DANIEL WONG/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Randy
Taylor (right), UCLA’s director of football operations,
speaks alongside Internet reporter Tracy Pierson
at the BruinReportOnline.com recruiting bash.
By Diamond Leung
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
[email protected]
It was Tracy Pierson’s party at the local sports bar, and
he could cry if he wanted to. Everyone in the house knew his name.
The people were sharing laughs, eating good food and talking UCLA
sports.
After Pierson addressed his fans, the lights were turned down
low and all eyes turned to the big screen television. This was what
they all had come for ““ to ogle at high school football
players.
The people proceeded to ooh and aah at an hour-long highlight
tape featuring UCLA’s latest recruits.
As editor and publisher of BruinReportOnline.com, Pierson makes
his living off behind-the-scenes reporting on UCLA athletics.
Hundreds of fans of his Web site, a part of the TheInsiders.com
network of subscription-based fan sites, showed their support at
the BRO recruiting bash. Pierson launched the site in 1998, and it
has developed a cult following.
“There was a niche to bring information to fans about UCLA
sports that they don’t get out of a newspaper,” said
Pierson, a 1983 alumnus. “So I thought with the birth of the
Internet that it was the perfect marriage.”
In the early days of Internet sports reporting, however, things
didn’t come easily. There was certainly less money to be
made. And UCLA wasn’t exactly sympathetic to it.
“I would show up at practices and be called a WIG, which
is a white Internet guy,” Pierson said. “The coaches
started thinking, “”˜Oh, he’s just a little geek.
He has no power.’
“Then they got scared and didn’t know what to do
with me.”
The one person in the UCLA athletic department who accepted
Pierson was Randy Taylor, director of football operations. His
staff now uses Web sites such as BRO to compile names of top high
school players for sending out initial recruiting letters.
According to Taylor, UCLA first learned of about half the players
on the current roster that way.
“The Internet is good because there’s so much more
information available about players you might not have heard about
before, especially nationally,” said Taylor, considered by
ESPN.com to be the best in the business.
And Pierson aims and loves to provide it. But why exactly is a
40-something like Pierson so passionate about chasing around
17-year-old recruits?
“It’s so much more enthralling to look at
someone’s potential,” Pierson said, grinning.
“My wife thought it was strange when I was going out and
watching boys in shorts playing ball,” he said with a laugh.
“Luckily it paid off, or I probably would have gotten
divorced.”
The Internet has made recruiting information more readily
available to the public ““ something that has athletic
departments cringing. Ten years ago, recruiting was done secretly,
and now the secrets are being revealed on Web sites.
The decisions of prized recruits have been affected by
information found on Web sites and their message boards.
“I have never ever heard of a kid being influenced by an
anonymous poster,” Pierson said. “If that influences a
kid, he’s pretty screwed up and he’s got
problems.”
Ңbull;Ӣbull;Ӣbull;
Pierson does not believe it, but UCLA recruiting director
Michael Sondheimer has seen it first-hand. He knows of recruits who
have decommitted from UCLA after reading content on Web sites.
BRO, he said, has been responsible in its coverage, but the
danger remains on the site’s message boards.
“The problem is the misinformation that gets out on the
message boards,” Sondheimer said. “It’s fine when
Tracy Pierson writes articles, but there is no accountability on
the message boards.”
The anonymous can start smear campaigns on the boards. For
example, football head coach Bob Toledo has been the subject of
criticism from posters after failing to lead his team to a bowl
game this season.
At least one recruit has taken notice of the negativity.
“Some of that stuff is kind of crazy,” said Matt
Moore, a top quarterback recruit who has signed a letter of intent
to UCLA. “People are going to say what they want, so I
don’t put much value in it. Toledo’s a great coach and
one of the reasons I chose UCLA.”
And if that type of information is false, UCLA cannot respond to
it. Under NCAA regulations, university athletic administrators can
only acknowledge if they are or are not recruiting a certain
player. Schools are left unable to defend themselves from
information on Web sites and their message boards that may be the
difference between a recruit committing to the school or going
elsewhere.
UCLA has not issued full-access press credentials for BRO
because it does not have a system of checks and balances. Pierson
simply does his reporting and puts it on the Internet.
“Maybe there’s too much information,” sports
information director Marc Dellins said. “Why should something
like a high school kid’s test score or GPA be the subject of
an Internet posting?”
Still, the athletic department does see how Web sites can be
positives for its program.
“Every year, it doesn’t matter what the sport is,
there’s usually somebody that pops up on the Internet and
ends up at UCLA who wasn’t a big-time recruit,”
Sondheimer said. “If you don’t look at the Internet and
deal with it, you’re going to be behind…”
Sondheimer’s phone rang.
The reporter on the other line was calling about the SAT score
of a high school recruit that he saw on the Internet.
Ңbull;Ӣbull;Ӣbull;
Toledo had been a self-proclaimed dinosaur; he had little
knowledge of the Internet.
Some of his assistants had never turned on computers before in
their lives.
So he called Pierson into his office. The Webmaster gave all the
coaches a crash course on the Internet.
And?
“I scared the hell out of him,” Pierson said.
“It’s frightening how much they know and how much is
out there for everyone to see,” Toledo said. “There are
no secrets anymore, and I don’t like that. If we were an
army, we’d all be dead.”
Taylor realizes the benefits of the Internet, and he has tried
to convince his staff to “understand that there are no
secrets anymore, deal with it, and go about your
business.”
But that, apparently, hasn’t sunk in.
“We used to say, “˜Well, we’re going to get a
guy because he’s hiding under the rocks,'” Toledo
said. “There’s nobody hidden anymore. Everybody knows
everybody’s business, and that’s what I don’t
like about it.”
Toledo isn’t the only one. Pierson claims that he has
received anonymous death threats from people who want him to take
down BRO.
With the recent launching of Bruin Blitz (ucla.rivals.com),
another recruiting-based Web site covering UCLA, it appears that
the Internet is not going away.
“Come on,” Pierson said. “Let’s
recognize this as a resource.”