Scouting service directors need not apply to Paterno

Coming to a college campus near you: Seven-on-seven summer football drills involving blue-chip high school prospects that may or may not be for sale to the highest bidder.

Or maybe the hottest new recruiting tool won't be headed to every college campus that soon, if ever. Penn State quarterbacks coach Jay Paterno has pledged that these meat markets won't ever violate the relative sanctity of State College, a commitment confirmed yesterday by his 84-year-old father, Joe Paterno, who is approaching his 46th season as head coach of the Nittany Lions.

"Yes," JoePa, taking his turn near the end of a series of Big Ten Conference-orchestrated teleconferences, replied when asked if JayPa was correct in saying that those seven-on-seven affairs would never be held in Beaver Stadium or at the Lasch Football Complex.

Just like that, the elder Paterno's thoughts on how his young Lions were shaping up for Saturday's Blue-White spring game turned into a referendum on the perceived ills of college football, a major revenue-generating sport whose idealism and integrity have come under increasing fire in recent months.

Oh, sure, Paterno offered his take on another under-construction offensive line (not there yet, but progressing) and his quarterback situation (co-No. 1s Matt McGloin and Rob Bolden are looking good so far, but he isn't ready to name one the starter just yet). But a curmudgeonly throwback who likes to brag that he doesn't even have a cellphone, much less an iPod, knows that every new rule is going to be broken, eventually, by some ethically challenged dude looking to find an edge. Thus has it always been, and probably always will be.

The latest angle being played by talent brokers involves scouting-service directors who offer their services - for a hefty fee, naturally - to success-hungry programs willing to pony up.

The antennae of evil-detectors went up when Oregon athletic department officials admitted that the school had paid $25,000 to Willie Lyles, who runs the Houston-based Complete Scouting Service, to provide information and assistance about Lache Seastrunk, a highly recruited running back from Temple, Texas. Seastrunk signed a grant-in-aid with the Ducks.

But Deryk Gilmore, a former Oregon recruiting coordinator and director of player development, said such expenditures not only are within NCAA rules, they're virtually necessary for any program hoping to contend for a national championship.