It is very important for high school athletes to realize the impact of social networking sites, with so many college athletes experiencing the consequences.

Some schools are now writing up contracts for the athletes to sign, which informs them that if pictures are posted involving alcohol, then this will be treated the same as being caught by police. This will likely lead to suspension from games.

Scandals Involving Social Media

The University of Iowa football team is currently going through a scandal involving two of their players, who have been found stealing and illegally using credit cards.  While their Facebook profiles were not the reason they got caught, these pictures below were something that quickly surfaced on the Internet afterwards.  The two athletes who were both expected to play a significant role on the team this year, now face time in jail.

The Impact In Recruiting

Social networks can have a huge impact in many areas for high school athletes, such as in recruiting, where college coaches will search for any information that is available on prospective recruits.  The coaches want to learn more about the character and personalities of these recruits and will do whatever they can to do this.  This includes talking to teachers in the school, other coaches, people in the community, and any other sources they know close to the area.  With most high school students having at least one account at Twitter or Facebook, there is little doubt that these coaches will be anonymously taking a look at what the profile of the high school athlete includes.

Make Sure Your Profile Is Clean

I would recommend for all high school athletes to think about this and make sure the information you have on offer, is nothing you wouldn’t want everybody to see.  Are there pictures of you that may end up causing trouble down the road?  Is alcohol involved in any of the photos?  Do people leave messages about how great the party was this weekend?  It may seem trivial but coaches will use whatever means necessary to find out information about athletes.  Considering that companies now search these profiles for prospective employees, (and has been found to cost people a potential job), these coaches will do the same thing.

It may be tough for a high school athlete to completely avoid these websites, but there is nothing wrong with having a respectable profile.  You just have to make sure that there is nothing on there that could risk your chances for a scholarship, or harm you in any way down the road. Do you have some things on your profiles that you need to delete from your profile? Let us know with your comments below