[fullmetal]

O tempora, o mores.

From this SI.com analysis:

The latest change took effect Friday morning. As of June 15, college coaches are allowed to make unlimited phone calls and send unlimited text messages to recruits who have finished their sophomore year in high school. Coaches will also be allowed to send direct messages on Twitter and private messages on Facebook, although public contact on social media networks is still not allowed.

The AP article is here.

I hope the proponents are right that we'll see the seedier underside of player promoter-agent machinations disappear.

[fullmetal]

O tempora, o mores.

From this SI.com analysis:

The latest change took effect Friday morning. As of June 15, college coaches are allowed to make unlimited phone calls and send unlimited text messages to recruits who have finished their sophomore year in high school. Coaches will also be allowed to send direct messages on Twitter and private messages on Facebook, although public contact on social media networks is still not allowed.

The AP article is here.

I hope the proponents are right that we'll see the seedier underside of player promoter-agent machinations disappear.

[stan01]

Hopefully all the recruits and their parents will be able to afford unlimited texting.  I can see a few phone bills getting out of hand for those who cannot afford a texting plan or who choose to limit their kids' addiction to texting. 

[stan01]

Hopefully all the recruits and their parents will be able to afford unlimited texting.  I can see a few phone bills getting out of hand for those who cannot afford a texting plan or who choose to limit their kids' addiction to texting. 

[pincemob]

Am I the only one who finds this all totally insane?  Shouldn't the recruit/family be able to specify the amount of harassment they want?  If they choose "unlimited" then fine, let them be bombarded 24x7.  If they want none, great, it can be like the "do not call" registry.  And maybe there is a middle ground, like one contact per month.  If either the schools or some middle-man broke the rule, the parents could report it -- like with do-not-call.  What would be wrong with that system? 

[pincemob]

Am I the only one who finds this all totally insane?  Shouldn't the recruit/family be able to specify the amount of harassment they want?  If they choose "unlimited" then fine, let them be bombarded 24x7.  If they want none, great, it can be like the "do not call" registry.  And maybe there is a middle ground, like one contact per month.  If either the schools or some middle-man broke the rule, the parents could report it -- like with do-not-call.  What would be wrong with that system? 

[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..

[fullmetal]

It sounds terrible to me.  You could easily write a program to spam kids en masse to affect a 'personal' touch to your correspondence.

[fullmetal]

It sounds terrible to me.  You could easily write a program to spam kids en masse to affect a 'personal' touch to your correspondence.

[Hank 91]

It also puts recruiters in a bad position. Let's say you're recruiting Bluechip McQuarterback. You want him badly, but you think it's kind of ridiculous to send a thousand pointless texts a day, so you don't. You figure it makes more sense to send meaningful texts a few times a week -- "Great game last night, can't wait to see you do that for us!" or "Good luck on your chemistry final; I know you're gonna rock it!" But then you hear that ten other schools are going with Shock and Awe texting plans. What do you do?

I think this is bad for everyone involved.

[Hank 91]

It also puts recruiters in a bad position. Let's say you're recruiting Bluechip McQuarterback. You want him badly, but you think it's kind of ridiculous to send a thousand pointless texts a day, so you don't. You figure it makes more sense to send meaningful texts a few times a week -- "Great game last night, can't wait to see you do that for us!" or "Good luck on your chemistry final; I know you're gonna rock it!" But then you hear that ten other schools are going with Shock and Awe texting plans. What do you do?

I think this is bad for everyone involved.