Texting Nixed for NCAA Coaches

The NCAA recently reviewed its legislation about text messaging recruits and found that they should, indeed, ban texting between coaches and high school athletes. There are all kinds of critics of this ban, There are those, like Gary Parrish of CBS Sportsline, who say that banning it is behind the times, and that it is useless to try to limit the ways a coach can get into contact with a potential athlete. He even likes the idea of texting high schoolers because it could be an unobtrusive way for a coach to do all he can to harass a teenage athlete.

Besides the NCAA, there are few proponents of the ban on texting… save for Yours Truly. I think that it’s in the best interest of the NCAA and high school athletes to limit the ways that coaches can contact students. To me, its like making sure that released molesters don’t live near schools. Sure, there are ways around it. But in principle, we should be doing what we can to keep one element away from the other. If coaches had their way, they could give high school athletes money, throw pebbles at their bedroom window at night and play the USC fight song on a boom box held above their heads on the kid’s font lawn. Coaches will find a way to contact players, but setting limits, no matter how arbitrary, is the greater good.

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Permalink - Posted in General on August 14, 2007 - Post a comment