Yep, the wacky, wild Web is at it again

July 31st, 2006 | Posted by PostmanR

Remember earlier this summer, when we made mention of the Washington Post’s lengthy profile on that 10-year-old basketball phenom?

Creepy? Yes. Wrong? Maybe. Surprising? No.

And the Big Lead has done a good job of digging up the dirt on some slimy AAU basketball coaches. What I’m getting at here is that the college basketball recruiting game is an over-the-top-hey-can’t-you-leave-my-fourth-grader-alone-already type of operation as much as it’s a corrupt, dirty and frightening practice.

OK, so I’ve done a mediocre job setting the stage as far as what’s going on in the recruiting game in 2006.

Well, after running across this Sports Illustrated article, college recruiting appears to be getting decidedly weirder.

The culprit this time? MySpace.com. (I prefer the cleaner interface of Facebook, thank you very much.)

The trouble all stems from the MySpace page of Patrick Patterson, a recruit that has peaked the interest of many schools, including Kentucky. Well, some UK fans got on his page and starting leaving him comments pleading for him to come to UK.

Apparently, this is a big no-no under the “unacceptable written contact with recruits by representatives of the institution’s athletic interests,” so UK went ahead and self-reported this secondary violation.

Odd. Just extremely, extremely odd. That a university has to report violations stemming from what a 15-year-old kid is typing on a Web site in his parent’s basement is almost beyond comprehension. (No matter how small the penalty for the school, if any is even incurred.)

Now, the SI article does a good job of pointing out this absurdity and urges the NCAA’s Recruiting Subcommittee to update their rule book on Internet matters such as this when they meet in September. Realize that it’s damn near impossible to monitor the Web for violations such as this (not to mention a complete waste of time and money) and that it’s probably not worth patrolling. However, setting limits on other electronic communication, such as text-messaging, is a worthwhile endeavor.

Seems to make the most sense to me.