Rick Pitino Quotes

A lot of kids, especially football players, had been using Twitter for recruiting.

So, I got a lot of recruitment letters from track.

Nowadays, of course, flesh peddlers and scouting services identify the best athletes when they are still in junior high. Prospects are not allowed to sneak up on us.

You don't beat football teams. You outrecruit them.

Mark Fox is always criticized recruiting: he can't keep the Georgia kids home. What that means - he's not cheating and paying. That's what it means.

It doesn't change whether it's Georgia, Clemson or Florida or Tennessee. You have to fight out there on the recruiting trail every day. And recruiting's a lot like shaving: If you don't do it every day, you start looking like a bum.

I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that's another story.

Gosh, all a kid has to do these days is spit straight and he gets forty-thousand dollars to sign.

One reason outfielders don't have stronger arms might be they don't practice as much as we did. Most teams today don't take outfield practice. Another reason is baseball has to compete with other sports now - basketball, football, soccer - for the better athletes that might have more skills and stronger arms.

Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship. And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes.

It's hard when your father's the coach. Sometimes you don't know where one leaves off and the other begins.

The thing that drives most coaches out of coaching in college is they get tired of the grind of recruiting.

I don't begrudge a coach for trying to get all that he or she can. I don't resent a school feeling it needs to pay to keep top talent. I'm just afraid to think where all of this will end up because the overall impact seems to be stretching far beyond the scoreboard.

I think the colleges should be free to give athletes less than a full scholarship, no scholarship and more than a scholarship. And the athletes should be free to bargain.

I didn't get an athletics scholarship at a major school.

I'd like to see the high schools put in a rule that limits recruitable athletes from playing on teams outside a 100-mile radius from their home or school.

College athletics are so entrenched and enjoyed by so many people that they will never be discontinued or substantially changed. I know that. I just pity the people caught in that tender trap. And most of all, I pity those kids.

Notre Dame is the one school that has a national recruiting base, from Florida to Texas to California.

I must have made a good impression because a club official to us into his office and asked me if I would sign on for a year with a view to becoming a professional.

I had played in a tournament with the captain of the University of Minnesota's golf team, and he thought I was good. He called his coach, and the coach called me and recruited me. A five-minute phone call changed my life.

My life, even as a college student, has all been through the NCAA, and I'm telling you there's so much good that comes out of it.

The difference between the National Football League and college is this: In college, you are a broke college student.

The thing is 3,900 out of 4,000 college basketball players are very happy to have a scholarship. They're happy. They've got a $70,000 scholarship and they've got money in their pocket. It's the other hundred guys and they're all going to make money playing basketball and the top guys are going to make a lot of money.

I haven't had a chance to pick where I wanted to play since 2007 when I chose to go to Michigan State.

A coach was managing the Newbury team, and he wanted me to play for his local team, and from there, I did it at district level, and then I got picked for Southampton.