Colleges

NCAA eyes ban on text messaging

Used in recruiting, it's seen as intrusive and expensive for players.

By BRIAN LANDMAN
Published April 26, 2007

Armwood High running back Eric Smith can be all thumbs.

That's not a bad thing when it comes to text messaging, and Smith, like so many of his peers, is adept at it and has grown increasingly dependent on it in today's fast-paced information age.

"It is pretty common for a teenager," he said.

For coaches looking for any edge in recruiting top-shelf talent, too.

"I heard from four or five different colleges already today," Smith said Monday. "It's a good way to keep in contact with people."

But the NCAA's Management Council sees it a bit differently. It suggests that text and instant messaging have become "problematic." Coaches have inundated youngsters with messages at all hours of the day.

That's why the Management Council has recommended a thumbs down -- a prohibition on text messaging as a recruiting tool and limiting electronic communications to e-mails and faxes. The Division I Board of Directors meets today in Indianapolis to vote on the rule change, which if it's passed would take effect on Aug. 1.

"I would not be in favor of eliminating methods of communications that allow us to develop relationships and make the best-educated decisions in the recruiting process," said Florida football coach Urban Meyer, for whom texting has become akin to breathing, at least during his waking hours, and has helped him land ballyhooed classes.

Georgia Tech coach Chan Gailey, another frequent text messager, said the proposal is a "knee-jerk reaction" as the NCAA struggles to keep pace with technology.

"In two years we're going to have something that takes the place of text messaging and then we'll be looking to have a rule against whatever that is and then that'll change in two more years after that," he said.

NCAA president Myles Brand said as much in his state-of-the-association address at the men's Final Four when he observed that text messaging may soon be "last year" in the communications world.

"One of the issues that we face ... is to understand how the new media is evolving and how to create fairness and how to project our rules, our old rules, into that new media that make sense and that are not overly burdensome ... and doesn't allow for abuses," he said. "I think we have a very hard job to do that and we run as fast as we can to catch up."

Even Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, who's ambivalent on whether the rule should be changed and jokes that at 77 text messaging is "out of my range, age-wise," said if the NCAA stops it, something will come along to replace it.

"As old as the history of football, there's always been somebody who moves a step ahead," he said. "If you cut this out, they'll find another way to do it."

North Carolina coach Butch Davis and others acknowledge the cost for text messaging can be a hardship for some families and that has to be considered.

"My mother has had to get on me about the expense," Smith said. "She just got unlimited text messaging for me and my brother (Petey, a talented linebacker)."

Gailey, for one, said no youngster has to have that feature on his phone. If it's too expensive or deemed too frivolous, forget it. But perhaps the best argument for banning it, some coaches say, is that it's intrusive for the youngsters, who are receiving and responding to text messages from coaches while in the classroom.

"I do it as much as anybody, and I think it really infringes upon their time," Clemson coach Tommy Bowden said. "And as you well know, you can sit there (in class), put that phone on your lap below the desk and be texting the whole time the teacher is talking. I don't think it's created a healthy environment. ... I voted to ban it totally."

Times staff writer Antonya English contributed to this report. Brian Landman can be reached at landman@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3347.

[Last modified April 25, 2007, 23:46:53]