<p>These college athletic powerhouses ought be ashamed of themselves, AGAIN! The NY Times reported on an ongoing NCAA investigation of the university Athletic Department using female students to "encourage" high school recruits to enroll at their particular college. I think we all know what this sounds like. Certainly the male teen-age athletes know the deal, as one guy was quoted as saying that he wouldn't want to enroll at a school where the girls aren't pretty.</p>
<p>I love college sports, but I am weary and angry about such clearly inappropriate behavior by the Athletic Departments and team boosters. This was also an issue at U of Oregon a few years ago. So, now besides failing to graduate their athletes and the various and asundry arrests, assaults, no-show class attendance etc., these school are exploiting young women too (whom probably are not unaware of what's expected of them; Not necessarily intimate relations, but a little shake, rattle and roll and special attention to a 17- ir 18-year old high strung male).</p>
<p>This is a big deal at most of the SEC schools and other Southern sports powerhouses, I believe. It’s a big honor for the young women to be chosen as a “Diamond Darling” (baseball recruiter), “Bama Belle” (football recruiter), etc.</p>
<p>I would be careful about putting the cart before the horse on something like this. All that has been mentioned is that these girls befriended recruits and came to their games. I’m not so naive as to think other things might have happened, but the main story in this case is the fact that Tennessee may have committed secondary violations via these women recruiting the players off-campus (i.e. at the Byrnes game in Duncan, SC). These recruiters are at a lot of schools, especially in the SEC. Before lighting the torches and getting the pitchforks, understand that the only thing the NCAA is investigating is whether Tennessee has committed those secondary violations.</p>
<p>And then people wonder (there’s a huge, long CC thread) about scoundrels like Tiger Woods?</p>
<p>I like sports. I’ve enjoyed participating and watching. However, ever since around MS, I’ve had a bad taste in my mouth for all these “privledges” the athletes get. I dunno, maybe this is because I was only JV since I tended to my knitting and was more of a scholar athlete. I just struck me as tawdry then and it still does. </p>
<p>At each level of the game, it gets more enboldened. Some of these athletes came from questionable family backgrounds to begin with and so perhaps never learned to respect women and maybe never will, since they haven’t seen it role modeled to them that way at any stage of their life.</p>
<p>Ick, What a heckuva way to spend one’s time in college. </p>
<p>"Coach Grant Teaff, who has refused to start a group at Baptist Baylor, says he has seen notes that read, “Dear Jack: I enjoyed having you here. I’m deeply in love with you. I’d like you to come to our school.” If you receive one of these, feel free to take the first and third sentences seriously.</p>
<p>The Solid Gold tidy up closets around the athletic department. Sweet Carolines do at least two hours of filing a week in the football office, and the Texas Angels keep scrapbooks for senior players. "</p>
<p>That SI story is 22 years old, by the way. I sincerely hope it would read a little differently today, although I will admit that as a Northeasterner, I find Southern culture so foreign that I can’t pretend to have any kind of handle on it. All the stuff in the article reads like satire to me, and I have to keep reminding myself that these real people talking seriously about their real activities.</p>
<p>As far as I can see southern football is as big and competitive as ever so I doubt they have changed much as the southern ways have not changes much. The only thing that has changed is random hook-ups are even less of a big deal in college today. So I’d expect a little more action occurs on these trips than 22 years ago.</p>
<p>OK then Knights09, then where and when do we stop the slide into corruption or scandal? So, we shouldn’t be bothered by the small stuff, like these visits by female undergraduates to see high school players; or by college policies that encourage high school seniors to enroll at college just in time for the Spring Practice Football Scrimage, which is common, for example, at U of Florida? Sorry, but to me this is ethics and morals dying a death by a thousand cuts.</p>
<p>That’s not a good analogy. Tour guides can be male or female, aren’t necessarily more attractive than the average young healthy person, and dress like any other student.</p>
<p>I think the key word is in Knights09’s post: “befriended.” It implies that the hostesses are expected to create a personal relationship–or rather, the illusion of a personal relationship–with the recruits. That’s certainly how I read the SI article, and to me that’s over the line. Being personable and welcoming is one thing; offering an artificial intimacy (please understand I don’t necessarily mean physical intimacy) as a marketing tactic is quite another. The difference may be difficult to define in words, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.</p>
<p>We should be bothered by them making these trips because they are NCAA violations. And I honestly see no problem with players graduating early and enrolling in the spring if they meet all the graduation requirements. Non-athletes do that too.</p>
<p>I have, but more importantly, the tour guides aren’t pretending to be the applicants’ BFF’s; they’re just explaining where the cafeteria and the science center and the dorms are.</p>
<p>I figured it was shorthand for “We can’t PROVE they were sleeping with them, but, yeah, pretty much everyone knows they were hired to sleep with them.” Then the college can put on its injured innocent act . . . “OMG, it wasn’t us! If they slept with the kids, it must have been their own personal choice!” </p>
<p>For the record, at the three colleges I toured, I had an average looking male guide, a rather unattractive male guide, and a pretty but not stunning by any means female guide.</p>
<p>It’s like the airline industry in the bygone era when the business people were actually mostly “businessmen” Do you remember the ad campaign featuring a female flight attendant in short short pants with a caption “Coffee, tea, or me?”</p>
<p>It’s a shame that these colleges are pimping their female students! There is no other way to look at it.</p>
Yeah, most of the guides we’ve had have been conspicuously average-looking–not unattractive, just ordinary. In most cases they have been very appealing kids, but more in terms of personality than appearance, which is as it should be. Certainly none of them looked like they had been picked out for their looks, or for anything other than their ability and willingness to be an outgoing, articulate host to a bunch of strangers.</p>
<p>Didn’t read the whole SI story barrons linked to, but it was interesting that one of the Gator Getters was a PhD candidate. (Noticed the story was from 1987! Things change slowly, I guess.) Do you think they put “Gator Getter” on their resumes?</p>