A story started to circulate last night that is part brilliantly executed prank, part college football recruiting, and part hit TV show Catfish.
When you combine all those things you get a story that’s borderline unbelievable, but here’s apparently what happened. This Instagram seemed to reveal it all and quickly caught fire.
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A group of high school kids created a fake Twitter profile for a fictional Tennessee high school offensive lineman they named Blake Carringer. That Carringer profile would occasionally tweet out that he’d been “blessed to receive” an offer from a school here and there, and those offers included school like Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.
It didn’t take long from there for recruiting service sites like Rivals to create a profile the 6-6 315 pound fictional prospect, which listed him as a 3-star prospect.
While 247 hadn’t rated him, Rivals had given him a rating based on his tweets of offers from those SEC school (and who knows what other criteria since no film exists), and the 247 composite score took into account the ratings for Rivals, 247, and ESPN. 247 CEO Shannon Terry admitted the mishap and noted a change to their procedure moving forward to prevent future situations like this coming up again.
Recruiting PSA 1 of 2: Yday a national recruiting service rated a prospect that doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, that service’s public data contributes to the 247 Composite. While appalling, I am not surprised. (continued …)
— Shannon B. Terry (@sbterry247) February 14, 2019
Continued … Ironically, it was same lil brother service that took shots at 247 on NSD. In order to insure that never occurs again neg impacting the Composite, 247 has a new protocol where prospects are no longer given a Composite rating w/o also having a 247Sports rating.
— Shannon B. Terry (@sbterry247) February 14, 2019
The recruiting sites weren’t the only ones fooled, as local Knox News also came out with a top 10 listing of prospects in the Knoxville area that included Carringer.
Who are the top 10 recruits to watch for the class of 2020? @TuckerBryn @CooperMays @Tylerbaron23 @elijahyoung52 @DrewFrancis1015 @carringer2020 @TdotH44 @AjDavis1321 @chancellorbri @edwardstyrece13 https://t.co/dJpc74h6NO
— PrepXtra (@prepxtra) February 7, 2019
Also, at least one guy who claims to be the founder of East Tennessee high School Football Recruits (with 7 total followers) claims to have had an actual conversation with Carringer. The account has sent three tweets total, two of them regarding the recruit who doesn’t even exist.
@carringer2020 Just came to me and told me that he received another offer this one from Syracuse University this kid has big things ahead of him #2020Recruits
— Tyson Kellog (@KellogTyson) November 28, 2018
Hey, @Rivalsfbcamps I recently saw that you followed one of my recruits Blake Carringer, if you need more information about him feel free to send me a dm. #NeverSettle
— Tyson Kellog (@KellogTyson) November 28, 2018
Every few years it seems like one types of stories pops up, but a bunch of high school kids fooling a recruiting service with a fake offensive lineman is a nice little twist to things.
