Phone Calls Are So Old School

UCLA's 22 sports programs just last month started using software developed by Scoutware, a 3-year-old company based in Aurora, Ill. At Stanford, the football program uses CyberSports, a 10-year-old company based in New Hartford, N.Y. Considering the money university athletic programs spend on young athletes -- many scholarships are worth tens of thousands of dollars per year -- the investment is considered worth it.

"Some of the coaches who have been the most old-school and resisted the hardest have been our biggest supporters," said Candice Hobin, vice president of CyberSports. "Because they didn't grow up in the age of technology, they didn't realize how much it would help them until they were trained how to do it."

Schools are finding they have to make changes or be left behind.

"We just got different phones to get text messages and e-mails," said Lane Kiffin, USC's football recruiting coordinator. "I think it's gotten out of hand, but we have to compete. A lot of football coaches don't know how to turn on a computer, let alone e-mail."

That's why having a technology expert on staff has become almost mandatory. At Stanford, it's Hackett, 25, who gets called on.

"They're yelling, 'Coach Hackett, come here!' " he said.

UCLA's expert is men's basketball assistant Kerry Keating, who took a photo using his cellphone from this year's Final Four, stored it, and plans to send it out to prospective recruits with the caption, "This is where we'll be."

"I'm 34 going on 19," Keating said. "There's so much going on with these kids. I had a kid send me a photo of him holding up a 14-pound bass through instant messaging."

The global positioning satellite system in phones and rental cars has become another helpful tool for recruiters in finding a home or high school when making visits to small towns.

"GPS is a must," Kiffin said. "You just punch in an address."

Soon, experts say, the NCAA will have to rule on individuals who use a headset microphone to talk over a high speed Internet connection. No telephone is used, but the NCAA currently counts it as a phone call because of the voice-to-voice interaction.

Coaches and others point out that change is happening almost daily.

"The minute one person figures something out, another does something else," Stanford's Hackett said. "It's never ending."