(Corrects spelling of Blu-ray in fifth, senator’s name in 18th paragraph.)

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Tweet! Don’t fret, this isn’t about a referee’s whistle. Rather, technology. And the trouble it presents for policing college athletics.

Anyone with an iPod had to chuckle when University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun referred to Yahoo! as a blog.

Based on that characterization it’s safe to assume that Calhoun, 66, doesn’t download and is probably ambivalent about the mounting hype of Skype.

Watching the curmudgeonly Calhoun address a Yahoo report of recruiting violations at UConn brought back memories of trying to teach my parents how to set the blinking clock on the VCR.

It didn’t take long for the VCR to become obsolete. It was replaced by the DVD, which is already being supplanted by Blu- ray. New and improved isn’t new for long.

That should make the National Collegiate Athletic Association nervous about the viability of its enforcement division, whose mission -- one of them, anyway -- is to ensure that members are following the rules.

It’s a job for Sisyphus.

“We have to trust our membership,” said Chris Radford, a spokesman for the NCAA.

Trust means trouble.

If the NCAA thought that policing win-at-any-cost coaches was difficult before handheld gadgets, then just wait until athletic departments begin enlisting their own Geek Squads as a means of winning the recruiting wars.

Taste for Twitter

Without getting bogged down in the minutiae of the Yahoo report, let’s say that it centered on a former UConn student manager and his improper dealings with a high-school player.

I just don’t see Calhoun having a taste for Twitter, which allows people to write short online messages -- or tweet -- as a means of mass communication.

It worked for Barack Obama, who used Twitter to reach potential voters during the presidential election.

Twitter has already caused a ruckus in the sports world, where Charlie Villanueva of the National Basketball Association’s Milwaukee Bucks tweeted a message during halftime of a game against the Boston Celtics. His coach wasn’t happy.

Villanueva, by the way, played for Calhoun at Connecticut, which faces Michigan State in Saturday’s national semifinal.

Whether it’s social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace -- and who knows what’s next -- how are NCAA officials supposed to monitor not only who is contacting high-school players, but when and how often?

“It’s literally impossible,” Radford said.

Legal Mess

Twitter is even disrupting the legal system, where mistrials have been declared because of juror tweets. More than 100 lawmakers have joined the craze, including Senators Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, and John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, who has been tweeting from the floor of the Senate.

“I would be shocked if more members don’t start to adopt these new technologies,” McCaskill said.

The same goes for coaches, who will do just about anything to land the player they covet. Last week, it took one of my colleagues all of 10 minutes on Facebook to reach a pair of high-school players who had already committed to UConn.

It’s impossible to know what technology will allow when coaches recruit Allonzo Trier, who was the subject of a recent New York Times magazine article. Trier is a sixth grader and one heck of a basketball player. Oh, and he’s already got a clothing line.

By the time Trier is ready to pick a college program, maybe every kid will have one of those Dick Tracy video watches. How will the NCAA track that?

Breaking Rules

College programs, particularly when it comes to recruiting, have repeatedly demonstrated a disregard for rules and regulations. Technology offers them an unfiltered conduit to the kids they crave.

The NCAA last year banned coaches from using text messaging to woo potential players. The measure also banned communication through other electronic means, including video phones, video conferencing and message boards on social networking Web sites.

What happens, though, when the technology changes faster than the rules?

The NCAA has opened an investigation into the Yahoo report on UConn. To expect coaches and athletic directors to self- report infractions is unrealistic. There’s too much at stake.

It used to be that a coach visited a promising athlete’s house, sat with the parents and pleaded his case for Whatever U. Now it’s only a matter of time before Steve Jobs concocts an iPhone application for recruiting.

The NCAA simply can’t keep up. It doesn’t have the manpower, money or high-tech savvy.

The governing body for college athletics will have to rely on the appropriately named whistleblowers.

Tweet!

(Scott Soshnick is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Scott Soshnick in New York at ssoshnick@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 31, 2009 05:03 EDT