TWITTERING COULD BE AN NCAA VIOLATION

While it seems like NCAA coaches (and just about everyone else) is catching Twitter fever, the microblogging service has some features that could get the very same coaches who are working to bring attention to their program into possible NCAA violations with potential recruits.While some of the best recruiters have always worked within the gray areas, utilizing social networking sites like Facebook and email features on Blackberrys to communicate with recruits. But the recent ban on text messaging sets a precedent for what schools can and can’t do.And as The Arena Blog points out, some of Twitter’s features act in the exact same way as a text message, but in the form of direct messaging.As the Arena Blog points out, “direct messages are viewable only by the sender and the recipient, and if the recipient has an option checked, are sent directly to a phone as a text message. But a direct message isn’t a text message. It’s a message sent from Twitter. And there’s no prohibition on Twitter under current NCAA by-laws."All this is a complicated way of showing how doomed the NCAA is in trying to police the growing technologies that allow people to communicate.