Internet Widens Web Of Influence In Collegiate Athletics

Quick. Name something with more rumors than a sports bar at happy hour, yet so powerful one college coach closed practices because of it. Something many coaches avoid, even hate, yet attracts aspiring recruits hoping to be noticed.

The Internet.

The digital free-for-all of chat rooms and web sites and e-mail is changing the way today’s colleges coaches face their fans, their critics and their recruiting.

Forget the joke-filled circuit of booster-club meetings. Now meetings are on the electronic circuits and convened at any moment. Have a bad day, even a bad set of downs, and you quickly could be the target of electronic jabs.

Barely two weeks into the football season, after coach Brad Scott’s South Carolina team struggled to a win against Central Florida and lost to Georgia, came this message on one fan chat room: “Now the rumor is that Brad Scott has contacted a realtor.”

Then there were the online claims - many posted under pseudonyms - that Notre Dame’s Bob Davie was wanted for the soonto-be-vacant Texas job or that Clemson assistant Rich Bisaccia was leaving for Syracuse.

“It wasn’t true,” Bisaccia said. “Every recruit I talked to asked me about that. I hate the Internet because it takes time away from what we have to do.”

No less than Southern Cal’s John Robinson has been slapped by the electronic hand of the fans who cheer him. Robinson opened practices until this year when unofficial web sites posted players’ 40-yard times and diagrammed plays, spokesman Roger Horne said.

Robinson quickly closed most drills. “It was basically because of these fan pages,” Horne said.

Then there were the calls about a player’s eligibility. The Internet rumor was that the player failed classes. He hadn’t, Horne said.

Scott also has been burned.

“It was stuff like, ‘Hey I went to practice today, boy the punter was awful, the snapper wasn’t doing a good job, Coach Scott was really on this guy. He didn’t get a punt off more than 30 yards,’ ” Scott said.

“I like for the fans to have access to the team, but it does make you stop and think about it.”

H.W. “Skip” Weldon of Columbia, who posted the rumor that Scott might be headed out of town, says it’s all just entertainment. Most chat time is spent pumping up your team while bashing your rivals, but sometimes emotions get hot, he said.

“You hear people complain about a lot of things,” said Georgia fan Brian Halferty, who spends about 20 minutes at lunch each day keeping up with the Bulldogs. “It can get pretty negative sometimes, even when we’re winning.”

But don’t tell all this negative stuff to Matthew Dura, a junior golfer at Sumter High with a 76 stroke average and mostly A’s. He’s convinced signing with an online scouting service will help him get a college scholarship, maybe to Wake Forest.

“My parents had me register right away,” Dura said. “It’s going to get me out there like I hadn’t been before.”

And if there are negatives, South Carolina women’s basketball coach Susan Walvius hasn’t seen many. “One junior-college player that will probably sign with us, we got because of our relationship on the Internet,” she said.

For Walvius and many other college coaches, the Internet has become a link to golfers, hurdlers and divers they never would have recruited otherwise. For instance, the NCAA limits Walvius or her assistants to just one call per week to a recruit.

But, she said, “We can chat with them on the computer every day, if we want.”

On-Line Scouting Network of Somerville, N.J., is trying to make a buck out of that opportunity. The 3-year-old company, financed in part by stars like Jerry Rice, Joe Carter and Ryne Sandberg, signs up hopeful athletes, then lets schools search its database.

“If you need a left-handed first baseman from Montana, you can find it,” company vice president Doug Bush said. More than 300 colleges use the service, he added.

Clemson won’t use the Internet for recruiting, Bisaccia said. Neither will South Carolina, said Brad Lawing, South Carolina’s assistant coach in charge of football recruiting.

While coaches bite their lips at the electronic words, they often follow up to make sure there isn’t some truth in the online rumors.

“We don’t want to get caught,” Bisaccia said.