The illegal recruitment and intrusiveness of athletic scouts, and their recruiting technique with regard to pursuing prospect student athletes has been a major problem in athletics ever since it became an industry that generated a profit.  However, recently there has been a significant spike in what is known as the underground recruitment industry due to multi – billion dollar deals with major television stations who are fighting to televise the collegiate sports events.  The dramatic spike has a direct correlation with the growing illegal recruitment industry, because where there is an increase in potential money to be made, there will also be an increase in competition.  The problem, however, is not that there will be more coaches, scouts, and boosters who will be attempting to partake in the illegal techniques.  Rather, the problem is that the NCAA will not change their porous rules and regulations regarding the situation, that make it exponentially easier for this type of recruiting to occur.  This is why the NCAA must add new rules as well as change existing rules in order to minimize the industry that has erupted in recent years.  

There are various ways that the many athletic coaches and scouts attempt to avoid the NCAA’s rules and regulations.  Prominent sports writer Jed Hughes, who writes for the world – renowned Bleacher Report, used the legend and championship winning coach John Calipari, who is the current head coach of the University of Kentucky Wildcats, as a prime example of a coach who pursues players by indirectly influencing their decision via other parties.  Hughes reports that Calipari has been building strong connections with minor league coaches by donating significant sums of money to the individual team in order for the coaches to guide their top players to sign with the University of Kentucky.  This article demonstrates how college coaches have been able to find loopholes in the laissez-faire regulations that guide the recruiting process through indirect donations that have a direct correlation to the university landing top prospects.  This is a significant problem that the NCAA must address because it is turning college athletics into an underhanded business venture for many of the individuals who are seeking a financial profit instead of an honest competition between programs.  The NCAA must create rules that extend to interacting with third parties if they wish to diminish this tactic of influencing student – athletes.  

Underground recruiting has plagued athletics ever since those who choose to partake in the immoral technique discovered that they could have an illegitimate “leg – up” on the competition by essentially buying better players for their team and then reaping the benefits of the team’s winnings.  In this issue those who are analyzing and trying to eliminate the underground recruiting industry focus on the morality of the method.  It is agreed that the morality of the situation is an important issue, however, many forget to focus on how the prospective athletes are affected by the recruiting process, considering they are the ones who are at the center of the situation.  Matt Maher, who is a prominent writer for the University of Texas, wrote an article that focused on the degree to which college scouts in many cases harass their potential recruits.  In the article, Matt Maher states that text messaging in recruiting was originally supposed to distant the player from the scout simply because it does not require any in person interaction; however, it has had the complete opposite effect.  The NCAA did not anticipate the volume in which scouts are able to text the recruits.  It has become so absurd that many players have stated that they feel as though they are being harassed by the scouts, and are now not even able to hide from them.  Texting has made finding loopholes in the system exponentially easier, because it is so much harder to track a virtual text than and actual face-to-face conversation.  Instant messaging has also made a difference in the recruiting process by allowing recruiters to overcome any geographical boundaries that had previously been an issue.  It has allowed recruiters to contact prospects at any time or at whatever volume they deem necessary. This adds a new dimension to the argument because it displays how rules must be changed as well as added to adapt the new and rapidly evolving world that is based around technology.  This is because the technology that can be useful, has been abused by aggressive and illegal recruiters who have taken advantage of the utility by invading on the privacy of the athletes, while understanding that it is easier to offer illegal temptations to recruits via telephone and instant messaging.

