NY Times: NCAA Investigating Tennessee Football Recruiting

Lane Kiffin has made a habit of flirting with NCAA rules and regulations since becoming head coach at Tennessee. Ironically, it now appears that it may be actual flirting that gets him in real trouble.

The New York Times is reporting that Tennessee’s football recruiting is currently subject to a “wide-ranging investigation” by the NCAA. The investigation is reportedly centering on the practices of so-called recruiting “hostesses”, female students who host athletes and other prospective students on visits to the school. The Times reports that hostesses traveled to watch the games of certain football recruits, up to 200 miles in one case. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Interviews with multiple recruits and their family members revealed that the N.C.A.A. has strong interest in Tennessee’s use of recruiting hostesses, students who are part of a formal group at the university that hosts all manner of prospective students at campus visits, including athletes. It is not clear whether the university sent the hostesses to visit the football players.

In one case, hostesses traveled nearly 200 miles to attend a high school game in South Carolina in which at least three Tennessee recruits were playing.

Marcus Lattimore, a running back who made an unofficial visit to Tennessee but said he would not enroll there, said multiple Tennessee hostesses attended a game at James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., in September. He said they brought signs, including one that read, “Come to Tennessee.”

“I haven’t seen no other schools do that,” he said. “It’s crazy.”

The hostesses are considered representatives of the university, which would mean they could not recruit players off campus. Therefore, the visits may be considered violations of N.C.A.A. recruiting rules.

Two of Lattimore’s teammates, Brandon Willis and Corey Miller, have orally committed to Tennessee. Lattimore described the hostesses as “real pretty, real nice and just real cool.” He said he thought they had “a lot” of influence in Miller’s and Willis’s commitments to Tennessee.

Because of their influence on recruits, the recruiting hostesses have become popular with Tennessee fans. Bryce Brown, the country’s top running back recruit last year, who is a freshman at Tennessee, was pictured on a social networking site last year with a hostess. Other Tennessee hostesses have publicly conversed with prospects through Facebook and MySpace.

Some recruits say their influence is significant.

“You don’t want to go to a college where they ain’t pretty,” Lattimore said.

This is obviously an interesting case. A major issue here will be whether these hostesses were acting at the direction of the Tennessee staff or the university. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more in the coming days, so stay tuned.