NCAA Football Ncaa Basketball Recruiting

I thought Shelley Smith of ESPN did an even-handed job when she broke the news that the University of Connecticut women's basketball team committed a recruiting violation by taking Maya Moore on a tour of ESPN. UConn coach Geno Auriemma does not agree with me.

Auriemma said this on his weekly radio show:

"It's a story that has been rehashed by ESPN to serve its own purposes. ... Shelley Smith came up to talk to me to do a story on [Tennessee women's basketball coach] Pat Summitt and my relationship with her, why the series was canceled, and I flat out said, 'Go ask her. I didn't cancel it.' I didn't want to be involved in [that] story.

"And [Smith's] response was, 'OK, we're going to [report the violation].' ... What purpose does that serve? It's already been discussed and dealt with [last summer]. It's typical: 'Let's drum up some interest before the NCAA Tournament starts and hope these two meet in the finals so we can get boffo ratings' at the expense of Maya Moore."

The notion that this was done "at the expense of Maya Moore" strikes me as rather silly. No one is saying Moore did anything that any high school basketball player wouldn't do: She was offered a tour of ESPN and she accepted. What makes the story interesting is that it was Summitt, Auriemma's arch rival, who reported the tour to the NCAA. If Auriemma doesn't think that's newsworthy, he's wrong.

Shelley Smith of ESPN.com is reporting that the University of Connecticut women's basketball team committed a recruiting violation by taking Maya Moore on a tour of ESPN.

The violation was brought to the NCAA's attention by UConn's arch rival, Tennessee, and Tennessee's conference, the SEC. Moore was heavily recruited by both schools and is now a star freshman at UConn.

ESPN acknowledges that it agreed to UConn's request to give Moore and her mother a tour. ESPN's headquarters in Bristol are located approximately 45 miles from UConn's campus. ESPN released a statement today saying, "To avoid future incidents, our tour policy will now prohibit high school athletes from receiving tours at the request of a college or university athletic official."

The tour was considered an impermissible benefit, although UConn says it did not receive any NCAA penalty for it. Tennessee had previously accused former UConn players of giving Moore car rides in violation of NCAA rules; the NCAA dismissed those accusations.

It's no secret that UConn coach Geno Auriemma and Tennessee coach Pat Summitt hate each other, and it's safe to say this won't do anything to change that. But it will add another layer of intrigue if UConn and Tennessee play each other in the NCAA Tournament.

It didn't get a lot of notice, but the NCAA took over the National Letter of Intent (NLI) program a couple days ago. Prior to that, the NLI was administered by the Collegiate Commissioners Association and the Southeastern Conference. Now the program will be handled by the NCAA Eligibility Center, and they will answer questions and investigate any issues regarding a NLI.

Never heard of the Eligibility Center? That's because it's fairly new.

The Center will have responsibility for initial eligibility and amateurism functions currently performed at the Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse managed by the ACT.

The NCAA Clearinghouse is not going away (for now), but it seems it won't have quite the same immediate impact on determining initial eligibility. There is some speculation that the NCAA control could lead to an early signing period in football, as there is in basketball and other sports. I'm not really sure how NCAA control would lead to that.

This seems mainly to be about the NCAA assuming more direct control over the recruiting process. Or at least the backroom paperwork.

The NCAA has consolidated both the formal commitment by the student-athlete to the school and the determination of eligibility under one NCAA operated and controlled division. There are no announced changes, and procedures for submitting the NLI by the schools appears unchanged for now.

Several months back The FanHouse reported that Yahoo! was negotiating to purchase Rivals.com. That effort stalled for unknown reasons, although it was speculated that questionable business practices by a Rivals executive had tripped the deal.

However, several more months have passed and the two sides have reached a suitable agreement. What it all means is anyone's guess, but the acquisition makes a little more sense than the Scout.com/MySpace merger reported recently in this space.

Rivals is already publishing some content on the Yahoo! Sports platform but I haven't seen Yahoo! content circulate in Rivals sites. These are strange days where recruiting sites - once the basement business and realm of the 900 number for updates - sell for millions of dollars to former Silicon Valley search engines gone big business.

I have yet to locate a sale price but will update this as we find out more about this merger.

Update: TechCrunch reports that Yahoo! paid $100 million to complete the sale. A very gracious hat tip to reader Jason of Eleven Warriors.

