As National Signing Day in February draws closer and closer many top ranked high school football recruits are anxious to catch the eye of a college recruiter. Nash Central High School student and defensive end Houhsun Gaines, ranked number 17 in North Carolina for high school football players, has recently been in the news for something other than his talent on the field. Houhsun Gaines was the victim of an online scam involving the creation of a fake twitter and email account posing to be a coach from the University of Florida. Gaines had been communicating with this unknown person via Twitter messages and limited emails who reportedly offered him scholarship money in effort to get him to commit to the University of Florida. This terrible trick played on a local football star has been covered by several large sports news outlets such as Sports Illustrated, Yahoo! Sports, and The Bleacher Report.

Gaines had been receiving messages from the “assistant coach” for nearly a month and a half from an unverified twitter account. Twitter verifies popular public figures’ accounts so that followers know that they are viewing their official page. Along with the unverified account, Gaines was sent emails from the fake assistant coach that was not from an .edu account. Houhsun Gaines was given a scholarship opportunity from the fake coach and accepted their offer. He committed to the university at a signing event in at Nash Central High School on October 3^rd according the Rocky Mount Telegram. On the same day Houhsun attended the RMA football game against Northeast Academy dressed in all University of Florida apparel. However, later that night, the Nash Central athletic director, Michael Mosley, was able to talk to an actual coach from Florida. The legitimate coaching staff member that Mosley spoke with said that while Florida was looking at Gaines, they by no means had offered him a scholarship to attend the University of Florida and play football for the Gators.  Here is a direct quote that Mosley gave to the Rocky Mount Telegram, “When I talked to a coach, they told me they hadn’t spoke to Gaines in several weeks. I think he was talking to someone he thought was a coach. I guess he said (on Friday) that he had talked to a coach the night before, but they said he hadn’t talked to anybody on the coaching staff.”

After the news broke that Gaines’ interaction with the university were a sham, the media claimed that Houhsun had been “catfished”. The modern slang term catfish refers to someone who posed as someone else, often over the internet. While at this day and age we are no stranger to people lying about who they are over the internet to normally start a romantic relationship, this particular catfish is something new. Gaines tweeted on October 5^th, “Lol I didn’t think about it that way but, I got catfished…Haha.” Gaines’ has since been forced to reopen his recruitment status. While the person who played this cruel trick has yet to come forward or be caught, Gaines is focused on moving forward with his career in football. Despite this unfortunate event, it seems as though Houhsun Gaines will have the last laugh. He is currently being looked at by several major Division 1 schools such as Virginia Tech, NC State, and University of Miami