Thoughts on Scout and Rivals...

hmmm ... intriguing trio of possibilities there ... is there something you need to tell us Hoops?

 

I'd love to direct a snuff film of Ann Coulter -- something with four horses, a bunch of rope, and the one-dress-owning bitch smack dab in the middle.

 

Actual situation:

State U gets a verbal from a kid who had been under the radar and had received zero attention from in-state big power school. Kid goes on to have a monstrous year, and looks like a real steal for his chosen school.

January rolls around and the bigger school's Rivals site starts what amounts to a campaign with headlines like "Will Joe Stud honor his committ to State U?" "Can Lure of Big Stud U pull Joe Stud from State U." The stories amount to love letters to the kid, but offer no real information, simply odd speculation that Big Time U has interest in the kid. The regime in question did NCAA time for recruiting violations and was known to step over the line if it could get away with it. It was the most obvious example I have ever seen of a site working with a coaching staff in order to swing a kid.

BTW, it worked. Kid reneged, signed with the other school, but failed to qualify and hasn't been heard from since.

As for what these guys do, I'm just glad it's not me. To have to cream yourself over every kid who runs a sub-4.6 and act like he's the next Reggie Bush would make my stomach turn. They're a lot like fantasy "journalists," projecting the shit out of everything, facts be damned. Then there's the fact that two out of five of these kids will ever start for their team and one in 10 is the all-conference stud and the transfer or dropout rate is more like three in 10. But if you read the report, nine of 10 teams have essentially recruited 17 future all-conference guys.

 

I know I do.

A buddy at another paper in the South called a kid once while working on a recruiting story. He asks the kid who was doing most of his recruiting. He answered with "coach (insert name of recruiting guru)." Buddy stops and asks, "No, which coach is recruiting you?" Kid responds with "Isn't he a coach there?"

 

I worked agreed to work for a Scout site once. Site publisher was a big fan of the school. He often changed feature stories in the monthly magazine to make them look better for the school. It was awful.

 

My favorite is when a scrub all of a sudden verbals to one of the top-10 programs and all of a sudden the recruiting sites make the kid a four- or five-star player.

 

Rivals.com is attempting to become a mini-ESPN: online videos, station on Sirius Radio, an annual magazine, in-house TV studio and , recently, the hiring of writers such as Olin Buchanan from the Austin paper. Heck, they're even on the EA Sports College Football 2006 video game.

Rivals makes money hand over first, probably at least $12 million a year. The brass lives in luxury homes in Brentwood, located outside of Nashville, and are workaholics who demand that everyone else be one, too, even for $30,000 a year. While they are terrific business people, they are profoundly shallow folks whose lives completely and entirely center around work. They've also been known to throw employees on the street without notice, including one guy on the day he returned from his honeymoon. I'd caution anyone about working there unless you want to eat, breath and sleep it 24/7/365 for the purpose of helping the executives move into bigger mansions. The word is getting out about this slowly but surely, but it probably won't hurt them in the long run.

As for how Rivals compares to Scout, I don't think there is any comparison. Rivals is far superior in my opinion.

 

Don't kid yourselves about these site. They have altered the way newspapers do business, be it for better for or worse. Little Rock and Knoxville hired folks specifically to handle recruiting for their own sites. Also, because of the sites, which houses message boards, print journalists are forced to work harder and try and track down rumors, most of which are false, however, many are true.

Also, newspapers now have their own team message boards. And let's not lump the entire group of internet people together. Not all are after convincing a kid to go to School X. That's like saying all reporters at the NYT are liars and shitty. ... Oh, well maybe that wasn't the best example to use.

 

I'm going to be "that guy" for a second and give you the difference between Scout and Rivals. For the most part, both do good jobs in the recruiiting circles. But Scout is now owned by Fox Sports, which gives it some solid credibility. Here are the numbes from Scout compared to Rivals.

Scout is:
a.. #1 in Revenue
b.. #1 in Total subscriptions: Over 215,000
c.. #1 in Unique Visitors: approaching 3 Million compared to competitor's 2 Million.

Scout is by far the most viewed team and recruiting property in the nation.

d.. #1 in Growth (uniques since 8/01): Scout has grown from 0 to nearly 3 million compared to Rivals growth from 1.4 million to 2 million.
e.. #1 in recruiting quality: According to analysis by Birmingham News, Scout rated highest in every category in recruit rankings.

http://www.al.com/sports/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/sports/1138530317230680.xml&coll=2&thispage=1

Sorry. Just had to set the record straight.

 

The preceding unbiased, fully neutral and totally objective message was presented by the good folks at Scout.com.

 

Facts are facts. Besidies, I said I was sorry.

 

Nine out of 10 web site "reporters" are not journalists and don't have even a basic grasp of ethics, news judgment, etc. Newspapers undoubtedly have their share of problems, but I'd say their ratio is a hell of a lot better.

I don't think anyone is questioning how influential Rivals and Scout have become. The issue is the fundamental problems that come from fans masquerading as journalists. If you don't think they permeate the culture, you're mistaken.