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Message: [QUOTE="leftytg, post: 688762, member: 2651"] I agree with your line of reasoning in this thread. It seems obvious that the NCAA crafted these rules about booster contact during recruiting in a pre-Twitter world. Twitter has exploded on the scene and has been quickly adopted, especially by the younger generations (lets face it, the NCAA honchos aren't exactly wet behind the ears). Before Twitter, the masses did not have access to recruits, so the NCAA regulations and definitions of who is a booster made sense. In the post Twitter reality, the masses and the recruits can interact freely in the massive chatroom that is Twitter. It makes the pre-Twitter NCAA regulations and definitions obsolete and effectively unenforceable. As mentioned by Anomander in the post I quoted, when it comes to coaches and their contact with recruits, the NCAA can reasonably expect certain rules and standards to be met and enforced (although this has proven slippery on its own). In the old days, it was reasonable to expect a school to keep a leash on some of their high rolling, passionate, very involved boosters and imputed knowledge of their impermissible actions to the school. But now? How in the world could any reasonable person conclude that ANY school could possibly keep a leash on Twitter participants? Especially when recruits often solicit the attention? It is simply laughably absurd to think the NCAA could possibly try to regulate and enforce bans on fans tweeting at recruits. We literally would be in a world where each and every member institution would have sanctions/be on probation. Even if, hypothetically, a school wielded such control as to prevent their entire fan base from tweeting at recruits, rival fans could easily create dummy accounts and make violations on behalf of the school. The NCAA ALREADY is woefully understaffed when it comes to monitoring and enforcement. Monitoring the Twitter feeds of each recruited athlete would take a ridiculous amount of manpower, not to mention the fact that the NCAA lacks subpoena power or other mechanisms to uncover the real names and addresses of the anonymous hordes of fans who tweet at recruits. In short, this whole thing is just a charade. The NCAA knows it can't enforce these overly broad and now outdated and obsolete definitions of booster, which include Twitter activity by random fans toward recruits. This is obvious by their lack of action in the face of widespread overwhelming activity by fans of schools all across the country. That the NCAA is slow to update or change the regulation should come as no surprise. Institutions such as the NCAA are not known for their speed at adaption. The hand wringing in this thread is overwrought and seems to stem from the fact that somehow the NCAA will turn a blind eye toward the Twitter activity of every other school's fan base but will hammer Syracuse with sanctions. Frankly, that idea is nothing short of paranoid. For those arguing "rules are rules", to me, this is more akin to those dumb outdated laws that are technically still on the books but are widely ignored for obvious reasons. For instance, in Eureka, Nevada it is illegal for men who have mustaches to kiss women. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_laws[/url] I somehow doubt we'd have an impassioned plea of "its the law, if you don't follow this one well, how do we know we're not going to allow murder next?" The NCAA's overly broad definition of booster is as outdated and unenforceable as this Eureka, Nevada law. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?