Here's a great story on basketball recruiting

You'' get a chuckle out of this but it's also informative:

Players Pay a Price for Recruiting Packets
Stephen Danley
New York Times
August 10, 2009

Pete Thamel’s story got it right. Roster packets at summer camps, giving the personal details of prospective student athletes, are exorbitantly priced. But portraying the coaches as the victims? Yes, those poor college coaches; having to pay others who are trying to earn a buck off of young talented athletes. Aren’t these the coaches who make their living off the athletic successes of those same 18-22 year-old athletes just a couple of years later? While playing at Penn, I had more than one assistant pull me aside and tell me I had to get my act together; that if we didn’t win an Ivy League title, he would lose his job and not be able to feed his family.

These packets primarily affect the athletes. It’s their information being sold so everyone else can make a pretty penny. Recruitment is a circus, but not always because of the scandals, free shoes, and wanna-be agents that we hear about. Your average recruit, with no N.B.A. future, isn’t trying to hide secret cash payments; he’s trying to balance offers from lower-tier Division I programs. Being recruited is more about figuring out if the letters you get from schools indicate interest — normally they don’t — and trying to keep assistant coaches from making friends with your mom when they call. That’s a classic, though embarrassing, recruiting tactic...

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