Nebraska football fans have it kind of rough these days.
They watched their beloved Cornhuskers endure a losing season last year, and they couldn't do anything to help but scream louder.
Until recently, that is.
No, Husker fans won't be allowed to storm onto Tom Osborne Field to tackle opposing running backs mid-play or even text message NU Coach Bo Pelini when they think they see a soft spot in Texas' zone defense. Their new opportunity is even better. Nebraska football fans can now become online social networking recruiters - unofficially.
That's right, the next generation of fanatics is learning about NU football prospects on recruiting Web sites like Rivals.com. Then they barrage the athletes with messages on networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in an attempt to persuade them to commit to Nebraska.
But are they really helping NU land the next great Husker?
"I get a lot of messages from fans," NU recruit Will Compton said, "and I just try not to pay attention to them all, because everyone is so biased and just wants me to play for their school. Everyone just tells you what they think you want to hear, but nobody really knows your situation."
About every fourth message on Compton's Facebook wall is from a fan of a school recruiting him, and some of them aren't very nice. One message on Compton's MySpace page showed a doctored picture of him and former NU commitment Blaine Gabbert hanging out at a bar with former NU Coach Bill Callahan. Gabbert and Compton are friends in real life.
Beneath the picture was the word "TOOL" in all caps, and the caption underneath read, "When you have no imagination or style, just follow your friends." The message was a spoof of popular inspirational posters that say things like "Leadership" or "Perseverance," followed by a motivational caption. It referenced how both Gabbert and Compton had recently committed to the Huskers. A Missouri fan, who called himself a 14-year-old from Albuquerque, left the comment.
"I thought it was kind of funny," NU recruit Kyler Reed said of all the messages on his wall. "A lot of my friends are going to (Kansas) or (Kansas State), so I still hear it to this day."
Both Compton and Reed said the fans who leave them messages are people they didn't think twice about adding as online friends.
Maybe they should.
One Nebraska fan went as far as calling Husker de-commits Gabbert and Jonas Lee Gray gay while trying to influence Trevor Robinson, another Husker de-commit, about his college choice. There are even Facebook groups dedicated to glamorizing or putting down recruits. Right under one group called "Blaine Gabbert and Jonas Lee Gray: The next Nebraska prodigies" is one called "Blaine Gabbert, Jonas Lee Gray and any other Nebraska de-commits suck."
You can literally find more than a thousand fans on recruiting Web site message boards on any given day this off-season, and the unwarranted attacks surely show the dark side of recruiting celebrity.
"It gets annoying sometimes," Compton said. "People forget that I'm a person, too, and not just a football player. I have other things going on in my life other than football."
In addition to all these rouge fans that leave personal messages, some online recruiters are getting organized.
There are at least a dozen MySpace and Facebook profiles set up for each major college program, and all of them seem to have been created for the sole purpose of boosting fan support and recruiting high school prospects. Most profiles clarify that they have no affiliation with the school they are promoting, and there appears to be nothing linking any university or football program to any of these profiles.
However, the majority of fan messages on the internet aren't mean-spirited. Reed said he likes the fact that Nebraska fans are passionate, and he pointed out that Husker Nation is one of the main reasons he committed to Nebraska.
He also said that he hasn't received any messages or been heckled enough by any of his high school peers to cause him to get angry. In fact, some of these revolutionary internet recruiters have actually helped make his college decision easier.
"I got a lot of good feedback from people at different schools," Reed said, "and they kind of gave me an idea of what it is like to go there."
Still, some college football fans might be better off just cheering for their team on Saturdays.
KRISKNOWLTON@DAILYNEBRASKAN.COM
is a member of the 
