Creating Separation | Social Media, Digital Trends Shape HS Football Consumption

From Players Attempting To Expand Exposure To Whole Programs Using It As A Billboard And Educational Tool, Commanding The Digital Space Can Be As Helpful As Winning High School Football Games  •

PICTURED ABOVE: Pittsburg’s Rashid Williams shows of his Twitter post announcing his commitment to Washington. (Photo: Chace Bryson / Design: Mike DeCicco)

Blake Nichelson is the kind of player that stands out on film.

You don’t need to look hard to find proof.

In fact, Manteca High’s 4-star standout makes it about as easy as possible to judge for yourself. Visit his Twitter page and right at the top sits a pinned post with a highlight package from his junior season.

He includes some stats — 2,670 all-purpose yards and 44 touchdowns as a junior might catch your attention even before you look at the video — and anyone with an internet connection can log on to form their own opinion of one of California’s top football prospects. 

Welcome to the age of brand management in high school football.

Digital access, whether through the 24/7 nature of social media or the constant creation of new online outlets devoted to finding the next great gridiron star, has fundamentally changed the way high school football is consumed across America. 

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What used to be reported in the Saturday morning newspaper now gets clipped, tweeted, retweeted, hashtagged and analyzed by 10 p.m. on Friday night. 

Want to find out the score of the night’s biggest game? No need to call a hotline anymore. Just log on, search and don’t forget to leave your opinion.

With more avenues available to peek behind the curtain comes a wide range of ways in which players, coaches, families, fans and athletic departments are managing their digital brand. Now more than ever, shaping the narrative has become an important tool in attracting attention to both programs and players.

At Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose, the importance of operating in a digital context is clear. In 2021, Jalal Beauchman took over as head coach of the program he once played for. As he took the reins, he sought to find any competitive edge he could within a crowded San Jose market and the ultra-competitive West Catholic Athletic League.

Enter a candid conversation with one of his assistants, Brennan Ronald. Listed officially as the Bells’ Director of Football Operations, Special Teams Coordinator and Running Backs Coach, Ronald is now the driving force behind Bellarmine’s efforts on social media. 

Beauchman’s directive was clear from the jump: Establish a professional brand that reflects not only what Bellarmine is about in a football sense, but also what the school stands for in its mission to educate young men.

“What we’re trying to do (on social media) is create a heartbeat for the program through our content,” Ronald said. “We’re trying to bring fans, families, friends, alumni closer and give them an inside look into what we do beyond just playing football. That can be service opportunities, brotherhood, or what we’re doing on any average day.”

There are multiple layers to what Ronald, Beauchman and the Bells do in the digital space. It is equal parts marketing device and teaching tool. When it comes to showcasing the program, Ronald says they see engagement from families who share current content, alumni who uplift throwback content and current students who might not play football but take pride in the accomplishments of their classmates and their school.

How do these efforts benefit the players themselves? Bellarmine’s coaches produce a digital recruiting packet for college coaches that collects highlights, grades and personal info in one easy-to-use document. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic left the Bells on the sideline like every other program, the team held virtual workshops with Bellarmine football alums to talk about what each student-athlete can do to leverage platforms like Twitter. The discussion reached beyond football, focusing also on how student-athletes can position themselves to eventually join the job market.

“Some of us on our varsity staff work in high tech, some work in real estate, some in the food and service industry,” Ronald said. “And we tell (the players) that regardless of what industry we work in, knowing how to promote yourself professionally and put yourself out there is only going to help you create your brand and how people perceive you in the future. We look at it as their first stab at learning how to put yourself out there.”

Follow a prep program on Twitter during the summer and chances are you have seen photo upon photo of college coaches visiting high school campuses. 

While still an assistant, now-Antioch High head coach Brett Dudley got his own indoctrination to that phenomenon when every notable college football power in America made a point to stop by West 18^th Street to have a chat with star recruit and now Pittsburgh Steeler Najee Harris.

The exposure worked both ways. College coaches posted photos to show their interest, and the Panthers used it to remind people of the good things taking place on their campus.

“You want to show the public that these college recruiters come here, they come on campus, they’re at our school just like they’re at all these other schools,” Dudley said. “They’re not just driving past Antioch, California and flipping us off. They come around. It’s not just the recruiting side of it, but you’re highlighting everything. You try to use it to make a highlight of your entire program.”

Dudley’s activity in the digital space goes far beyond Antioch. As he has moved through the coaching ranks, he has used social media for collaboration. He will often ask questions of other coaches, trade concepts and share schemes with coaches from across the country.

