NCAA rules on recruiting, retweeting, liking ... and possibly offering confirmation?

I have been thinking about this new rule that allows coaches to retweet, like, etc., a recruit's posts on Twitter. At the stroke of midnight on August 1, things obviously got very silly.

Latest after NCAA CFb social media rule: pic.twitter.com/pzjQDG4JxF

— Jean Rishard (@gentryjohn) August 1, 2016

Many schools' compliance departments were prepared and have sent out handy guidelines for what is and isn't allowed under the new rules. It's all about "actions of approval." They even have a hashtag #ClickDontType.

Guide to the social media changes effective Monday! Prior to Official Commitment/NLI = #ClickDontType @naacconnect pic.twitter.com/2ydZsJoTit

— Mizzou Compliance (@MIZcompliance) July 29, 2016

Coaches can’t quote-tweet a recruit’s posts, but they can retweet them, then subtweet them a minute later. It's effectively the same thing. The purported benefit is that recruits will be able to see how much of a priority they are to the schools that have offered them.

More information regarding when Coaches and Staff can interact with social media posts #ClickDontType pic.twitter.com/VMu2n5TZHn

— Mizzou Compliance (@MIZcompliance) August 1, 2016

Just last night, Missouri received the commitment of Louisana defensive lineman Josh Smith, the second commitment of the 2018 class. But we're still be waiting to hear if he had an actual committable offer.

I think here we have a situation where coaches being able to RT a player’s commitment actually makes sense.

Coaches are not allowed to publicly comment about unsigned recruits and thus can neither confirm or deny if they have offers or if they have committed to a school. That leads to some wonky situations where a recruit declares they have an offer when in fact they might not, or where a recruit commits to a school when in fact his offer was not committable (or they never had an offer in the first place).

When situations like that arise, we often have to rely on back channeling and unconfirmed sources to tell us what's really going on.

Now coaches can acknowledge new offers and commitments with their RTs/Favs – thereby tacitly verifying they are "real." Maybe that's the hidden benefit in all this.

Meanwhile, the simplest solution has been to unfollow coaches ... or if you can't, turn off retweets.