BLOGS
Matthew Marco, Internet, and College Football
When Matthew Marco spoke to us over Skype about web navigation and setting up your website, I immediately thought of my topic and how High School football players sometimes create their own site with their highlight reels. Matthews lecture was a lot about making your site convenient for users to get around and making sure you have links to all your pages. The first thing a High School player needs to do in order to get recruited, is to make sure their site is very easy for College coaches to find and to access. In their site, they should include their position, height, weight, year, school and their highlight videos. They should make all this information very easy to find on their site like having it at the top or on the right side of the page as Matthew Marco told us. Players should also add their email or any way that coaches can get in contact with them. Players might want to even think about card sorting as Matthew Marco touched on, card sorting is organizing your topics into categories. If a player wants to make their website seem very organized, card sorting would be a way to do that. The player could have his highlight categories and his personal categories like his size.
UT's Twitter tactic
When the University of Tennessee was going after big name recruit Shy Tuttle, they got creative when it came to trying to reel him in. They photo shopped his picture to the cover of Rolling Stone magazine standing next to Beyoncé and made the background Neyland Stadium. The image was uploaded to Twitter and it was the talk of College Football for a couple of days. Like many other people, including Shy Tuttle, I found this to be a very unique and different tactic of recruiting that is proven to work on these kids. It had to be cool for Shy Tuttle to wake up one day, check Twitter and see him on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine with Beyoncé, it was all over twitter with many people re tweeting it so there was no way he was not going to see it. The Twitter tactic proved to be effective because he committed soon after that and while he was struggled with injuries, he is a dominant player when healthy. Twitter is a wonderful way to connect with people and in my opinion, its the best way. Twitter is a useful tool from College Football recruiting to business's or just for connecting with friends.
No Privacy In Locker Rooms
Recently in sports, there have been many problems with coaches being filmed giving speeches in the locker room. An example of this came a couple years ago when Tennessee's coach Derek Dooley was filmed giving a speech after beating Vanderbilt. He said "If there's one thing Tennessee does, its beat the shit out of Vanderbilt". Video got out of him saying this and it really infuriated Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt beat Tennessee the next year. Im not saying it was because of this, but it definitely gave them motivation. Filming coaches can result in coaches getting fired and it can cause problems with teams. Unfortunately we now live in a society where you are never in a private setting anymore, you never know if you are being filmed and if that person will post the video online. There have been many examples of this lately and not just in sports but in everyday life, like the fraternity guy at the University of Oklahoma who said the N-word on the bus and got expelled from the University. Oklahoma's star linebacker Eric Striker expressed his anger on social media after the incident. I wish people would respect the privacy of others but in todays society with smart phones, that just will not happen.
Spring Forward
I really enjoyed the spring forward speaker we had last week and I enjoyed her story of how she did not know what she wanted to do after college until she joined a Raleigh organization that gave her a great opportunity. Trying to find a job after college is somewhat like a high school football player trying to find a college to play for. As graduating seniors in college are sending out their resumes to companies to get hired, high school football players are sending out their football resumes to coaches and are trying to get in contact with those coaches hoping they will be impressed. Some college graduates don't always get the job they want right away just as high school recruits don't always get recruited by the school they want. Lucky for our guest speaker, it sounds like she got a wonderful job that she enjoys and that is good for her, Students tend to panic too much when they are graduating and they should just relax and think everything will be fine.
NFL Draft And Social Media
I enjoy watching all professional sports drafts whether its the NFL, NBA, or NHL. I love seeing who my teams are going to take and also where players from my favorite college team are headed. I love seeing the joy on players faces and the joy on their families faces as well when their name is called. The NFL draft is the day that every high school recruit dreams about. With social media now days it is not as anticipated in hearing who the number one pick will be when they announce it because we all pretty much have an idea now because of twitter. Social media has somewhat ruined the excitement and anticipation of the draft just like it has ruled many other things.
Tennessee Titans Draft Rating
I am a Titans fan, and I was very pleased with the Tennessee Titans first round draft picks. The Titans selected Corey Davis, a WR from Western Michigan with the 5th overall pick and Adoree Jackson, a safety from USC with the 17th overall pick. Although no-one expected Tennessee to take Corey Davis with the 5th pick, adding another talented WR was a very smart move to help out their young quarterback, Marcus Mariota. Adore Jackson is a dangerous kick return man and is also very good on the defensive side of the ball. Overall I give the Titans a B+ draft grade. Look for Tennessee to become a factor in the next couple of years.
Tennessee's QB Options
With the departure of Josh Dobbs at quarterback, Tennessee looks to fill that position with either Jarret Gurantano or Quinten Dormady. They have yet to make a decision on who the starter will be and they have not ruled out a two quarterback system. Both QB's are very good but Dormady appears to be ahead of the Gurantano as of right now. Dormady played very well in the spring game, he went 5 for 5 on his first drive of the game including a TD pass to end the drive. I was hoping to see more out of the spring game, but there was a bad storm that ended the game at halftime. If I had to guess I would say Dormady will be the starter at the beginning of the season.
My Time At ASU
I have really enjoyed my time here at Appalachian State and I can only hope to enjoy myself in the real worlds much as I did in College. I made some great relationships at APP and I had Professors who really wanted to see their students succeed. I am thankful to have attended such a wonderful University and looking back on my college career, I wouldn't have wanted to attend any where else. Appalachian has given me the skills I need fore the future and I cannot wait to put those skills to use once I start my job at Monster Energy as an Intern. Go Mountaineers!