Real-time drama is the new normal

— -- It was Friday, Jan. 30, as the 2015 college football recruiting clock was tick-tocking its way down the homestretch, through the final weekend and final allowable communication between players and their potential future schools before that clock struck midnight, starting the dead period of silence that will last until national signing day Wednesday.

That day a tweet came from Deondre Francois, a Florida State commit and a candidate to replace outgoing Heisman Trophy and BCS-title-winning quarterback Jameis Winston: "I'm officially decommiting from the university of Florida state."

Just as quickly as the nine words had shaken the core of Seminole Nation, the tweet vanished, deleted from his account. Shortly thereafter this tweet came from another FSU commit, running back Jacques Patrick, who posted "#NoleNation everybody can relax I just talked to @Deondre_3 and he is committed to FSU! Someone had hacked his twitter account."

Split-second, real-time drama has become the norm in every corner of this social media-driven world. But when it comes to college football recruiting, every little bit of flame touched to the timeline has the potential to start full-on bonfires.

Why? It's really two issues rubbing together to the point of ignition.

First, the search for recruiting information has always been college football's wild, wild west. Social media has given everyone involved 140 characters to keep in their holster.

Back in the day, anyone sitting around the barber shop was a recruiting expert. "I heard that kid from Abilene was up in Austin this weekend and everyone knows his granddaddy went to Texas, so ..." But as the sport grew to unforeseen levels, the need for that information became a cottage industry, from a start of faxed newsletters to message board-driven websites to Wednesday's round-the-clock live national signing day TV coverage.

As for that barber shop, it now has nearly 300 million potential experts sitting around, ready to gab, and all with equal voices. That's how many users are now on Twitter. No, college football recruiting doesn't make up a large percentage of that user base, but whatever percentage it does own is among the Twittersphere's most intense.

"Social media is probably the single thing that's changed everything we do more than anything else that's come along since I've been coaching, what, 30 years now," says Georgia head coach Mark Richt. His account, @MarkRicht, has 155,000 followers. "I like that everyone has a place to voice their opinions. But you can't let it be a distraction or something that can get a student-athlete or a football program in trouble."

Most are those voices are trolls, fans or both. On Monday, Richt's timeline included tweets wishing him luck with Wednesday's class, one barking at him to "close a class for once" and another asking him to check out an outside linebacker from Texas at the last minute.

Somewhere in the middle of it all exist real recruiting experts with real information. There are also hundreds of coaches, all with their own social media accounts that are either following or friending recruits. There is also a fair share of genuine people excited about their kid or their favorite school.

But all of the above have the tools to unknowingly toe or step over the line of NCAA violations. That leads to conversations, letters and yes, tweets, to remind people with university ties of what they can and can't do.

"You have to educate your fan base on what's allowed and what's not," explains Texas A&M athletic director Eric Hyman, who was thrown into the social media deep by arriving in College Station just as Jonathan Manziel was becoming Johnny Football.

A&M's compliance office has been among the pioneers of schooling the masses on the NCAA do's & don'ts, through its @TAMUCompliance Twitter account. On Jan. 22, in one of its typical friendly-reminder posts, compliance officer Brad Barnes wrote: "Everything is awesome! except #NCAA trk/fb/swm coaches texting recruits. In a violation, coach texted the recruit, 'Awesome, so exciting.'"

"Where the issues arise is that sometimes it feels like just when you've gotten your arms around whatever is the new thing, everyone is already off to the next new thing," Hyman explains, having been around long enough to see athletic departments have to police mail ... then fax machines ... then email ... then texting ... and now social media, which is constantly shape-shifting into something different from it was just a few months ago. "This issue is especially true in our business, because we're dealing with teenagers. I've raised a couple. They don't sit still."

Ah yes, those teenagers. That's the second part of this combustible formula. Thanks in no small part to social media, recruits are no longer regional high school heroes, they are nationally recognized superstars, tabbed in their early teens as college football saviors.

Not surprisingly, that attention -- and the following that comes with it -- can become a bit complicated. One month you're sitting in history class trying to get the head cheerleader to look your way and the next month you have 40,000 Twitter followers either begging you to come to their school, ripping you for committing somewhere else, or overanalyzing anything and everything you just posted.

See: Deondre Francois, or longtime Texas A&M commit Kyler Murray ( @TheKylerMurray), who tore the Lone Star State in half Jan. 21 when he tweeted a photo of a Texas Longhorns jersey during a last-minute visit to Austin. It was the biggest needle-mover in the midst of a frantic month that wallpapered social media with blue chippers' photos of campus visits, home visits from coaches and guys doing everything from hanging on the rim at the Dean Dome to eating cookies adorned with the Illinois "I." (See a rundown of the best shots here.)

"It's crazy, man, and it's way crazier now than when I did it all just four, five years ago," one-time top-ranked high school recruit-turned-No. 1 NFL draft selection Jadeveon Clowney admitted last fall. He joined Twitter in high school, but the hype surrounding his college decision, unprecedented at the time, and his freshman year at South Carolina ran him off. He rejoined ( @clownejd) in February 2012 as a sophomore. These days he's more of a Snapchat and Instagram guy. "You just want to do your own thing, and you do. But all those people out there constantly hitting you up ... it's cool, but when you're in high school it can be too much. It's hard to say no to the attention"

That attention can no doubt go to a kid's head. But it also can be fun -- a last chance to grab the spotlight as a big-deal high school senior before moving to the bottom of the depth chart as a college freshman. More and more, players are figuring out how to make that spotlight burn as long as possible.

Just a couple of years ago, it was commonplace for ESPNU's daylong national signing day coverage to be finished with players' on-camera school declarations by lunch, shifting into review mode. This year more than a half-dozen decisions are scheduled to happen in the second half of the day.

"I think you definitely see kids playing it up and why not? It's a chance to have a good time with it, even if it does give coaches and fans some serious heartburn," says UNC head coach Larry Fedora. "I think they all know that when they get to college, the work starts. If they don't know that, they will figure it out pretty quick."

"Yeah, it's fun for everybody that does the thing with baseball caps and having the gym full of people, TV cameras, and everyone going crazy," Mario Edwards Jr. recalled last fall about his 2011 decision to attend Florida State. Ranked as the third-best player overall, the defensive end's signing day buildup included zero drama or hype, save for a brief flirtation with Texas. "But the fun ends when you show up for two-a-days. Then no one cares what you did in high school anymore. They want to see what you are doing now."

He grinned. "Nobody tweets about that part, do they?"