Chansky's Notebook: Flippin' Crazy!

The basketball recruiting blogs are driving me nuts.

Maybe if I knew how to shut off the constant pings, rings and vibrations, I could get some peace from the blogosphere battle going on with my phone. I get geo-targeting and all that stuff, but it makes you want to go back to a flippin’ flip phone!

If it’s not 247 Sports, which I think owns Inside Carolina, or Keeping it Heel, or Tar Heel Blog, it’s the Duke Basketball Report, Ball Durham or Fansided or SB Nation, Carolina and Duke editions. Every day, three times a day, a new story comes beeping through to tell me who has made or missed the final list of some 7-foot basketball player, or 6-9 stretch forward or 6-5 shooting guard.

I guess I understand when one of my own columns shows up on my phone, since that’s a pretty easy link for the geo-targeted software geeks. Oh, here is somebody that might be interested in Art Chansky’s post and his name is… Well, you get it.

The thing is, I don’t cover or even write about recruiting, unless I am borrowing from a story that highlights Carolina or another ACC school. It has to be a special angle for that to happen, like a Georgia kid drops Georgia off his list and still has UNC on it.

Where do all these bloggers come from? How do they hook on with these various blog sites? And what expertise do they have in recruiting to grade the high school kids and, worse, give them a crystal ball rating of where they are going to college?

If I had the time and patience, I would construct a spread sheet of such and such a recruit and what schools he has in his top ten and what are his crystal ball chances of going there.

Where do they get this information? Oh, from other blogs. And do the coaches pay any attention to this, like they used to read Bob Gibbons’ All-Star Sports Report because Gibbons was a proven talent scout who actually went to see high school stars play?

This week alone was a story about one Duke commit who will play his senior year in high school with another Duke recruit. Big Whoop. Or one UNC prospect from California who is tied with Stanford for having a 43 percent chance signing there. Where?

How do the bloggers know that? Personally, and I’m just taking a wild guess, I like Stanford’s chances because… it’s closer to home.