Oregon
Does College Football Need Scouting Services?
In an article posted today on OregonLive.com, Aaron Fentress of The Oregonian does an excellent job of laying out why schools like Oregon need scouting services. He doesn’t answer many other questions that the NCAA’s inquiry is hoping to settle, but he does make a strong case that schools simply must subscribe to these scouting services in order to compete nationally:
Services help procure game video, transcripts, grade-point averages, test scores, accurate height and weight, addresses and phone numbers.
A national package could include a region, a select group of states, depending on the service.
But it all starts with the game video.
Gilmore said that too often UO, and other college programs, would request tape from a high school and receive only a few games. Through a package, Gilmore said, UO could get a player’s entire junior season and then also be able to watch opposing teams to scout additional players.
It’s easy to read a couple of headlines and determine that of course Oregon shouldn’t be paying for these services, right? We’ve all learned that any time a school makes the news for paying for anything, they’ve probably crossed a line somewhere, right? If this is actually legal, it shouldn’t be, and that’s a loophole that should be closed up right away.
Not so fast, my friend.
off
Scouting Services or Boosters: Oregon’s Gray Area
Yahoo Sports reported last night that the University of Oregon is under NCAA investigation for their payments of $28,000 to two “scouting services” with connections to recruits.
According to public invoices (see here and here) obtained by Yahoo! Sports, Oregon paid more than $28,000 to two men with personal ties to current Ducks for “recruiting services” – specifically, video of potential prospects. Recruiting services are common and legal (see below), but if either of the recipients in this case is determined to have had a role in a prospects’ recruitment, he could be classified as a booster and bring significant heat from the NCAA.
As one might expect, this has not gone unnoticed and virtually every major college football blog is talking about that report this morning1. The short-form headlines are much more damning — typically insinuating that Oregon was paying for recruits — than the current state of the facts, but it’s not as simple as it might initially appear.
- Just a sampling: Addicted to Quack, Dr. Saturday, SI.com, Maize n Brew, Double-T Nation, and Roll Bama Roll [↩]
