Michigan Football: Brady Hoke's Stance on NCAA Social Media Policy Is Spot-on

Brady Hoke, as one would suspect, is a bit of a Luddite.

He's not on Twitter, nor is he the type of coach who always seems to be looking down at his phone while he texts an assistant coach or recruit.

He even told AnnArbor.com that he's never sent so much as an email, preferring to give hand-written notes.

Yet still, even Brady Hoke knows the NCAA's regulations on social media are, in his words, "really silly."

Let's back up a bit.

When Michigan picked up the verbal commitment of Mike McCray, a big-time '13 linebacker prospect from Trotwood-Madison High School in Ohio, Michigan wideout Roy Roundtree took to Twitter to congratulate McCray.

Roundtree is not only a friend of McCray's, he's a fellow Ram, having graduated from Trotwood-Madison in 2008.

And according to the NCAA, that constitutes a secondary violation of recruiting guidelines, since a football player had just publicly mentioned an unsigned recruit.

Michigan self-reported that and a similar tweet from another Michigan player to the NCAA this week.

This? This is madness—and Brady Hoke knows it.

He told AnnArbor.com that "there's no question something needs to happen," and lest there be any doubt, he means a loosening of the restrictions on social media policy.

More to the point, it's not particularly helpful to have the ban on publicly mentioning recruits on social media in the first place.

All it does is create an incentive to resort to more private methods of contacting recruits —outside of the scrutiny of the NCAA and the public eye.

Why not let fans see exactly what the coaches are telling recruits, and conduct at least that small part of recruiting out in the open?

It doesn't create an unfair advantage for big-name schools and coaches when that coach can mention a player on Twitter.

That big-name program already has that recruiting advantage built in with superior facilities, prestige and everything else that goes with what makes a big-name program great.

If four-star safety Johnny Awesome is a recruit with offers from Ohio State and Ohio, for example, it's not as if he'd be on the verge of becoming a Bobcat until an Urban Meyer tweet switches him to the scarlet and grey.

That's not the way it works. If anything, the personalized attention he might get from an Ohio coach's public tweet might sway him back toward Ohio or some other small school.

So really, it's hard not to sympathize with Roundtree and Michigan on this one.

Objectively, it doesn't help anybody to tell Roundtree he can't tweet at his friend if his friend is an NCAA recruit.

It puts Michigan in danger of NCAA reprisal (unlikely as that seems at this point), it obligates school compliance officers to monitor athletes' twitter feeds (I assure you that is not an enjoyable task) and it feeds into the culture of finding a way around rules instead of just conducting recruiting the way a coach would like to.