Would you let your daughter be a ‘recruiting hostess?’

Would you let your daughter be a ‘recruiting hostess?’

There are three things I don’t want to hear from my daughter when she goes away to college:

Mom, I’m gonna be on “Girls Gone Wild.”
Mom, I’m on a MTV reality show.
Mom, I’m a recruiting hostess for a major university athletic program!
The last one may seem odd if you don’t follow college football or haven’t heard the latest news about possible University of Tennessee recruiting violations involving “hostesses.”

The NCAA is investigating whether the University of Tennessee violated recruiting rules when two of the school’s “recruiting hostesses” showed up at a high school game more than 200 miles from the university. The young women showed up dressed cute with signs for these high school players. They claim they didn’t meet with the students, but photos have popped up of the girls posing with the players.

But the accusations go further than just meeting with players off campus.

From The New York Times story about the University of Tennessee investigation:

“Also on Friday, Keith Easterwood, a veteran summer basketball coach, said that on a visit last year with his son, a football recruit, he had to ask a hostess to stop brushing her breasts against both him and his son.”

“He recalled saying, ‘Young lady, if you don’t stop doing that, we’ve got a problem.’

“Easterwood said that he took a group of basketball players to a Western Kentucky football game at Tennessee this year, and that the presence of the hostesses had his players ‘literally reduced to blubbering idiots.’ ”

“ ‘I’ve been up there five times, four for football and one basketball visit,’ Easterwood said. ‘My observation is that this is a very organized operation. These girls have obviously been groomed. There’s a lot of eye contact and touching.’ ”

Another story pulled quotes and photos from a UT hostess’s My Space page. From Deadspin, a sports Web site:

“One is Lacey Pearl Earps, whose name is well known on SEC message boards. (That’s her above, with current UT freshman Bryce Brown.) According to her MySpace page, she is a student at University of Tennessee and she “recruits champions.” There are numerous photos of her hugging what appear to be Tennessee football players and/or recruits. (The pictures are small, but clearly taken on a football field.)”

Depending on who you ask, the ‘hostesses” are either top-notch ambassadors of the university, or according to many critics, young women who use their looks to seduce 17-year-old boys into picking a college.

AJC.com
12/15/9