By this point nearly everyone has heard about how the new NCAA regulations permitting unlimited phone calls and texts between coaches and recruits will revolutionize the recruiting game. That may still come to be true, but a week into the new policy, the most notable contributions that the rule change has made are A) that even more calls and texts are being ignored by the nation's top recruit and, B) they gave birth to one really, really corny joke.
As noted by the Los Angeles Times' Eric Sondheimer, West Hills (Calif.) Chaminade High junior star Jack Williams was among the scores of teens who received text messages at precisely 12:01 a.m. on Friday, June 15. In Williams' case, the school that came courting first was Northern Arizona, the institution in the shadows of the Grand Canyon which uses the Lumberjack as its mascot.
The first message from an unnamed NAU coach was about as wrote as one would imagine: "We're texting you at 12:01 because we want you to be a Lumberjack."
To be fair, that text easily could have been sent to 100 or more prospects in a mass text. It's certainly nothing to get excited over. Yet there was another text that immediately followed that first one to Williams:
"Our mascot already has your name in it: Lumber-'Jack.'"
Clearly, this coach isn't headed to be a writer for Letterman or Conan. Of all the directions in which he could have used some wit to lure Jack Williams — "We think you can handle playing cornerback for the Lions AND hoops for us!" or "The tires are on us in Flagstaff" come to mind — they went for 'Lumber-Jack'? Ouch.
Williams still has a lot to prove in the remainder of his high school career, but his early returns have been bright. In fact, they've been bright enough to warrant a top priority text from a school. Now Lumberjack fans just need to hope he has as good a sense of humor about receiving texts after midnight as the coach who sent them.
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