At the end of each of his players’ junior years, Georgetown Preparatory High School head coach Dan Paro sits his players down and has them list 15 schools they’re interested in. He contacts the schools’ coaches and sends them highlight videos of the respective players.

The work Paro does is extensive, but it could all be undone by some overzealous writer for a college football recruiting Web site, he says.

Sites such as Rivals.com have been around since 1998, evaluating players and giving fans and college coaches up-to-date information on prospects’ college decisions. The sites provide video, statistics and vital information such as height, weight and 40-yard dash times. But recently, some of these information centers have turned into a blitz for the latest news on high school athletes, Paro said.

Though Rivals.com and leading competitor Scout.com are the two main dogs in the race for recruiting news, ESPN started its own service in July after purchasing Scouts Inc. (a separate company from Scout.com), a scouting service for professional, college and high school athletics. Fox Interactive Media acquired Scout.com in early August in a multimillion-dollar deal, giving it a stronger financial platform to stand on.

Paro recognized the hard work done by sites such as mdvarsity.com, a branch of Rivals.com, but he is skeptical of other Internet scouting sites. As a result, Paro advises his players not to talk to any media. Instead, he promotes players to colleges himself.

‘It’s been kind of like a feeding frenzy in the past three or four years,’ Paro said. ‘I’m a big believer that you have to go and scout kids for yourself. How many times do you get inaccurate heights and weights on a roster? Does this media attention really help?’

Scout.com and Rivals.com both sell subscriptions to their premium information for $9.95 per month. Scout has more than 200,000 subscribers and 200 writers. According to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Scout.com recorded 1.4 million visitors in May alone.

Bob Lichtenfels, a writer for Scout.com, recognized the negative reputation of recruiting Web sites, spread in part by a July 4 story in ESPN the Magazine about the recruitment of Myron Rolle, a top high school prospect. The story, which coincided with the unveiling of ESPN’s service, painted recruiting Web sites as information-hungry and biased.

Lichtenfels said the story was one-sided.

‘A lot of that stuff was taken out of context,’ he said. ‘When they talk to somebody, they leave things out of stories. Anybody was intelligent enough to see it was self-serving.’

Lichtenfels is one of 10 regional analysts of Scout.com’s team, making him one of the Web site’s most prominent writers. He mostly covers Big East recruiting in the Western Pennsylvania area. He said he combats the negative stereotypes about his job by seeing as many prospects in person as he can.

Lichtenfels works out of his home. He says a typical work day starts at noon and ends at 4 a.m., with breaks in between to care for his kids and family. He watches film and keeps in contact with area high school coaches, saying he makes sure he doesn’t call recruits more than once a month unless the player is close to signing with a college.

On Fridays, he is always at a football game.

‘When I was coaching, you can make a difference for one or two kids,’ Lichtenfels said. ‘When you do what I do, you can make a difference for a couple hundred kids at a time. Kids that I watched two years ago still call me and say thank you for getting them to college.’

Lichtenfels’ counterpart on the Rivals network, Mike Farrell, has a similar workload. As a renowned national analyst, Farrell landed weekly television appearances on ESPN.

Farrell worked for Eagle Action, a Boston College publication, until 1999 when Rivals bought his services for its BC Web site. He covered the Big East region until two years ago when he was promoted to national Rivals analyst.

Farrell said he receives about 200 e-mails each day, mostly from high school players or parents.

‘Either their son isn’t in (the Rivals.com network of prospect profiles) and they want to be in it, or they aren’t rated on the system, or they want to be rated higher,’ Farrell said. ‘People also ask us for help all the time. They want to know what we think of their kid or how they can better promote him.’

One problem with analysts like Farrell is that many accuse them of bias toward their school. Farrell, for example, said he is accused of being a ‘homer’ or being biased to BC by many other teams’ fans. He said he knows the coaches at Boston College because he worked with them for several years and that while he is afforded a press pass at BC’s Alumni Stadium for all games, Rivals’ code of ethics prevents him from slanting what he writes.

Dan Orlovsky, Jr., father of now-Detroit Lions and former-Connecticut quarterback Dan Orlovsky, said that code of ethics has never stopped Farrell in the past.

‘Farrell makes it certain if you don’t go to BC, you’re not good enough to go anywhere else,’ Orlovsky, Jr., said. ‘Mike Farrell has no idea what he’s talking about and he has no credibility.’

Orlovsky, Jr., said his son never gave Boston College a chance and Farrell was upset as a result. Orlovsky, Jr., said Farrell went on eagleaction.com’s message board and personally attacked his son under a false name, a claim that Farrell says is not true.

As a result, Orlovsky, Jr., said he’ll never read a recruiting Web site again.

‘There’s no science to recruiting,’ he said. ‘A lot of people can’t stand that guy (Farrell). Now, I’ll just pick up Street & Smith (Magazine) and read an article by somebody good.’

Syracuse wide receiver J.J. Bedle said scouting Web sites have no credibility, that their ratings aren’t based on anything. Bedle believes recruiting sites only exist to make money.

Because he was from a small high school in New Jersey, Bedle said he didn’t get the accolades he deserved.

‘You gotta throw it out the window completely,’ Bedle said of his three-of-five-star rating on Rivals.com. ‘Ask the All-Americans about J.J. Bedle and I bet they’ve heard of me.’

Farrell said Bedle’s was a classic case of poor promotion. Bedle’s highlight video showed several clips of him dunking a basketball and few of him on the football field.

Whether or not high school players and their parents promote themselves through these sites, high school and college coaches have taken notice. Lichtenfels says he talks with the coaches in his area on a weekly basis. Syracuse recruiting coordinator Chris White said the first thing he does each morning is check the latest news on Scout.com and Rivals.com.

Bedle, however, doesn’t let Web sites determine what type of player he his.

‘It’s just words,’ Bedle said. ‘I’d rather just play and perform than read about myself. It’s a lot of politics.’

Published on September 25, 2005 at 12:00 pm