 5-star prospects in for official visits and a recruiting camp that tries to keep up with all the competition. Under Larry Fedora, it was called Freak Show, under Brown it is Showtime.
And social media sites carry it all from videos of the recruits working out during Showtime to their individual posts when they announce they have received official scholarship offers from Carolina and other schools after visiting those campuses.
Is all this good for college football and the kids?
Mostly, yes, because they get so much more publicity than the olden days when maybe their names were mentioned in their local newspaper. Upon returning, Brown promised to make UNC the “cool school” and he’s learned how to do it in so many ways of today.
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