Question about ESPN Insider Q&A With Ron Zook
I just read Bruce Feldman's interview with Illini HC Ron Zook and thought it was really well done and gave good insight to the recruiting process. However there was one quote by Zook that I would like to know more about. He stated:
Q: How much has it bothered you when people say you must be doing something outside the rules if you're getting blue-chip recruits or more than they think you should be getting?
Zook: Sure, it bothers you. The one thing I'll get riled about is if people question my integrity. Recruiting is about people. That's one of the great things about this place. It's a family. It's all of us, not just the coaches. It's the secretaries. It's the recruiting girls. It's the trainers. Everybody's involved. I know we're doing the right thing.
What are these recruiting girls he speaks of? I understand Michigan has a group of girls called Club Blue that help with the recruiting process but does anyone know what they actually do? Do all programs have recruiting girls?
Heres the Link even though its behind the paywall.
They have sex with the recruits to get them to sign. Duh.
My cousin was being recruited by Michigan to be a preferred walk-on and can attest that this is true. He wasn't satisfied (maybe because of walk-on status???) and ended up going to play for Albion.
I remember earlier conversations on the board referring to girls at Texas and Alabama doing similar things. Also, remember David Oku (RB recruit from a couple of years ago) committing to Tenessee and doing an interview in which he mention the female chaperones. Also Jamacus McCFarland (I think), a DT from the same class as Oku (I think Will Campbells class) having a local paper interviewing him and his mentioning his mom was infuriated with the girls and parties the SEC and USC were throwing at recruits and he committed to Oklahoma because Bob Stoops did the dishes after dinner with his family.
Is this really true about UofM also? Shit.
Also, I hope your cousin never saw the field at Albion.
gonna hate
Some of us want to watch DK frantically copulating with a swordfish.
I'm not going to say his name, but a four star athlete who went to my highschool told me Michigan State had the best hostesses. I asked him what that implies he said, "They have sex with you. That's what they're there for."
This was John L. Smith era... So maybe Dantonio has cleaned it up. /s
John L. didn't have the best taste in hostesses. Come to think of it, neither does Mork.
I knew you would get a response like the first one...but it is a good question and one I would like to know the answer to as well.
Don't know why this is Flamebait, but I am also curious. In defense of the first comment, a TriDelt did sleep with Terrelle Pryor (on her own accord I believe) on his recruting visit and won an award in the sorority for it.
I remember there being a lot of rumor/hoopla over who was gonna sleep with him, and a Tridelt deciding too - all before he came to campus
Havent you seen He Got Game?
They just lie in wait for recruits to walk inot their room and try their best to seal the deal!
While most of the campus hostesses and recruiting girls are not ready made whores, and to imply that is incorrect, it's closer to reality than we'd like to readily admit. The practice was started by Bear Bryant and his hottie collection was known as Bear's Angels. The gorgeous co-eds provided campus tours and some quality time with top recruits, clearly in an effort to persuade them to join the program under the premise of "look at how hot the girls at our school are!" It's become common practice now. Since a head coach and even position coaches aren't going to spend every single minute with recruits during their visit, they allow these girls, who are affiliated with the administrative offices of the school, to tour the kids around and then take them to parties to show them the fun social life at night. What happens at the parties or afterwards is certainly not required of these girls but if I had to guess there are a number of recruits nationwide who chose their college because of the awesome night they spent with some females.
if it was so self explanatory, would a coach really be admitting it? In all honesty, if a university has girls on staff or campus who sole purpose is to sleep with recruits would they admit it?
I think the question is "do they have a real function other than to sleep with recruits to get them to commit?" That is my question anyway. Surely the NCAA can't allow unis to just keep hot girls on hand to sleep with recruits when they make a big deal about a team stretching an extra hour per year.
But not by much. Has there ever been much question that (a) schools use pretty girls to get recruits to think highly of a school, and (b) some of those girls will sleep with those recruits? These hostesses lie the gray area between escorts and "escorts."
The NCAA might want to steer clear of this issue altogether. Sure, they can crack down when a school is sending girls to Marcus Lattimore's high school games, but cracking down on on-campus hostess/recruit nookie would be really dicey territory; is the NCAA really going to try to prohibit sex on recruiting visits?
