Michigan football has surely been trying some new tactics for recruiting since Jim Harbaugh took over as head coach, but this probably isn’t what he or the program had in mind.
As of early Wednesday morning, the Michigan football Twitter and Facebook accounts appear to have been hacked. Either that, or the program’s social media department is adopting some very different ideas of what might interest alumni and fans.
Either the @umichfootball Facebook account was hacked or Harbaugh has changed the culture even more than I thought. pic.twitter.com/k3x0IIluOL
— Chris Burke (@ChrisBurkeNFL) August 12, 2015
As of 7:30 a.m. ET, it appears that Michigan football’s Twitter page has been scrubbed of all extraneous, viral, non-football content. But its Facebook page is still populated with a bunch of pop culture and gossip detritus. Here are just a couple of screen caps:
Good morning, Michigan football Facebook page http://t.co/EvuZ9gntGy (HT: @TheStudebuck) pic.twitter.com/Ti6G0kesPP
— Ramzy Nasrallah (@ramzy) August 12, 2015
Of course, it’s possible that someone in the Michigan athletic department happens to be intrigued by what the stars of That 70s Show look like as they’ve grown up, photos of bad tan lines and various things women won’t tell men about sex. But we’re going to presume that such content wasn’t meant to be posted on the football program’s Facebook page.
Fans of U-M Athletics: We want to acknowledge that our Facebook pages for Michigan Football, Basketball, and Athletics have been hacked.
— Michigan Football (@UMichFootball) August 12, 2015
Someone’s probably going to be chewed out by Harbaugh this morning, or at least receive a very intense stare.
At the very least, a Michigan athletics social media coordinator is likely going to be attacking these posts with enthusiasm unknown to mankind this morning.
But it’s probably worth keeping an eye on whether this wave of BuzzFeed-like junk was successful for Michigan football’s social media traffic. If so, perhaps Urban Meyer or Mark Dantonio might consider sharing links to articles about co-stars who hated each other, 20 fascinating facts we didn’t know or Miley Cyrus’s most controversial pictures. Whatever attracts the players of the future and makes a football program look down with current pop culture, right?