The most important step when attempting to solve a problem is identifying the underlying the cause in order to fully comprehend the crux of the issue.  In this specific problem, that is the recent spike in underground recruiting, there is a particular reason that explains volumes about why the spike is occurring.  Tyler Pasko, who is a credible writer for the popular sports paper, The Phoenix, articulated a perfect explanation for the dramatic increase in illegal recruiting in his article, “College Athletics: Business or Experience.”  This article describes how record breaking deals with various big television networks have created a substantial spike in revenue for all parties involved.  These deals have also increased the competition for young talent, because of the shear amount of potential money that can be made off of them.  This has in turn made the underground illegal recruiting process significantly more profitable for the potential recruits who have been accepting absurd amounts of cash and other gifts in return for their agreement to play for the university.  An example of this is the recent headline that reported that the University of Michigan gave Chris Weber an astounding reported $600,000 to play basketball.  This article does an excellent job of describing the situation surrounding what motivates coaches to go to such drastic levels of bribery and influence to attract top level talent to their universities.  The insight that we gain is that many coaches see the potential economic benefit that they can have by signing with big name television networks such as ESPN, FOXSports, and CBS.  However, they realize that in order for this to occur they must be as successful as possible on the field.  It is at this point that they trade their morals for potential economic gain despite the risk involved in acquiring talented players illegally.  The knowledge of the coaches’ thinking pattern will help the NCAA exponentially when brainstorming how to approach the situation.  This is because they now understand where the motivation to participate in the activity arises from so it will be easier to target the central point of the issue and cut most of the illegal recruiters off at the beginning of the process before they corrupt the prospect athletes.

After the problem is identified, a significant amount of action is required by all parties involved to change outcome of the situation.  In this case it is understood and accepted by the NCAA, universities, and all student – athletes that there is a serious problem that is growing rapidly due to increasing liquidity involved in the scheme.  However, the even bigger problem is that the individuals who are benefitting from the underground recruiting are also heavily involved with the rules and regulations regarding the recruiting of prospect student athletes.  Alexander Payne, who writes about the legal interpretation of athletic policies for Vanderbilt University focuses in his writing on the legality of college scouts, as well as university donors, take advantage of the weak preventative laws that surround the current recruiting process.  Payne addresses the porous rules that allow for the prospects and scouts to take advantage of the various loopholes, however later in the article he suggests specific rules that would prevent from the exploitation.  He addresses that a huge issue with the rules and regulations system is that the penalties set for the agents or boosters who are doing a significant portion of the illegal recruiting are so minimal that they are able to keep recruiting naïve athletes without any deterrence while the players and universities involved receive intense scrutiny.  Payne refers to a press report published in 2010 that states 42 states with sports – agent laws have yet to revoke a license from an agent recruiting an athlete under illegal circumstances, which is outrageous considering the thousands of illegal recruiting scandals that occur every year.  He states that the biggest problem that the NCAA would face in passing the regulations is in fact a major portion of the NCAA itself.  This part is composed of those who have invested heavily in the recruiting of high caliber prospects, who either directly or indirectly support the underground recruiting. 

 While approaching this topic many people forget to analyze possibly the most integral part of the recruiting process.  This is the point of view of the players who are being pursued relentlessly by coaches, scouts, and donors across the nation.  Steven Spiegel directed a Real Recruiting Documentary, which captured the opinions of the student athletes firsthand from those who are currently going through the process.  It interviews many prospects and how they approached the process as well as the various ways that college scouts approached them.  The one common theme that all of the student – athletes agreed upon was that the scouts all made the lives of the athletes significantly more stressful, and that the majority of the scouts made various promises from direct financial gain to exotic material means.  The video reinforced the theme of coaches, scouts, and boosters putting their potential economic gain over the security of the players as well as the universities that they represent.

There are many rules that surround the recruiting process, however many of these are unknown by high school coaches and athletes.  The lack of understanding of the rules is a main reason why agents and recruiters are able to manipulate the high school coaches and players by taking advantage of particular rules that are not commonly known and using the uncommon knowledge to their advantage.  Scott Klungseth, who is the athletic director and coach for Dakota State University, wrote an article entitled, “The Five NCAA Recruiting Rules That High School Coaches Should Know.”  This article described five rules that illegal recruiters commonly violate.  Klungseth reiterates that if all coaches and players were forced to know these rules and uphold them then there would be significant decrease in the amount of illegal activity amongst the players and recruiters.  He identified that the five rules that should be known by all coaches are the limits on telephone calls and contact between recruiters and players, the specified representors of athletic interest, the timing of possible offers and inducements, timing of official visits, and the details of a national letter of intent.  He then adds that the most frequently breached rule associated with college recruiting is the amount and nature of phone calls between athletes and recruiters. Klungseth specifies that the phone calls must always be at the athlete’s expense.  He also states that during there are various times during an athlete’s junior year that an athlete may at maximum receive one phone call per usually month long time periods.  During the athlete’s senior year, they can only receive at maximum one call per week from a coach.  The overall comprehension and respect of these rules would be a tremendous step in the process of eliminating the illegal recruiting industry.