As to why the Zooker would admit it, that one IS self-explanatory. It's Zook.
I just figured that if a coach was going to go on record and mention that he uses girls as a recruiting tool they must have a real purpose (other than screwing the recruits). I have a hard time believing even zooker would be that stupid to throw it out there if they didn't also have a legitimate purpose (which is what I, and I believe the OP, were inquiring about).
Is Club Blue different than Team Blue? My sister-in-law (enough with the sex jokes) worked for Team Blue for a couple years in her undergrad. She worked at Schembechler Hall a couple days a week doing paperwork and then would also go to games and show recruits around the stadium and get them to where they were supposed to be on schedule. I asked about the funny business and she said she never saw any. Maybe there's a different group for non-game-day recruiting visits. She only did office and game-day stuff.
but would your sister-in-law admit it if she did take part in the extracurriculars? I mean, I wouldn't even dare ask my sister-in-law that and have my doubts she would give me an honest answer if she had done it.
I asked her about other girls on Team Blue, not her, and she said she never saw anything. No reason to doubt that. I have heard other good stories from her so not like she would hide it. She also tells my wife EVERYTHING, and there were never any stories about anything with Team Blue.
I really think it's a game-day vs other recruiting trips. How are you going to get hinky at the game? She never went to parties after or anything.
Like other's have said, Team Blue is mostly a marketing/administrative task related to recruits and getting them to right places and on time.
for whatever reason I imagined her being your brothers wife, not your wifes sister. That shines it in a different light to me. I would ask my wifes sister anything and expect she would be honest in her reply. Especially if it involved sleeping with someone (she's a bit of a tart).
Yeah, good point. I should have made the distinction. I guess that does make a difference. She's 10 years younger than me, so I don't go into detail b/c I was in college and she was in Jr. High when I met her so she stills seems young to me.
A friend of a friend at Michigan was on Team Blue, and I asked her one time about what it was all about. She was definitely not one of the more athletics-interested people I encountered in Ann Arbor, and I was surprised when she said she was in it.
Anyways, it sounded like it was a whole lot more of being some kind of lackey/marketing intern at Schembechler Hall that helped with a lot of things (including the logistics of recruiting visits and such) and less with anything having to do with things outside of the "workplace," so to speak. She had great stories about hanging around Schembechler with Bo ("he was like the world's greatest grandpa" were her exact words), and some other cool behind-the-scenes anecdotes about what Fort Schembechler was really like, but little more than that. It's also coed, if I remember correctly.
That doesn't mean the "party/sleep with recruits" thing doesn't happen at other schools, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily accurate to say it's that way at Michigan, especially with this Team Blue thing.
I knew a couple "Unofficial" Recruiting Girls at UNC. Aside from helping write essays, most of them were just sorority girls who would make sure that when recruits were in town, whatever bars/clubs/parties they were going to would have atractive, fun girls there. Money beets, if you will. They always said nothing shady went on, that it really was just trying to make the school look good by showcasing as many good-looking, fun people as possible. And if they happened to flirt with the recruits, that's cool too.
I see what you did there. Well played, Mr Schrute.
just another recruiting inducement to an 18 year old horny as hell, 4 or 5 star prospect. (kinda doubt the 2 and 3 star guys ever received tours by the recruiting girls").
Go Blue !
that his preferred walk-on cousin was getting some. I find that hard to believe.
I think preferred walk-on implies they are better than the average walk-on and in many cases could be someone who has scholarship offers to other universities. You would be asking that player to pay his own way and still come to your university. I would think they would need even more incentive than the average scholarship athlete...I can see a school sending the welcome wagon their way.
I don't feel like they say or even suggest that the girls have sex with the recruits they probably say go out and show them a good time.
It's not like these girls have no brains of their own. I'm sure a lot of girls want to have sex with these guys. A lot of the highly touted ones are going to become the stars of the school and later rich professional athletes and are in good shape and if you're from Ohio State going to be constantly driving in different brand new cars.
These are things a lot of girls are attracted to and not just want to have sex with them to get them to commit to the school and play football there.
1. Is there a college coach in the entire country who doesn't use that line about his program?
2. If it's a family and the girls are having sex with the other family members, shouldn't this article be about the West Virginia program?
Well played Wolverine 73.