Text Ban a Good Thing

Depending on with whom you speak, text messaging is either a blessing or a scourge; either way, it's on its way out as a recruiting tool.

One highly ranked prospect absolutely, positively does not give her cell-phone number out to coaches. It's a rule that her parents implemented but one - surprise, surprise - for which she thanks them.

It's not that they were afraid her phone would ring off the hook. It already does. That's what the silent, or vibration, mode is for. It's the text messages. Not one or two a day, but a veritable avalanche of them. Another prospect would turn her phone off before school and, when she turned it back on after school, there'd be twenty-some text messages queued up in her inbox.

And if you didn't have a plan for text messaging (or, simply, texts), some carriers would charge a dime per, meaning the one prospect was nicked two bucks a day just for receiving them. That is, until her parents added the first-tier plan, that cost about $10 a month, but they'd get overages. Finally, they had to get the plan that cost $20 a month.

Last week, the NCAA presumably put an end to all of that, come August. Then, the body's ban on text messaging as a recruiting tool will go into effect.

To which I say: IAT!

(It's About Time)!

Very few players or coaches I talked to during the past year liked the use of text messaging in recruiting. Players (read: parents) thought it was too costly and so intrusive, it sometimes bordered on harassment. In a conference call with media last week, David Berst, the NCAA's Division I vice-president, said the body heard disturbing anecdotal evidence, including one instance in which a prospect awakened to find 52 text messages.

For coaches, it was both nerve-wracking and irritating. In the latter vein, many had to learn a new skill - pecking away on an itsy bitsy keyboard with a finger or two thumbs - and a new language (WUG - what's up, girl). It was nerve-wracking because whether a prized teenaged recruit returned a text sometimes made or broke a day for a middle-aged coach. Since there is no prohibition on frequency of texts, and it was well known that texting is the communication mode of choice for many girls, any lag in replies often was taken as a bad sign in the recruiting process.

Time was, you could identify the coaches at evaluation events by the logo gear they wore. Lately, an additional identifier has been the preponderance of PDA-type phones, such as Blackberries and Treos. Some staffs even assigned the task of consistent messaging of recruits to a (usually young) assistant coach, thereby creating the ACT (assistant coach, texts). You'd hear conversations like:

Head Coach: "Have you been talking to (Recruit A)?"

ACT: "Yes! I just texted her this morning."

Funny how "texting" became synonymous with "talking." Though, on the positive side, messaging did remove an often-awkward barrier to communication that made a simple conversation between recruit and coach a trying task. And some prospects did enjoy the level of attention that frequent messaging represented.

Text messaging also is, in many ways, superior to voice calling, particularly if the intended recipient isn't picking up. It is much easier to scan a message on a screen than to access voice mails. Texting is this generation's twist on the pager, in terms of ease of use and urgency.

All in all, text messaging, Ibelieve, was a negative in the recruiting process because it contributed to the sense of overall pressure that girl's basketball recruits already feel. Many girls do not like being pressured into making decisions and have two major fears - that they will disappoint or hurt someone's feelings, or that any perceived reduction in attention they give a school might be met with a reduced desire for the school to recruit them. To wit, what often mars the otherwise joyful and celebratory occasion of deciding on a school is the task of calling the coaches with whom the recruit didn't commit - and the fear that such calls will result in begging, crying or, worse, screaming.

The ban will help reduce that pressure, though I'm skeptical about enforcement. It will be incumbent upon players to report violators and it's difficult to imagine girls ratting out coaches. I'm also unsure about the impact of the ban. It did have somewhat of a field-leveling effect. For the 2009 class and beyond, there again will be a premium on scouting and "babysitting" recruits - aka, the personal touch - which will favor the larger programs with resources.

Overall, it's a good thing. I just have to remember the time I was interviewing a player and her cell phone constantly was buzzing. I asked if something was wrong with the unit's vibration function. She held up the screen to show me the enslaught of text messages.

To which I thought: OMG!

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