Rockne's Roundtable

merlin08,

Good post. I agree that fans shouldn't be attempting to contact recruits or have interaction with them, whether its through twitter, facebook, or any other means, and I think that's just common sense. As someone else pointed out, such actions would have the potential to create allegations of recruiting violations and, as you rightly point out, its just plain creepy.

As an example, my neighbors have a terrific 14 year-old daughter that sent me a friend request on facebook a year or two ago. I accepted her request, but I think it would have been creepy for me to send her a friend request and it would be creepy of me if I were to start commenting on her posts or trying to jump into conversations that she has with her friends. I'm a 44 year-old married man, and even though I've known her parents for several years and have a good relationship with them, I would have no business trying to "hang out" online with 14-16 year old girls and it really would be a creepy thing for me to do. So I exercise some common sense and I don't do it. Well, its the same thing with high school boys - they're still kids living with their parents and aren't grown up yet, even though some of them look more mature physically. They're still immature kids. They're boys, and grown adults who don't know them and have no relationship with their families just shouldn't be contacting them. At all. I don't care if one of them says something like "where's my ND fans on my birthday," its still not cool to be contacting young boys as if you're they're friend. Not only is the risk of creating recruiting violations something that everyone needs to take seriously, but you're absolutely right that its very inappropriate contact and your describing it as "creepy" is on the mark.

Keep getting your message out. Nobody's need to follow recruiting can justify inappapropriate contact with minors. Period.

This is the weirdest discussion ever on this board. Following high school kids tweets is pathetic. Contacting high school kids is very, very strange.