A major reason why there is not more urgency to fix the problem of illegal recruiting that has been plaguing the NCAA for generations is because many do not understand how significant the underground industry is from an economic standpoint.  Allen Sack, who is the head of the department of sociology at the University of New Haven, wrote a paper on a study that he conducted that discussed the degree to which college athletes violate the NCAA rule with regard to amateurism.  The rule of amateurism in the NCAA is that players are not allowed to accept payment of any type with the exception of an academic or athletic scholarship.  The survey that he created was sent to 3,500 active and retired professional football players who were also all recruited actively by big universities.  Out of those 3,500 players 1,182 players returned the survey.  Although Sack did not disclose the exact number of players who said they did receive under-the-table payments by recruiters, agents, and boosters during their time as a collegiate player, he did say that the number was substantial which we can interpret to mean even more than even he assumed there would be.  This is significant because since the 1980s Sack has studied the illegal recruiting patterns of agents, scouts, boosters, and coaches while also focusing on the underground economy that exists in college athletics.  The significance of his reaction is because with all the experience that he has had with scandals regarding athletes and coaches it is astounding that even he is surprised by the number of athletes who received underground payments.

We have already researched what motivates a collegiate coach or recruiter to put their career and the university’s program in jeopardy to violate the recruiting regulations.  It is now time to turn our attention to the athlete’s prospective to help us understand their psychology behind jeopardizing their entire career for extra money or merchandise.  Thomas Hurst, who is a professor at Villanova University, studies the possible payment of college athletes, and wrote an article that describes why many student athletes would rather take illegal money instead of traditional academic or athletic scholarships.  Hurst answers this by describing how many of the athletes were raised with little to no money to spend on things that they want otherwise known as luxury items or “non-necessities,” and a traditional scholarship simply would pay for a necessity such as their schooling, however does not take care of the original issue that is having little to no money to spend on themselves.  This is why when an agent approaches them with money and luxury items that are foreign to them they jump at the opportunity without evaluating the long-term risks that are definite possibilities.  Another factor is that many of the athletes were raised with little to no supervision so the parents are not involved enough to make a mature and rational decision, and to think about all of the risk involved in the situation.  These concepts brought by Hurst are key because the first step to solving a problem is identifying the mindset that is the cause for it.  

There have been many stories about illegal recruiting with regards to money, however not many people understand to what extent coaches will go to retrieve top – level talent.  In a YouTube video that was filmed by Chris Maher many of the nation’s top prospects entering college were interviewed, and asked to share some of their craziest recruiting stories.  They started off to be rudimentary exchanges of large sums of money, however as the video progressed the level that coaches and recruiters would sink to was simply jaw-dropping.  Some of the offers include luxury cars and even attractive women all for a football player.  We learn from this video that there is no level that a recruiter won’t sink to all in the selfish desire to land a star athlete.

Illegal recruiting has plagued the high school and college athletic divisions for decades, however recently there has been a dramatic spike in both the amount being offered to recruits as well as the number of violations regarding the recruitment rules.  This is why it is vital now more than ever to analyze what is causing the growth of the underground recruitment industry, and then find a solution that will permanently eradicate the issue.  Throughout the paper there have been many causes discussed, including the exponential growth in profit that collegiate sports have experienced due to majorly lucrative television contracts, and how susceptible the rules are to being violated.  Illegal recruiting has reached a climax in recent years, and is taking the integrity out of one of America’s greatest pastimes.  It is because of this that all fans of collegiate sports must rally together and focus on upholding the rules that makes the sports honest, and change the system where that is the main focus.