Digital media also serves as a teaching tool with his players. When the pandemic hit, Dudley took an increased interest in finance and identified financial literacy as an area in which high school students often lack guidance at an early age.

The result was a course called Money Mondays. A summer lecture series that he uses to teach his players about investing, saving to buy a house and planning for retirement became a tool that he could post to his CoachTube page for others to benefit from. It became a real-world application for the academic principles his program preaches, and a digital asset that other coaches could use if they wanted.

“I push the education piece, partly because I’m a teacher, partly because I was a nerd in school. I was a terrible athlete. School was my thing. So, I push that,” Dudley said. “We schedule our practice around study halls to make sure they have their grades. We pump a lot of kids out to college, whether they’re playing football or just students. We really just try to make sure they’re better people than when they started in the program.”

While coaches are charged with turning the digital era into an educational benefit, players are now tasked with leveraging their own digital brand to market themselves for the next level.

In that respect, Nichelson has gotten a crash course in what digital marketing can look like for a player in demand. As a highly touted recruit, college coaches have used Twitter to reach out and connect with the linebacker/running back.

Because social media can be the first point of contact, Nichelson uses it in kind. By pinning his highlight package to the top of his Twitter page, he makes sure coaches don’t have to search to find out what kind of player he is.

“It’s the most important thing,” Nichelson said. “Once colleges check out your profile, the first thing they can find is your highlights. That makes it easier because sometimes coaches won’t go out of their way to try and find your stuff. It’s easier to just have access to everything right there.”

As he has gotten scholarship offers, Nichelson has also been sure to thank schools publicly with a post. That way, he makes sure to reciprocate the interest being shown in him. He’ll also thank journalists who might write about him, providing another way to show his appreciation for the role that media coverage might play in helping him reach the next level.

At Pittsburg High, the social media chatter has been seemingly constant for the Pirates’ plethora of high-profile recruits. 

What used to be a process that could be executed behind closed doors is now lived in the open, and managing what that looks like externally falls mostly on the shoulders of student-athletes themselves. 

“It can get hard if you make it get hard. You’ve just got to know how to manage it,” said Miami-bound quarterback Jaden Rashada. “I haven’t been on it as much as I usually would, and that’s my way of dealing with it. (It’s about) noticing how social media isn’t really that important but people make it important.”

But, is it ever too much?

“Not really for Instagram, because that’s friends and stuff for me, but Twitter is like a business social media platform for me,” said Washington commit Rashid Williams. “It got hectic for a while trying to answer everything and making sure I didn’t leave any teams, before I committed, undelivered for a lot of hours.”

Vanden-Fairfield quarterback Tre Dimes follows a similar script when it comes to digital brand building. After leading the Vikings to a storybook CIF State Bowl title in 2021, he returns for his senior season this fall with an eye towards duplicating that success while also planning for his future at the next level.

So how does the multi-talented athlete approach what he puts on social media? For starters, as someone who doesn’t post much on social media outside of football, he knows that leveraging digital media really isn’t optional these days.

“I do feel like it’s very important. Especially with Twitter, I feel like that’s a big resource for players in my position,” Dimes said. “Honestly, I feel like not as much with Instagram but with Twitter, yes, you kind of have to use it to get your name out there a little bit.”

Amidst the possibility it creates, social media can also have negative consequences. With more and more kids constantly tied to their phones, the propensity to always be “on” when it comes to digital can be daunting. 

In the week leading up to the start of training camp, Bellarmine imposed a dead week in which players and coaches alike were encouraged to hit the refresh button before starting the season. Ronald said what resulted was a noticeable decrease in digital activity across the board, and when players returned to camp, he heard more chatter about trips to the lake and camping than he did about what was trending on social media.

“Whether it’s the kids, the coaches, the people that cover us, this is such a heartbeat and important component to high school sports and how we know it today,” Ronald said. “Everyone has had to adapt, and it’s here to stay, but I think it’s always great for coaches, players, families, the people who cover us alike to be able to unplug and go do something face to face and put those phones down to recharge those batteries and be able to navigate all this.”

As digital channels continue to evolve and more and more voices emerge in a rapidly growing market, high school players and coaches still rank among the best at narrowing their focus to the task at hand. 

Ask how a successful program comes together and they will still tell you that the key to success is to take things one play, one game and one season at a time.

Coach speak? Maybe. But it’s 2022, so here’s the real question. 

If they didn’t Tweet about it, did it really happen?