Bob McFlurry with Sports
Recently it’s been in the news that the Tennessee Volunteers have a program in which they employ “hostesses” to help lure highly touted football recruits to the University. So I guess my question is why is this news now? I don’t think it’s any secret that using insanely hot girls to help land big time recruits is a time honored tradition in the ranks of College Football.
There’s a lot of things that go into where a top recruit will play his collegiate ball: proximity to home, family influence, program prestige, the ability to start right away. When you’re a top 50 recruit in the nation though you can pretty much go anywhere and every school is going to trow as much at you as they can without getting nabbed by the NCAA for violations. Gifting money is kind of out of the question, at least not directly, so what other recourse does a University have but to bombard the recruit with a bevy of the hottest chicks on campus. Some of which are probably told to “take care” of the recruit. It’s way easier to pay off or incentivize some sort of University coed than it is to straight up pay a player to come to the University.
Anyway, I think it’s a little naive for the media and sports fans in general to be shocked by this or consider it news. There’s buku bucks in College football in Bowl Games and it all starts with what kind of players a team can get. The better the player, the better the chance of a huge bowl game, the more money brought into the University. Millions of Dollars.
Even way back in 1993 in the movie The Program Halle Berry was given the task of convincing highly touted recruit Danell Jefferson (played by Mekhi Phifer… or was it Omar Epps) to come to fictional University ESU. Not that Halle Berry banged the guy to get him to go there but she was named Sexiest Woman Alvie by Esquire magazine, you do that Algebra home slice.
Goes something like:
Hot Chicks + Blue Chip Football Recruits = Letters of Intent = BCS Money2
It’s pretty obvious to me what’s going on here and I really don’t have a problem with Football Programs wagging hot chicks in front of recruits faces. Anything that goes on besides that, sexually, is between the recruit and that “Hostess”. If the “Hostess” decides to use her body as a marketing tool for her University I’m pretty sure she’s allowed to do that. I’m not sure what kind of incentives would be involved if the recruit signed but ultimately I doubt that a University is saying to these “Hostesses”, “have sex with this recruit coming in here this weekend”. Blow/Hand Jobs maybe but not sex.