Entries tagged with “college” from Global Sports Buzz

Syracuse, Binghamton, Cornell, Siena, Niagara and Buffalo could all be in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.  What a great year for Division I Upstate New York basketball in a terrible year for the economy.

Although UB needs to win the Mid-American Conference Championship tonight to punch its ticket and Niagara must wait for Selection Sunday, all of the aforementioned teams have had tremendous seasons and deserve to be in the Big Dance.

Even if UB and Niagara do not make it, the economic impact created by the buzz around all these teams will be interesting to measure, especially with the current state of the economy. How many more tickets were sold? How much more merchandise was sold? How many more meals and hotel rooms were sold? How much did applications increase at those schools because of national exposure? How many more dollars did alumni donate?

The answers to the above questions will provide the quantitative proof of the impact of success on the basketball court, but what could be of even more importance is the measurement of the enhancement of community image and visibility. Sports teams are highly visible images of universities, communities, cities and regions. Success of sports teams have proven to provide millions of dollars worth of positive public relations in addition to direct economic dollars.

With Upstate New York, especially Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany and Binghamton, being particularly hard hit during this recession and unemployment approaching double figures in many cities, Division I college basketball success just might be the stimulus package its communities are looking for.

The NCAA has had numerous problems with college coaches and top high school recruits communicating. To try and stop these problems, a vote was passed that college coaches could no longer text high school recruits. Some recruits were receiving "roughly 20 text messages a week from coaches."  In todays' society is it right for them to ban text messaging? Text messaging is a major form of communication in this day of age. As long as they are not breaking any NCAA regulations, why shouldn't they be allowed to text a top high school recruit? That is their job to try and get these kids to their programs, and they are competing with hundreds and hundreds of other schools in the nation.

On one side were college coaches seeking the right to use modern technology to maintain a casual relationship with top prospects. On the other were high school athletes so inundated with text messages that their cell phone bills were skyrocketing and their phones were buzzing during classes.

So which side is right? As usual, the answer lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Instead of depriving coaches and kids of an effective communication tool, couldn't the NCAA have limited the number of text messages a coach can send per week, mirroring the rules already in place regarding calls to recruits? Or perhaps the organization could have implemented a ban on texting after 10 p.m. or during school hours?

                                                                                                                                                       
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