FanHouse Scout.com

Recruiting wasn't always like this. Until recently, the broad-based networks like Rivals.com and Scout weren't even an idea in someone's mind.

Not long ago it was old school, with names like Allen Wallace, Tom Lemming and Rick Kimbrel. They (and others) published once-a-year magazines, perhaps a newsletter or a 900 number for the hopelessly committed recruiting fan to know something so simple as the name, high school, height, weight and brief athletic summary of a recruit. It also helped to know where he was headed, of course.

Reflecting on how things have changed, listen to this anecdote from Rick Kimbrel who is now the West Coast Editor for Rivals.com:

It was still a small world back then. Things were done in hard copy, weeks in advance. Every kid he called got excited to hear his voice.

But Kimbrel always had a sense it could be bigger. The 900 number they'd started was doing brisk business. People loved the real-time information they could get. And it wasn't just fans. Lawyers, doctors, even Nike chairman Phil Knight, signed up.

The athletes he scouted saw the power in it too. One mention in Blue Chip Illustrated and they were set. One of his first big finds was a wide receiver out of South Central L.A. named Keyshawn Johnson.

"Keyshawn would always come by and hang out in my office. He was at Valley College at the time, but he had no place to go," Kimbrel said. "So he'd come in and read through all the magazines we'd publish and just talk to us."

That would pretty much never happen now.

Indeed. In fact, a solid handful of kids with offers from around the nation annually avoid the recruiting writers altogether, leaving coaches, friends, teammates and sometimes family in the dark until they've made up their minds.

And in that time, the 900 numbers are mostly a relic, giving way to Rivals, Scout and a handful of other comprehensive recruiting services. According to the article Rivals now has 180,000 subscribers to go along with over 70 million page views on signing day. Yahoo! recently bought Rivals for $100 million.

Several months back The FanHouse reported that Yahoo! was negotiating to purchase Rivals.com. That effort stalled for unknown reasons, although it was speculated that questionable business practices by a Rivals executive had tripped the deal.

However, several more months have passed and the two sides have reached a suitable agreement. What it all means is anyone's guess, but the acquisition makes a little more sense than the Scout.com/MySpace merger reported recently in this space.

Rivals is already publishing some content on the Yahoo! Sports platform but I haven't seen Yahoo! content circulate in Rivals sites. These are strange days where recruiting sites - once the basement business and realm of the 900 number for updates - sell for millions of dollars to former Silicon Valley search engines gone big business.

I have yet to locate a sale price but will update this as we find out more about this merger.

Update: TechCrunch reports that Yahoo! paid $100 million to complete the sale. A very gracious hat tip to reader Jason of Eleven Warriors.

Need further confirmation of the story the FanHouse broke all this week? We got it. Check out this message board posting at the Bucknuts website, formerly Scout's Ohio State affiliate:

The Scout Oklahoma website, OUInsider, considered at one time to be the 'flagship' of the Scout fleet has pulled up anchor and set sail. . . .As part of the dissolution, the site has given back to Scout management of the once popular Sooners Illustrated magazine.

We called the newly independent Oklahoma website for their comments this morning.

"We felt like our customers we're not getting their monies worth with Scout," publisher Brian Bishop said. "This on-going message board debacle was the last straw, and I doubt that Scout can survive it. We had no choice but to let the sucker sink and try to load as many customers as possible into the lifeboats before next weeks' announcement from Scout that they will become MySpace Sports."

Bishop went on to opine, "Imagine that -- you'll now be crossing paths with your fourth grader as you visit you favorite team site. That's not exactly the affiliation we wanted when we signed on the Scout."

Heh. Just in case you still can't believe what's happening, we have more proof: Scout's website is already posting job listings for the new MySpace/Scout merger. Check out the logo (below):



Will this new venture plug the leaks or are more publishers bound to jump ship at the sight of the reworked Scout.com platform? Stay tuned ...

Previously at FanHouse:
Scout.com Wants To Add You As a Friend
Scout.com Getting The Pants Sued Off It
Is Scout Crumbling?

File this under: "rumor" for the moment. A tipster wrote in to tell us that the rapidly deteriorating situation at the recruiting/fan network Scout.com just got weirder.

Apparently Scout's chameleon act continues with plans to become an entity called "MySpace Sports".

HUH?

We've reported earlier on three major departures from Scout's network of team websites as its Ohio State and Florida affiliates parted ways. Then the USC affiliate announced last week it, too, was leaving Scout. Not to be outdone, the Oklahoma affiliate officially went independent (err, is partnered with ESPN?) yesterday. Those websites collectively represent the fan bases of four of the last seven BCS championship teams. Somehow we doubt this is the last departure, either: see Brian Cook's analysis of the pending class-action lawsuit against Scout.com by a handful of former affiliates representing all its affiliates.

Anyway, if true the MySpace thing is just bizarre. Hopefully some details will trickle in so we can learn if Scout as we know it is still motoring along or if this is the end of the line as a mainstream recruiting platform.

Technopants, of course, since it's an Internet company. Earlier, Brian Grummell wondered what was with the exodus of several prominent Scout affiliates -- including giants representing schools like Ohio State, USC, and Florida -- to independence. Well, it turns out that there's a bunch of lawsuitin' going on. This gripping 55 page PDF details a suit filed by various Scout affiliates against the network for breach of contract; basically, for not paying them enough.

One of the allegations: though sites with magazines charge just 10 dollars more than sites without, which run 90 bucks a year, Scout earmarked a third of the annual subscription revenue as magazine revenue, which publishers get only a tiny cut of. Another: Scout chronically gypped sites out of advertising revenue -- a "conservative estimate" comes in at almost 30k a month for OU Insider, another of the named plaintiffs. That one seems hopelessly optimistic about internet advertising, but there you go.

The rest of it continues along the same path, detailing ways in which Scout avoided paying affiliates things their contracts stipulated they owed. As one side of a court document, it's obviously not balanced, but it appears that the affiliates have a pretty solid case. This would make two internet recruiting networks that the guys who run Scout have plowed directly into the ground, as Rivals almost imploded a few years ago under the leadership of the current Scout honchos. Third time's a charm?

Sure looks like it.

Several months ago, the Ohio State website BuckNuts left the Scout.com network. Not long ago, another top school's affiliate website left Scout when the Florida website Gator Country departed. And news comes in tonight that WeAreSC, the USC affiliate, has informed Scout they are leaving the network.

What gives? I don't know, but it's interesting. It's one thing for a random site operator to choose independence over network affiliation as has happened at both Scout.com and competitor Rivals.com. But this is an entirely different animal when three affiliates of high-profile schools leave like that.

I first remember hearing about BuckNuts' departure and thinking: ok, that's interesting. Maybe they had an independent streak in them. But not long after that I began hearing rumors that two other top 10 programs would soon depart. Well, today is the day that rumor came to realization. Something is officially rotten in Denmark.