NCAA dealing a heavy blow to Rivals.com ...

Then they should go ahead and put the block in place.

The other part could be accomplished with something like random drug testing. Just have the coach sign a sheet saying the site has not been accessed. If there's a reason to suspect otherwise, then the PDAs and other devices get checked.

 

What % of Rivals' gross revenues come via monthly fees paid by NCAA member schools? I would guess something on the order of 0.0001%. Or, what am I missing here?

 

One of our resident SIDs, might know the answer, but wouldn't blocking the access on school networks prevent regular students who legitimately subscribe from accessing the site in their own dorms?

If the goal is block certain sites on college campuses, I think its safe to say that Rivals wouldn't exactly be on the top of the priority list.

 

It would. Sometimes life has its bonuses. But then the school could charge a fee for the access.

 

My first-hand observation of individual Rivals.com team sites is that they pretty much do whatever the coaching staff asks them to do. Not actively recruiting these kids, but definitely keeping tabs on them. Coaching staff will call Rivals guy, say, hey, get in touch with Joe Athlete and see why he's going on this visit to Auburn. Then call me back.

It's definitely an extension of the coaching staff.

In exchange, the coaching staff lets Rivals know when they got a commitment, and it magically appears as a breaking news item about 20 minutes after the kid commits. Putting it out there publicly then puts a little pressure on the kid to keep his commitment (ha!)

When I was a college beat writer, my managing editor kept bitching to me that we were getting beat on recruiting stories by Rivals.com. As much as I tried to explain the relationship, he never wanted to hear "excuses" about why I wasn't the first to get commitment stories. Fucking putz.

There's nothing worse to cover than football recruiting. Interviewing flip-flopping dumbasses who's necks are in knots from all the bullshit all the coaches tell them. "It just seemed like a good fit" and "the coaching staff is a great group of guys" and on and on and fucking on.

 

This should be interesting, especially considering many newspapers across the country are beginning to explore ways to sell original content to readers. Can't wait to see if the interpretation of this new rule is to ban writers from these sites. I don't think so. Guaranteed this one will be overturned. This is just more proof the NCAA is clueless.

 

I'm actually surprised that a lot of coaches haven't faced more sanctions from the NCAA regarding the recruiting deals they have with writers. I know of one guy at a decent-sized school who full-on recruits for a school, and he's one of the analysts for the site itself (and an alumnus). The fact that they want to shut down the coaches' access is one thing, but there's such a desire by some of the die-hards out there that it would be tough to limit.

The most unfortunate thing about the site and network itself is that a kid who is getting recruited will get his few phone calls from the coaching staffs of schools interested in him, but then he has to deal with the calls from all the recruiting sites. There appears to be no communication there. In one night, you might see an update on Will Smith's recruitment from the writer of the Texas site, the Oklahoma site, the Texas A&M site and the Baylor site ... and that's just on the one network. Perhaps three or more of the Scout writers call him, too, and then maybe a few 24/7 writers and then the Oklahoman and the newspapers.

I've talked to plenty of kids when they get on campus who say that it just drives them insane to have to answer phone calls from all the recruiting sites, and usually they just start ignoring everything at that point.

Through and through, it's a flawed system. But, unfortunately, it's market-driven, and that can be a dangerous thing.

 

It's not the loss of revenue, it's the damaging of the symbiotic relationship. As several above have noted, college assistant coaches and recruiting staffers read Rivals and its ilk to keep tabs on what players are doing and how they're leaning (because they can only contact them personally so many times and so often).

If that ability to monitor their recruits through Rivals is taken away, there's less incentive for college teams to feed information to the sites. Thus that takes away the niche (a multi-million dollar one) that the recruiting sites have carved out to separate themselves from traditional media.

EDIT: An interesting side note to this is that Tidesports.com, The Tuscaloosa News' Alabama Crimson Tide-specific pay site, recently became part of the Rivals.com network. Of course, a huge portion of their content --- including the day-to-day team coverage of football and other sports --- has no connection to recruiting. Does this mean Saban can't read Cecil Hurt's column while he's drinking his day-old coffee and scarfing down Little Debbies every morning?

 

Yeah, except it's not going to stop. The Rivals guys and coaches are still going to exchange info. It's really like any other beat, there's give and take with your sources. I worked for a Rivals site a while back, but didn't cover recruiting much. The head football coach disliked me as much as he disliked all the other media people. He would have been pissed to know some of the stuff his assistants were telling me. An assistant coach might ask me about a booster I knew or if I thought a certain high school player was really interested in them and a week or two later he might tell me the real reason a player missed the last game.

 

True, but those relationships exist largely on a "what can you do for me?" basis, on both sides.

The reporter tells the recruiter, "Let me know you're recruiting and who commits and I'll give you publicity on the site. And also, our writers down the network will write about when that guy visits another school, and you can read on our site how it went and where he's now leaning."

If half of that equation is taken away, the recruiters are going to have less/no incentive to help out the reporters by providing them scoops/content. The publicity for a commitment is nice, but it's nowhere near as valuable to the coaching staff as the ability to find out what's on a recruit's mind when your opportunities to communicate with them directly are limited.

 

Instead of reading it on the site with a comped subscription, the coach and the Rivals guy will just talk. There's still going to be the same exchange of information.

 

Didn't know about the Tidesports and Tuscaloosa News relationship. That's a great model for some smaller newspapers out there. Much better than starting your own premium service.