By the strict interpretation of the NCAA recruiting guidelines, it is NOT ok, because strict interpretation is such that any contact by a fan of university sports program to a recruit immediately becomes a 'booster' situation - ticket buyer, multimillion dollar booster, or just a casual fan, never been to the school and never attended anythign personally.....all the same.
It's a bunch of silliness, but it is how the rules are written right now, and how they apply to social media. It's a HUGE grey area, because there are quite literally hundreds of thousands of these kinds of 'inappropriate' contacts happening daily, and the way the rules were developed, happened when there was no social media/internet, and the kinds of perfect stranger kinds of discussions about an intercollegiate sport b/w a fan of a university and a recruit, across whatever distances and locations, would never happen.
Sooner or later, the NCAA will have to try to come up with some kind of rules, but for now...
Here's my opinions on the matter. If you're worried that you're committing some kind of NCAA violation - don't do it.
But if you are going to contact somebody via twitter,facebook, etc....no way to stop anybody from doing it, try to have some guidelines, same things you should do for contacting any stranger with a public profile that you've got an interest to contact. Respect.
The only thing that can be done, is to make sure that nothing inappropriate is happening, is to not do anyting inappropriate yourself. If you're going to follow recruits directly via these twitter,facebook things, and choose to engage in conversation - do it the same way you would if you were talking to that kid face to face, as a perfect stranger to them, and in front of their parents, coaches, and your own parents, coaches, and everybody's priest, rabbi are also watchign and listening.
As for specific things, avoid writing / discussion about specific sports, avoid begging them to come to your school. Tell them what you like about the school if you're going to talk about the school. Keep things general, nothing that could be construed as soliciting a kid to play a specific sport. Congratulations, non-sport specific conversation? That's not going to cause problems. Dont ever disrespect or write derogatory things about other kids, other schools, or directly to a recruit if they don't happen to end up at your school, or leave your school.
Huskydan - I love what you do, and you're taking the lead on this stuff promoting it, so if you're out there in twitter and facebook land, I hope you're playing traffic cop with the information you see flowing.
You are what you are perceived to be others, and a good online rep for a fan base, is a good thing to have. Be respectful, keep it general, and there will be no problems.
