Recruiting question

[SoonerNorm]

If a recruit (any sport) puts a note on Twitter or Facebook and tells which schools he/she is considering signing with, is it wrong for fans to try to persuade him/her to come to their school?

 

[35TangoTango]

If a recruit (any sport) puts a note on Twitter or Facebook and tells which schools he/she is considering signing with, is it wrong for fans to try to persuade him/her to come to their school?

I'm pretty sure that it is an NCAA violation for someone who is identifiable as a fan of a particular school to contact a recruit. IMO whether or not the recruit has said something about that school in social media is irrelevant.

 

[SoonerNorm]

I'm pretty sure that it is an NCAA violation for someone who is identifiable as a fan of a particular school to contact a recruit. IMO whether or not the recruit has said something about that school in social media is irrelevant.

That's what I thought too. I saw this very situation on Twitter and OU fans are some that are involved.

 

[Soonercuda]

The below is from OU's compliance office at soonersports.com http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/okla/genrel/auto_pdf/20071024_03_faq.pdf

May I e-mail or post messages on a prospective student-athlete’s MySpace, Facebook or similar web site and try to convince him or her to attend the University of Oklahoma?

An athletics representative may not e-mail or post messages on the webpage or website of any prospective student-athlete.

But this would have to be almost impossible to police for average fans.

 

[BlackwellSooner]

An athletics representative may not e-mail or post messages on the webpage or website of any prospective student-athlete.

But then you get into the gray area of what constitutes an "athletics representative"?

It could be argued that a high school fan is not a "representative" of a school.
Further, the degree of influence than said "fan" or "representative" exerted over any given recruit would also play into how illegal the said contact was.

For example, a recruit's employer, who was an OU fan/booster is likely to come under much more scrutiny from the NCAA than would Joe Blow's girlfriend, also an OU fan.

Both undoubtedly fall under the same rule umbrella, but likely looked at much differently by the NCAA....

 

[sybarite]

The NCAA has been rather arbitrary in the past about what constitutes a fan or representative of the program. Just buying a kid you know a hamburger is a violation unless you can demonstrate that you do this for others as well. The interpretation is so arbitrary that I have deliberately refrained from any discussion of any college athletic programs with anyone who might conceivably get a scholarship. There have been several questions asked by kids who did get D-1 scholarships, some of whom were recruited by OU. I have never discussed OU with any of them. I think it is best not to provide any opportunity to those who may wish to make some statement about the evil state of OU athletics, at least until I find some reason to think of the NCAA as logical, reasonable, or unbiased.