The reason for that NCAA rulewould seem to be to keep the prospective student athletes from getting caught up in the spin various schools might use to try and lure them to sign on the dotted line. It would be unfair to get them to sign on the dotted line based on speculation and rumors about who might join them.It would also give the Coaches too much incentive to unfairly claim that this or that recruit had confided in him that they would be coming or that this recruit or that recruit said they would come if you do etc. It could all be lies so the NCAA made the rule that the schools can't speculate on that publicly.Now you are using the Clintonesque tactic of haggling over how strictly one interprets the definition of "publicly". You apparently feel that Huggins & Co. can tell the recruits anything they want as long as they personally aren't quoted doing so in the mass media. You apparently feel your program is on solid ground even if the prospects are coming out and unabashedly saying to the mass media what the schools are prohibited from saying publicly.The dictionary definition of "publicly" says:http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=publiclypub·lic·ly adv.1. In a public manner; openly.I'm not as confident as you are that the NCAA would interpret "publicly" as narrowly as you think, and they are the final arbiters in such situations after all. At a minimum Huggy's interpretation certainly seems to go against at least the spirit of the NCAA prohibition. Although he seems to be tightroping around personally stating his hopes and speculations in the mass media, it certainly appears that they are quite openly discussing these things quite "openly" with the prospects individually, and those prospects in turn are openly discussing them with the mass media.You may be right as to how the NCAA would interpret things if push came to shove, but I wouldn't be as comfortable as you seem to be if my school was as consistently pushing the limits of acceptable behavior as KSU seems to be.
