GAINESVILLE -- Florida coach Urban Meyer is in a little trouble these days for the apparent recruiting tactics he used to lure receiver Carl Moore to Gainesville.
Trouble No.1: According to the Sacramento Bee, Moore got a call from Meyer while he was in New York for Tim Tebow's Heisman ceremony. Shortly after Tebow won the award, the quarterback was on the phone shouting at Moore to come to Florida.
Is this a problem? The NCAA might think so. There is a bylaw in the NCAA's rules and regulations manual that prohibits coaches from telling current players to speak with recruits.
Number of times this bylaw has been broken: 43,393,228 times. (And that's just at Southern Cal.)
Will this stick? Doubt it. Can't Tebow just say he asked to speak with Moore?
Trouble No.2: Meyer might have recruited Moore's girlfriend, Maranda Smith, who is now a gymnast at UF.
Is this a problem? Another NCAA bylaw stipulates that coaches can only recruit players for the sports they coach.
Will this stick? Doubt it. Can't Smith say she was already thinking about coming to Florida? She is certainly good enough. She competed for UCLA in 2006. The Bruins won the national title in 2004. Smith was a also a junior Olympian. AND she says she contacted Florida about possibly transferring way back in February of 2007. AND what girl wouldn't want to go to the same school as her soon-to-be-NFL-receiver husband? Smith said on Wednesday that she and Moore plan to get married after they graduate.
Is Meyer a shrewd recruiter? Florida doesn't pay the guy $3.5 million a year to be the moral police.
Is Urban Meyer a dirty recruiter? First off, this question is inherently absurd. ("Dirty recruiting" is about as redundant as "fast racecars" or "cold snow" or "good ... well, you know.") Secondly, the NCAA bylaws that might have been broken only exist for one reason: to be broken. If a school breaks an NCAA rule, guess who gets paid? If the NCAA really wanted to clean up major college athletics, then it would just have a draft. (OK, that idea might border on the absurd. But so is the current state of recruiting.)
-jo-
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