[pincemob]

The S.I. article is comical.  The writer is applauding this, saying it will cut down on transfers and free up the NCAA's bandwidth to focus on more egregious penalties.  He also suggests that it will lead to more studying by the recruits, as the deluge of messages will encourage them to pick up a book and read more. 

The transfer argument is pretty funny.  He believes that kids are now misjudging how much they are wanted by each school, because they are calling and texting the same number of times.  Now, kids will be able to tell more easily which school really want them, i.e. if they get 1,000 texts per day from Alabama, they will know they are wanted more than Florida State which only sends 500 texts per day.  And if the school writes a software program to text them 1 million times, they will know it is a great fit.

The argument that the NCAA will now be able to root out more serious issues like agents, etc, is also ridiculous.  I doubt the 5 or 6 people who were perusing cell phone records are capable of changing the problems with grass roots basketball, agents, and the like.

As for the suggestion that this will lead recruits to tune out the messages and read more, I don't know what to say.  Teens spend 30+ hours per week online.  They are obsessed with exactly this type of messaging and ego-boosting communication.  I think more likely this will just change how those 30 hours are used, possibly increase it to 40+ hours, not to mention give them more incentive to text when they are driving. 

I also worry there will be unintended consequences.  Now that contact is unlimited, it will allow posers to get much closer to recruits without the recruits/families suspecting a problem.  These are pretty young kids, and as we saw with that recent Ohio State incident there are some shady characters wanting to make contact with them.  Before, if your kid was getting 10 messages a day from someone they thought was Tosh Lupoi, they would suspect an issue.  Now it will be harder to discern if the contacts are legitimate or not since that would be allowable. 

I could be missing something, but this seems like bad news..

[pincemob]

The S.I. article is comical.  The writer is applauding this, saying it will cut down on transfers and free up the NCAA's bandwidth to focus on more egregious penalties.  He also suggests that it will lead to more studying by the recruits, as the deluge of messages will encourage them to pick up a book and read more. 

The transfer argument is pretty funny.  He believes that kids are now misjudging how much they are wanted by each school, because they are calling and texting the same number of times.  Now, kids will be able to tell more easily which school really want them, i.e. if they get 1,000 texts per day from Alabama, they will know they are wanted more than Florida State which only sends 500 texts per day.  And if the school writes a software program to text them 1 million times, they will know it is a great fit.

The argument that the NCAA will now be able to root out more serious issues like agents, etc, is also ridiculous.  I doubt the 5 or 6 people who were perusing cell phone records are capable of changing the problems with grass roots basketball, agents, and the like.

As for the suggestion that this will lead recruits to tune out the messages and read more, I don't know what to say.  Teens spend 30+ hours per week online.  They are obsessed with exactly this type of messaging and ego-boosting communication.  I think more likely this will just change how those 30 hours are used, possibly increase it to 40+ hours, not to mention give them more incentive to text when they are driving. 

I also worry there will be unintended consequences.  Now that contact is unlimited, it will allow posers to get much closer to recruits without the recruits/families suspecting a problem.  These are pretty young kids, and as we saw with that recent Ohio State incident there are some shady characters wanting to make contact with them.  Before, if your kid was getting 10 messages a day from someone they thought was Tosh Lupoi, they would suspect an issue.  Now it will be harder to discern if the contacts are legitimate or not since that would be allowable. 

I could be missing something, but this seems like bad news..