What Should Athletes Post and NOT Post on Social Media

Our experts give student-athletes some tips for using social media, including What NOT to do on social media if you want to get recruited.

SUMMARY

Be strategic about the content on your accounts.
• Your social media accounts are great places to post some of your favorite articles about your sport, share inspirational quotes and post your highlight videos.
• Call out academic or athletic awards you’ve received.
• Avoid any inappropriate language and anything overtly political. This rule also applies to your username.
• Monitoring your social media accounts is going to be a key part of your recruiting process – because you may be dedicated to posting only positive content on your accounts, but your friends may not follow suit.
• Make sure you can review all tagged posts from your friends so you can approve which ones will appear.

NCSA has the expertise to help you keep your recruiting journey on track during the challenges of coronavirus.

RESOURCES

FOLLOW NCSA (Next College Student Athlete):

NCSA is the largest and most successful college athletic recruiting network. With a network of over 35,000 college coaches, NCSA assists student-athletes in 34 sports to find their best path to college.

[rizmacadillac]

An athlete works too hard to have his or her career destroyed by some misunderstood political view. When I was in Kindergarten a kid started talking about what I now recognize as being a "political" issue. All I said about this issue was that I thought maybe I was too young to know anything about it. I believe this was an appropriate response and entirely proper. But the next day I picked up the kid so we could walk to school and his Mom answered the door and yelled and screamed at me to never be around her kid or family ever again. I obeyed her because I never spoke to the kid again. But to be truthful, adults kept up some pressure regarding politics. Eventually I watched the news every day and if I was asked a question in school I often gave my own answer based on what I heard Senators, Congressman, Cabinet members or even the President say about a given issue. It always troubled me as a kid that when I gave an answer in class that was in line with what we were being taught in school and what seemed to make sense so far as our government was concerned that I was often laughed at by other kids and such and somehow these answers never worked so well for me as they did for the Government Leaders. I was never extreme, but as this man so truthfully points out we live in harsh times. Athletes know they are good at their sport and maybe have a shot to make big money, but I believe there are people who would love to ruin anyone with ability. And if someone can get you to take an extreme political position on an issue that might not really matter that much to you... well, I think they would enjoy ruining the life and potential career of an athlete. Just a word to the wise. I was good in school, but I felt a need to make my intelligence count and one way was to sound intelligent on issues of the day. Athletes are good in sports but they, too, might want to feel intelligent (and we all want to be). Mind you, I have never been a political extremist, but the people who pushed me into taking an interest in politics at a young age also had the ability to spin what I might say and put words in my mouth and twist my meanings and ideas into something they were not and never intended to be. And the truth is, I might never have even thought about it had I not spoken a few months ago with a former teacher who pointed out to me what people thought of me when I was in High School and how they viewed me and I was surprised - very surprised - to learn why kids avoided me and why I had a certain amount of social difficulty. I have always considered myself to be a middle of the road sort who understood a wide range of Americans and why they think as they do. Furthermore, I've always hoped that America was big enough for all of us to get along and respect one another. But what we don't know about ourselves can really, seriously hurt us and hurt our life.