For the past several seasons, text messaging recruits has been college coaches preferred method for contacting potential players because it didn't fall under any pesky NCAA regulations. Unlike telephone calls (which are strictly controlled) and other forms of contact, there was no limit on the number of text messages a coaching staff could sent to a recruit.

It appears the NCAA is now about to close that loophole:

An NCAA committee has approved a measure banning the use of text messaging in recruiting, potentially closing a loophole that has been used by coaches since the technology became widespread.

This week, the organization's Division I Management Council approved the proposal, submitted by members of the Ivy league, and forwarded it to the Division I Board of Directors for consideration at their April 26 meeting in Indianapolis. (ESPN.com)

The idea behind the telephone calling restrictions was to allow high school students to have something of a normal life, but the text message floods can actually cost a kid a fortune as well. Some teens were reporting cell phone bills of several hundred dollars per month from coaches inundating them with text messages, and the continual texting during daytime school hours can't be something that was helping athletes focus on their classes. If anything, this move by the NCAA is probably a year or two too late - everyone has known this was a giant gaping hole in the rules for a while.

Still no actual confirmation as to whether Yahoo! is trying to buy Rivals.com and whether it is for the reported $100 million. What we do have now is a blog-scuffle with lawyers threatening legal action for defamation.

The blog TechCrunch discussed the rumored purchase of Rivals.com. TechCrunch creator, Michael Arrington posted that past securities fraud issues involving Rivals.com CEO Shannon Terry could derail the acquisition. To be clear, the issues took place in 1998, and the company where it took place was not and did not involve Rivals.com.

According to the post Rivals.com was nearly bought by Fox in 2005 and then AOL. In both cases Terry failed to disclose his past fraud litigation until it was discovered in the due diligence phase. The post says in both instances that shortly after the discovery, the deals fell apart.

Well, Terry and his lawyers didn't like the post. Not one bit. Being lawyers, they sent a three-page demand letter for a correction, retraction and apology for false and defamatory statements in the post. If the terms are not met, they threaten legal action on (or about) April 18, 2007 in Tennessee civil court.

TechCrunch naturally posted the demand letter for all to read. They also state that they are now in huddle with their own lawyers over this, so they cannot comment any further. Arrington and TechCrunch are offering Shannon Terry to the chance to directly respond on Tech Crunch with a response to refute the facts and opinions in the original post . That's unlikely to happen.

Now, it's wait and see with regards to the rumored deal, and the showdown with TechCrunch.

Previously on Fanhouse:
Yahoo! Wants to get Closer to Teenage Boys
$100 Million For Rivals.com?

When there's money to be made, lots of things become mainstream. In the past two years, the sports media industry has recognized the importance -- but especially the money to be made -- in paying attention to college recruiting. At the same time, there seems to be a wariness at embracing the recruiting sites too closely.

ESPN created its Scouts, Inc. group to track recruiting and evaluate high school talent for football and now basketball. With the weight of the 800 pound gorilla in sports media behind it, to cross-promote on ESPN.com and the various TV channels, it has gained prominence. All the while, though, the whole recruiting venture is treated like a separate company that is merely a contractor for ESPN.

Fox Interactive Media bought Scout.com in August 2005. The price tag was a reported $60 million. Despite the ownership, there is very little to indicate ownership by Fox.

Viacom/CBS/CSTV acquired MaxPreps.com for an undisclosed sum last month. This in addition to their own recruiting information that they had been building with Tom Lemming. MaxPreps will continue to operate as a separate site.

College recruiting is big business, we already knew that - but THIS big? Fox paid $60 million for the recruiting network Scout.com about a year and a half ago, and now it appears that Yahoo! is preparing to pay up to $100 million for their competitor Rivals.com. It's amazing to think there's enough guys sitting around paying monthly fees to follow the latest news about 17 year old kids and their future college choices to support two separate companies worth over $150 million combined, but that's evidently the level we've reached.

Rivals has an interesting history, as the first incarnation of the site blew through $75 million during the original dot com boom, but the new version seems to be built much more solidly and is very heavy on the multimedia side. Rivals has also aggressively signed deals to provide content for other sites such SI.com, USAToday.com and here at AOLSports.com. There is no word on how a potential deal with Yahoo! would effect those deals, but you can assume that they would want to keep the content at Yahoo! Sports and those other deals would slowly be eliminated.