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BY HILLARY SMITH
hsmith@nwitimes.com
219.933.3233 | Wednesday, February 01, 2006 | (No comments posted.)
COLLEGE FOOTBALL | NATIONAL SIGNING DAY
Kyle Yelton was hanging out with his friends when his cell phone alerted him to a text message. He then had the pleasure to led his buddies know that a college recruiter was texting him.
"They were all like, 'No Way!' " said Yelton, Chesterton's kicker who was recruited by Indiana, Ball State, Western Michigan and Eastern Michigan before picking Illinois. "It was kind of cool."
Welcome to the new wave in college recruiting: text messaging.
"We don't go anywhere without our cell phones," said University of Illinois recruiting coordinator Reggie Mitchell. "Now that we can text message, our entire staff changed over their phones so that we would be able to text easier."
With innovations in technology, the landscape of college recruiting is changing while the NCAA tries to keep up.
While there are periods in the recruiting process when coaches can make just one phone call, text messaging is considered written communication, which is unlimited. So a coach can quickly message: CALL ME or HOW'D YOU DO or WE'RE PLAYING ON ESPN SATURDAY keeping in touch with the recruit.
"It's unbelievable," said Blaine Bennett, Purdue's recruiting coordinator. "It's unlimited. Each coach is a little different. On our staff there are some guys that don't text at all and some people that text all the time."
The problem for players is that they pay for every message received.
"I was always getting a phone bill and there's $30 extra in text messages, all from coaches," Yelton said. "I was getting texts from a lot of different schools and I'd have to put all the numbers into my phone, so that when I saw I had a text I could say 'Oh, this is from IU, this is from Illinois, this is from here, or there.' It was kind of hard before I did that because I didn't know who they were from."
"What it comes down to is face-to-face meetings and phone calls anyway," Thornton coach Bill Mosel said. "They're going to try everything to get the upper hand in recruiting."
As the Internet expands, so does its impact on recruiting. Sites dedicated to high school athletes, junior college athletes, specific schools and specific sports rate the power of each class as recruits begin to commit. The sites also post game film of top athletes and information on the recruiting progress of each athlete.
"As recent at three years ago, four maybe, we were publishing a junior book through the (Indiana Football Coaches Association) and we would all list all of our juniors and all of their relevant information," said Jeff Yelton, Merrillville football coach and father of Kyle. "Then we stopped doing it all of a sudden because like boom, Web sites were there with all of the same information. It has had a huge impact on recruiting."
Do coaches actually look at those rankings?
"We don't," Bennett said. "I'm sure some people do, but we don't try to search Rivals.com to generate new recruits. ... We don't really look at the rating. If Rivals rates a kid four stars, somebody else might rate them one. We might offer to the one and not the four."
"If you look in the Big Ten, the teams that have won the Big Ten the last couple of years haven't had the Top 25 recruiting class," Mitchell said. "We do look because if you take for instance a kid in California that we're interested in and we may not have tape on him, we'll go on the Rivals site and decide, is this a guy we need to get more film on?"
Ultimately, Bennett is concerned that technology will start to erode the necessity of relationships with recruits.
"I would say that recently more coaches are on the tech side and would have more information on a kid," Bennett said. "They might have more information and more interaction with a kid, but I don't know that they'd have a better relationship, just more information. The older style, you have better contact with the head (high school) football coach and the parents and a better relationship."
Bennett also thinks that the NCAA will begin to regulate the use of text messaging, a phenomenon that took off this year.
"It shouldn't be like a phone call, it can't be regulated that way," Bennett said. "You wouldn't be able to keep the records, but I don't know what they're going to do. ... This year it's very new and its happening very fast. It's like any new technology, some people are really excited about new technology and some have decided to recruit the same way for 15-20 years."
There are also concerns among coaches about the legitimacy of the information on recruiting sites. Information is posted before it ever happens (such as planned recruiting trips that are cancelled) or athletes begin to rank their colleges before taking a visit or being offered a scholarship.
"We have talked to our kids, and our own son, to be very careful what you say to those recruiting services," said Jeff Yelton. "You don't know what's going to happen down the line and you want to keep all of your options open. ... I also think that recruiting services are another way for athletes to get their names out there and I know that they do read them. They do get upset if college coaches think they're rated first on a kid's list, they read that and find out they're third."
Added Mitchell: "I know some coaches don't like the Internet because it puts out too much information. But I think if you're honest with the kid, you don't have anything to worry about. Sometimes you go on the Internet to find out what a kid is doing, because he has no reason to b.s. the Internet guy."
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