Courtesy SI.com:

Earlier this summer, a handful of Kentucky fans tracked down the MySpace.com page of Patrick Patterson, a coveted basketball recruit from Huntington, W.Va., who calls himself the "King of DubV" on the site. He's an undecided, 6-foot-8 forward who is rated No. 16 overall in the class of 2007 by Scout.com and is being targeted by the Wildcats and nearly every other national powerhouse.

And so those UK supporters, in their overzealousness, posted comments on Patterson's page, ranging from innocuous ("I'd sure like to see you in blue and white! GO CATS!"), to promotional (a photo of UK coach Tubby Smith coaching troops in Kuwait) to outright sexually suggestive (a pic of lips with the message, "Hey there sexy ... you need to make a trip down to Lexington soon so we can play a little one on one").

In the last poster's defense, Patterson did have a somewhat suggestive message of his own, which read, "I'm black and 6'8 and 217 lbs. So ladies, y'all know what that means" -- but in making that statement, he didn't break any NCAA rules. The UK fans who posted, however, may have -- and last week the school self-reported secondary violations for unacceptable written contact with recruits by "representatives of the institution's athletic interests" (as reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader).

MySpace, to the world at large, is a social networking site with 94 million users (in the first week in July it was the U.S.' No. 1 Internet destination, accounting for 4.46 percent of all Web visits). But in the college basketball world -- where the NCAA's archaic rules fail to effectively address modern technology -- MySpace is one big recruiting violation waiting to happen.

The NCAA's Recruiting Subcommittee plans to examine Internet issues at its meeting in September, but can it really extend its umbrella to interaction with high schoolers on MySpace? As one Division I athletic department official told SI.com this week, "You'd have to have someone on staff 24/7 to monitor it the right way -- and the cost of that would be unbelievable." Another said, "How in the world would that be policed?"

Putting restraints on the 21st-century text-messaging craze, which is currently unrestricted between coaches and recruits, is feasible; the NCAA attempting to regulate MySpace, however, would be futile. Accountability is difficult; how can you prove the true identity of a fan with a screen name like "WildcatBlue," or be sure he's not, say, a saboteur from elsewhere in the SEC? And the sheer enormity of the site -- 94 million users -- makes keeping tabs on all new messages nearly impossible.

And yet as of now, if the interpretation reached by UK (with counseling from the SEC compliance office) holds, any recruiting-oriented post made by a fan on a prospective player's MySpace page could equate to unacceptable contact by a booster. "A booster doesn't have to be someone who donates money," said Kentucky compliance director Sandy Bell. "As soon as they involve themselves in recruiting, we have to consider them a booster."

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