College football recruits are mocking the NCAA's new social media rule

Published Nov. 15, 2016 3:49 p.m. ET

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Aaron Torres

True story: If you went to bed early Sunday night, you missed, what might turn out to be one of the most entertaining evenings of the college football.

How can we say that, especially with the season still a little over a month away? Well, for starters, Michigan switched their apparel deal from Adidas to Nike’s ‘Jordan Brand’ and fans went absolutely bonkers, but also a new NCAA rule went into place which, of every NCAA rule, might be the most bizarre and confusing one yet.

What is it? Well, it’s about how coaches can now interact with recruits on Twitter. You see, back in the old days (like say, 24 hours ago) coaches weren’t allowed to interact with recruits at all on social media, until they had signed a letter of intent.

Now however, they are allowed to  ‘like’ and ‘retweet’ the tweets of the players they’re recruiting, but still aren’t allowed to respond or comment to them.

Got all that? Of course not! Either way, here’s a quick primer via the NCAA (courtesy of SB Nation):

Here's NCAA Proposal 2015-48, passed by the NCAA's legislative council in the spring and taking effect Aug. 1.:

An athletics department staff member may take actions (e.g., "like," "favorite," republish, "tag," etc.) on social media platforms that indicate approval of content on social media platforms that was generated by users of the platforms other than institutional staff members or representatives of an institution's athletics interests.

So yeah, the rule is confusing, and if you think you’re the only one that can’t totally figure out what is going on, well, you’re not alone.

Some of the best high school football players in the country were confused to on Sunday night, which led to some truly spectacular tweets.

Once things were explained, that's when things got even better.

But while it all started out as fun and games, eventually some players just had enough.

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