College football coaches bask in a fan-filled limelight for a full five months out of the year. But when the husky lads leave the field and the alcohol-laden student section finally clears out, what’s a college football coach to do? How do spotlight-loving coaches with multi-million dollar salaries pass the time?

Recruiting, plotting, team-building and training are the first activities that come to mind. This season, however, coaches are devoting their time to a much more strategic and high-tech offseason maneuver: twittering.

Known for their unparalleled elocution and prose, college coaches have thrived in the uncensored 140-character-or-less social-networking arena.

Twitter is the perfect platform for Minnesota’s Tim Brewster to slowly reveal his former life as a cheerleader. Through excessive exclamation points and sickeningly sweet phrases of encouragement, Brew manages to both inspire and repulse in 140 characters or less.

“This is a fun team to coach!! They do things right on and OFF the field! GO GOPHERS!!”
“Cant hardly wait til tomorrow! Practice #4 and its in FULL PADS!! GO GOPHERS!!”

Michigan’s Rich Rodriguez hopes Twitter will draw attention away from his spectacularly disappointing rookie coaching season. Whether it’s the hockey team, the basketball team, the weather or his social networking woes, Rich Rod prefers to tweet about everyday happenstance rather than his Michigan Wolverines.

“Trying to Change my background image and having problems.”
“Getting ready to watch Michigan Basketball. Good Luck John! Go BLUE!”

Always at the forefront of all-trendy-things-football, Oregon has put their entire athletic department on twitter. They’ve even gone a step further and done away with press releases, interviews and news articles. Henceforth, all Oregon football news will be announced via twitter, like their recent coaching hire.

West Virginia’s Bill Stewart is the novelist of the bunch. Ever the scholar, Coach Stew outshines the tweeting competition with his complete sentences, accurate punctuation and comprehensive thoughts. He even manages to stay on topic with only the occasional reminiscent Freudian slip:

“It was an early wake up, and I’m most appreciative how they responded. I didn’t have to yell at them too much.”
“Heard Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James and the Shondells coming to practice at 4:30 a.m. Knew it was going to be a Crystal practice.”

USC’s Pete Carroll seems to have fully learned the multi-media ropes, updating his page several times a day and interacting with other tweeting celebrities. Ever the optimist, Carroll hopes that in all the high-tech hubbub, people will FINALLY forget that Stanford game.