A few years ago, Old Dominion head coach Bobby Wilder made the difficult decision to ban players in his program from using Twitter after it was discovered that a few players that were struggling academically were tweeting over 100 times a day. At that point, Wilder saw social media as a distraction for his guys, so he instituted a ban and enforced it for about four years.
Well last summer, Wilder signed up for Instagram and has posted updates there almost daily, and in July of 2015 he decided to lift the four-year Twitter ban. Just last night, Wilder announced via Instagram that he would cross his name off the list of the 13 head coaches without a Twitter account, and he made the announcement by taking a screen shot of one of our articles from last year titled "Which FBS coaches don't have a Twitter account?"
Now Wilder is officially on Twitter as
Fired up to be joining the Twitterverse #AimHigh#ODUFB
— Bobby Wilder (@ODUCoachWilder) May 9, 2016
" target="_blank">@ODUCoachWilder, and considering he's been on for less than 24 hours, he's been pretty active using the platform to promote their satellite camps with Michigan, Syracuse and Florida, and he admits to spending much of last night tracking down and following some of their top recruits.
When asked in the Pilot Online why he decided to take the plunge now, Wilder noted that, "Recruiting was the No. 1 reason I signed up."
"There are 129 FBS head coaches in the country, and I was one of ten percent of coaches not on Twitter. Our assistant coaches have been encouraging me to get onto Twitter so I can correspond with our top recruits. In this day and age, Twitter is the best way to communicate with recruits."
"I'll always still prefer the face-to-face conversations and phone conversations with prospects. I personally feel that's the best way to get to know them. But I respect how busy their lives are."
While some coaches prefer to outsource and have someone else control their Twitter profile, Wilder (who controls his Instagram account himself) insists that he'll be the voice behind his Twitter handle.