The NCAA rule changed at midnight, same second the calendar flipped, and now the following is true: college coaches are allowed to retweet and like posts from high school prospects regardless of whether they've signed national letters of intent.

So you know what's coming next, right?

College coaches, from coast-to-coast, are going to be retweeting and liking all sorts of things that aren't worthy of retweets or likes in an attempt to gain favor with 17-year-old prospects. The fear of how not retweeting and liking might hurt coaches with prospects guarantees as much.

Take it away, Georgia Tech assistant Eric Reveno ...

Up early trying to find a prospects tweet to retweet. New NCAA social media rules effective today are going to be interesting. -- Eric Reveno (@CoachReveno) August 1, 2016

Interesting, indeed.

I've read and heard some folks opine that this represents the end of recruiting as we know it, and one person even used the always fun "Wild Wild West" cliche. With all due respect, the Wild Wild West featured guns and death. So this is not that. But it's also not nothing. And here's why: we are, as a country, raising a generation of children who attach their self-worth, in many ways, to social media. Don't believe me? Read this Washington Post story from earlier this year that details how much importance teenagers place on likes, retweets and other such things. One girl, in that story, explains how she deletes posts that don't get enough likes because, to her, a lack of likes suggests the post was lame.

Now apply all this to college basketball and football prospects.

Once you acknowledge they're also teenagers who also place a weird, but not uncommon, level of importance on social media -- surely you've seen them begging for followers, right? -- then you must acknowledge that college coaches would be foolish to not cater to those emotions. Hypothetically speaking, if you're a college coach recruiting a high school prospect who is active on social media, wouldn't you now feel compelled to follow and consistently like or retweet things? Because, if you don't, a high school prospect might perceive it as a lack of interest (or love) on your part -- especially if coaches from other colleges are liking and retweeting and just generally catering to the prospect's ego in the newest and most public way the NCAA allows.

"Sounds right to me," D.E. Wittkower, a social media expert and associate professor at Old Dominion University, told me Monday morning.

Simply put, not playing the social-media game might really cost a coach a prospect. That's not hyperbole. And so the question is this: will coaches who have been invisible and/or inactive on social media have to adapt? Is being active on social media -- and generous with retweets and likes -- suddenly part of the job?

In most cases, I'd say yes.

Granted, it probably won't matter much to the giants of college basketball like Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, Michigan State's Tom Izzo and North Carolina's Roy Williams -- provided, of course, their assistants play the Twitter and Facebook games they're likely unwilling to play. But it could matter to many. And that means, on some level, that being active on social media is now a part of a college coach's job just as much as it's, say, a part of my job.

Speaking frankly, there are aspects of social media I despise. The negativity is insane. The trolls are irritating. The stupid replies are ... stupid. And I hate how I'm addicted to Twitter to the extent that, while awake, I rarely go even a few minutes without checking it almost regardless of what I'm doing.

But guess what: it's part of my job.

A different approach would make me less effective at my job. And now college coaches, to a certain extent, are in a similar spot. They must cater to the Twitter feelings of high school prospects or risk the repercussions. Like it or not, for better or worse, such became a reality last night at midnight.