Okay so the headline is more or less a bit of hyperbole but when new recruiting rules go into affect later this week it might not be a bad idea for recruits to start getting unlimited text messages at least.
The NCAA as of Friday will now allow college coaches to send unlimited text messages and make an unlimited amount of phone calls to recruits who have finished their sophomore year of high school. Coaches you better brush up on your texting lingo.
I fully expect that kids will be seeing their phones and their bills blow up from Friday on with a wave of texts and calls from coaches scrambling for their services.
This is an odd turn of events that come into play considering just a few years ago former Indiana basketball coach Kelvin Sampson was fired after repeatedly making too many phone calls to recruits while at Oklahoma and then as the Hoosiers head coach.
Currently coaches can only call a recruit once per month from June 15 after a player's sophomore year to July 31 after his junior year, though the prospect is permitted to call coaches as often as they like. Coaches can call a recruit twice per week starting August 1 after their junior year and no text messages are allowed.
Once the new rules come into effect coaches will be able to call and or text players as often as they want which means high school teachers expect to hear a lot of buzzing or inappropriate cell phone wringing in class.
Recruits can expect to see their phone bills go up as a result too unless they already have unlimited plans that allow them to receive or make as many calls and or texts as they want anyway.
This certainly makes things easier for the coaches but also seems like an incredibly obtrusive way to do so. Recruits who are still very much kids will be inundated with calls and texts and likely they won't always be from coaches or programs they care all that much about.
And it also, at least to me, comes across as a bit too impersonal and a bit desperate. Had the technology been around when former Duke player Shavlik Randolph was being recruited perhaps Billy Donovan would have sent a Randolph a picture of him waving rather than burning the jet fuel he did to come and simply wave at him from the tarmac as he famously did during the his recruitment efforts.
My feelings is, that much like Donovan's failed attempts to recruit Randolph with his wave stunt, that coaches won't be necessarily ingratiating themselves to recruits or their parents by blowing up their phones at all hours of the day.
It will be a delicate balance now for coaches to determine when enough is enough and we all know that sometimes more is not always better.
I would expect that Duke is already developing a strategy to approaching how often and when to call recruits.
To me calling and text messages are incredibly impersonal but obviously a necessity when coaches can't visit players or vice versa. So, in a way it is a step forward but it is creating a slippery slope that some of course will abuse and overuse.
In reality all it really does is create less headaches in terms of oversight for the NCAA and more headaches for recruits.
So, yeah I guess it all makes sense LOL. TTYL
