Give me a call.

That message flashed across the screen of Nick Provo’s cell phone more than once this time last year. Back then, Provo, now a freshman tight end at Syracuse, was a well-recruited senior at John I. Leonard (Fla.) High School. The text messages asking for a phone call were from college coaches and recruiters.

NCAA rules limit football coaches to one phone call per week during a high school athlete’s senior season. Yet recruits can call coaches as much as they please. The ‘call me’ texts that Provo and many other high schools football players used to receive were a convenient way for coaches to circumvent rules limiting contact with recruits.

Provo said he didn’t mind the texts. The NCAA did.

Messages like the one Provo frequently received are just one of the reasons why text messaging from coaches is no longer an issue for high school athletes. A proposal was passed April 26 by the NCAA board of directors banning the previously unlimited use of text messaging by college coaches in all sports. Effective Aug. 1, Proposal 2006-40 took from coaches what had for the past few years become a vital recruiting tool.

Despite the decision, text messaging is far from a dead issue, and it’s unclear just how long the bar on texting will remain the law of the recruiting landscape. The future of the ban is set to be voted on in January, and, in a separate movement, more and more coaches are pushing for the reinstallation of text messaging in a limited format that would supposedly eliminate the abuses that many say violated recruits’ privacy.

The backlash against texting among current and former recruits is what prompted the NCAA Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) – a group of 31 former and current athletes, one from each D-I conference – to take action.

‘Just hearing from the student-athletes that we talked to on the campus and conference level, this is what almost 100 percent of them wanted,’ Division I SAAC Vice Chair Kerry Kenny said. ‘What the (NCAA) board of directors credited their decision on was the voice of the student athlete based on our committee getting out there and making sure all the feedback we heard on campus was represented.’

The Division I national chapter of the SAAC compiled feedback from students that overwhelmingly supported a banning of text messages. With these findings, the chapter placed its support squarely behind a current proposal that would completely end the use of text messaging in the recruiting process.

Besides coaches getting around the one-phone-call-per-week rule, one of the biggest reasons for the ban was monetary concerns. Unrestricted text messaging, Kerry said, resulted in exorbitant monthly phone bills for recruits, often to the tune of hundreds of dollars. Kerry, who played basketball at Lafayette before graduating last spring, referenced Patrick Patterson, a basketball recruit who recently signed with Kentucky. Patterson racked up more than 1,000 text messages from recruiters in one month – a $500-plus phone bill.

But perhaps as poignant an issue for the SAAC was the intrusion of privacy caused by incessant texting from coaches.

‘It’s really not a professional means of communication,’ Kerry said. ‘If you’re going for a job interview, you’re hopefully not going to be texting the employer to ask him about the interview, and hopefully he’s not going to be texting you for similar reasons.

‘From talking to people, to have coaches and just other members of a coaching staff use those kinds of technologies is unprofessional and, they’ve said in reports before, ‘kind of creepy.”

Of course, appreciation for the sanction doesn’t extend to all high school players and coaches. Provo went as far as to say he and most students he knew liked being texted, and that the NCAA ‘went a little overboard’ in its ruling.

‘I got texts from (SU cornerbacks/secondary) coach (Jim) Salgado all the time just saying, ‘How’s your day goin’?’ and stuff like that,’ Provo said. ‘I think guys like getting texted all the time. It shows schools have interest in them, just to show off to your friends.’

Fellow SU freshman, running back Doug Hogue, also said he didn’t feel the coaches who recruited him abused text messaging.

As the head football coach of Hargrave (Va.) Military Academy, Robert Prunty regularly coaches athletes who are highly recruited, including Syracuse’s own Hargrave alum, running back Curtis Brinkley. Prunty said he received positive feedback from students who received text messages.

‘I think that, from the talk I heard, I think they enjoyed it. I really do,’ Prunty said. ‘I think the kids are used to being texted. It’s modern technology. Whatever is best for the student-athlete. If it leads to a student getting recruited or getting a college education, then text.’

The frequency with which high school players utilize text messaging, as well as its instantaneous nature, make texting a desired way for recruiters to connect on a personal level with recruits.

Included among those in favor of re-establishing text messaging as a recruiting resource is Syracuse head coach Greg Robinson.

‘You know, I kind of wish we still had the ability to use it some,’ Robinson said. ‘I just think if you limit it, it would really help the recruiting process, and at the same time, I think that most coaches would do the right thing and text once a week.’

Having the ability to text recruits in a limited capacity has become the focus of new counter-proposals to the all-out ban. One of the people championing that logic is Grant Teaff, the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association and former head coach at Baylor.

Teaff, who wrote a letter to the NCAA on behalf of college coaches urging the board to reconsider its decision, is adamant in saying both he and the coaches he has talked to would not be in favor of the formerly common unlimited abuse of text messaging. Still, Teaff emphasized the ability to text is important for coaches to stay on the cutting edge of recruiting.

‘In many ways, it’s like saying in 1930, ‘Well, hey, that new thing we got there, the telephone, I don’t think we’re going to use that,” Teaff said. ‘The thing that a lot of people think text messaging is, is endless recruiting rhetoric that drives people crazy. Well, we’re not very interested in that. It’s the ability to communicate on special, important issues, i.e.: academics, when you’re taking your test, ‘remember to do this.”

Before the ban passed in April, Teaff organized a group of assistant coaches to come up with a plan to regulate text messaging. Teaff said part of the regulations would likely involve curbing text messaging similar to the one-call-a-week rule for telephones.

Kerry was adamant in saying the SAAC would not currently support any legislation that would involve allowing text messaging, even on such a controlled scale. Yet he did leave the future open.

‘While it’s still working out there in the recruiting process, you can’t really find a solution,’ Kerry said. ‘Talking to some other committees in the NCAA, we just felt like the good starting point was to place the full ban on it. And obviously, that’s not going to be the end of it. In the future, there’s going to be more restrictive practices instead of a full out ban.

‘At this point, our committee is focused on making sure this proposal (prohibiting text messaging) is passed.’

Both Kerry and Teaff indicated they expect the NCAA at some point to re-examine and redefine rules on text messaging. But much to the SAAC’s dismay, the return of text messaging could come sooner than expected.

Upon the rule’s approval in August, at least 30 Division-I schools petitioned against the new legislation, thus making it eligible for the NCAA’s override process. The future of Proposal 2006-40 will be at the mercy of a vote of all 119 Division-I schools at an NCAA convention on Jan. 12, 2008, Kerry said. If five-eighths of the 119 schools vote against the ban, unlimited text messaging will go back into effect immediately.

For now, inboxes on the phones of recruits will be at least a little emptier. There is reason to believe an agreement could be reached in the future regarding text messaging – one that allows coaches the means they desire to connect with recruits while limiting abuses such as the ‘call me’ messages. Until then, it appears as though the immediate future of text messaging is an all-or-nothing deal.

‘What will happen with it, I don’t know,’ Teaff said. ‘To make it a win-win, the student committee should be involved, the assistant coaches, and folks who have a vested interest in what’s best for the student-athlete.’

Published on September 25, 2007 at 12:00 pm