Notes, Quotes and Slants
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College Notebook No. 10 Wednesday, July 6, 2005 By Denny O'Brien

Boundaries needed for Internet recruiting

©2005 Bonesville.net

Recruiting once was a high-stakes game in which coaches sometimes spared no expense to court their most coveted prospects. If that meant occasionally lining the pockets of a rare talent, what the NCAA didn't know certainly couldn't hurt.

Those were the good old days, some might say, back when coaches and athletic administrators had a firm handle on when and how to bend the golden rules of recruiting. If a program was penalized for infractions, rest assured its leadership was well-aware of any inappropriate actions — and the potential consequences — prior to facing a jury.

Such was the modus operandi under which many programs in the old Southwest Conference operated. In what was traditionally one of the most competitive leagues before it disbanded during the 90's, schools that walked the straight and narrow typically found themselves floundering in the basement.

Nowadays, the recruiting battlefield is far more complex. With the attention given to recruiting within the media and by fans, coaches no longer have full command during heated battles over blue chippers.

That was the topic in a story recently published in ESPN The Magazine that focused on the recruiting of high school standout Myron Rolle. Instead of chronicling the creative ways in which coaches have wooed the prized defensive back, the article profiles how superfans have thrust themselves into the middle of the recruiting skirmishes.

And that's a problem. Anytime fans have unregulated access to recruits — and abuse it by trying to influence their college decisions — coaches can sometimes be forced to exhaust as much time in damage control as they do in the demanding regimen of recruiting within the rules.

So much so that it was the topic of heavy discussion at the Big Ten's spring meetings this year. It seems coaches have become a little wary of the role the Internet now plays in recruiting.

For good reason, too.

While maybe not the exact concept envisioned when Rivals.com and Scout.com launched, it quickly has become a predominant theme among those two networks' affiliated sites. Whether they want it or not, almost all Division I-A programs have an indirect web presence on at least one of the two networks, and many of the parties responsible for the individual school sites are die-hard boosters who will stop at virtually nothing to see their alma maters succeed.

And Rolle has heard from many of them.

He's heard from them in e-mails encouraging him to select the school they represent. He's heard from them at the summer scouting combines, where they flock in hopes of stealing a moment to discourage him from committing to the rival school that he may seriously be considering.

Forget the rivalry between Steve Spurrier and Phillip Fulmer. There's a bigger one brewing between the individual Web sites within the nation's two largest online fan networks — and it will continue to percolate until restrictions are in place that will reduce the amount of contact boosters can have with potential recruits.

The most conservative solution would be for the NCAA to draft legislation that prohibits boosters of individual schools from involvement in networks that focus on recruiting. That at least would provide schools with some institutional control and perhaps blanket them with a sense of security that die-hard supporters won't become online vigilantes whose well-intended efforts backfire in the end.

But that's an unlikely scenario. The rights protected by the First Amendment likely cover fans who supplement their hearty appetite for recruiting by operating those niche sites.

None of this is to say that network sites centered around recruiting and message boards are eternally bad for college sports. In fact, their introduction in the late 90's provided a long-awaited and much-needed forum for fans whose thirst for timely information far exceeded what the print media could quench.

For that reason, the Internet has become a valuable resource in which readers savvy enough to discern which online publishers are credible can remain informed without having to wait for the morning paper's arrival. In fact, the Internet's role will only grow over the next few years, and many analysts predict that its importance will soon surpass all other mediums.

That makes sense.

What doesn't is the dangerous role some Websites and fans insist on playing in the game of recruiting. Last I checked, coaches are fully capable of botching that one by themselves. 

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02/23/2007 02:00:10 AM