BC football story: Apology necessary?

So, a BC football player mentions the names of a couple of recruits he's going to be hosting, the BC-centric news site reports it, the school reports the violation ... and the website apologizes and takes the story down. Should the site have done either of those things? Or is it only something a partisan "news" operation would do?

http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/extras/colleges_blog/2010/10/boston_college_4.html?comments=all#readerComm

 

It's kind of tricky.

It's not really a violation for a player or coach to tell you news about recruits and such but it's a violation to publicize.

So if you ever want to hear about recruits or visits or commitments or whatever, you need to know how to play the game. And that means knowing what's a violation and what's not.

 

No surprise at all it's EagleAction.com. That site works so much in hand with the coaching staff that I often wonder if the owner and writers do the recruiting instead of the coaches.

 

I think that when you go to Eagleaction.com -- heck, when you type the URL -- you know you're going to a homer website for boosters and school-color-bleeders.

I obviously see nothing wrong with publishing the information, nor do I think the apology and retraction were out of line. I would hope an independent news source would neither apologize nor take the story down, but I got no problem with fanbois being fanbois on fanboi sites. Sucks for them that they hurt the program they cheer, but no harm done on the journalism end of things.

 

The site would have been better off writing the story, but not quoting anybody.

 

It's never a violation to publicize for the simple reason that a newspaper or web site or radio show or TV show are not members of the NCAA and not subject to their rules. It's a violation for coaches or other university staffers or players to comment specifically on recruits before they're signed. If one of them id dumb enough to tell a member of the media about, there are no legal restrictions from reporting it.

Same misconception about naming juveniles in crime stories. A particular police department, county or state may have laws preventing disclosure. But there are no laws preventing publication if someone does disclose.