They're watching us.

[Jim Metz <JBMetzEA@AOL.com>]

Title: They're watching us.

This was sent to me, by a poster, to the AOL board.
-JB-
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http://www.acctoday.com/Michael_Kruse_article.jtmpl?id=12540&author=142&subject=2&school=101

Kruse: Bret, Beer & Boards
by Michael Kruse
May 24, 2001 7:44 AM EST
Bret Bearup is many things.
He's a former University of Kentucky basketball player. He's an Atlanta-based NBA player agent. And he's a high-profile message board poster -- BretB -- on popular college hoops sites such as UNCbasketball.com, Peegs.com, Wildcatfaithful.com, the Kentucky Sports Report and the Duke Basketball Report.

RThis weekend, though, BretB will become real. At least he'll become real for a chunk of the Tar Heel Internet community. Bearup has offered to buy drinks for a group of UNCbasketball.com personalities Saturday night at the Franklin Street BW3 in Chapel Hill
"I got no problem buying a whole bunch of beer," Bearup said Tuesday evening. "I interact with these people all the time. So I thought it'd be kind of fun to get together and put names with faces while tossing back some beers."
Sounds like fun. But Ben Sherman isn't sure what to expect.
"It's not like everybody is going to be wearing a sign saying 'I post,'" said the UNCbasketball.com webmaster. "I've met people (from the board) before. It's usually pretty low-key. But now with Bret Bearup trying to round up the troops? It'll be interesting."
What's really interesting, though, is the message board phenomenon as a whole.
Lots of folks used to look at the open-ended forums as the scourge of the Internet. Lots of them still see them that way. And they kind of have a point.
"There's no accountability," said kik84, a particularly prolific UNCb poster who says he's "an analyst" in New Jersey but refuses to reveal his real name. "Anybody can say anything. Anybody can start a rumor, and if you're convincing enough, a lot of people are going to believe it."
Accuracy -- or lack thereof -- is only the beginning. The grammar isn't always tip-top and some of the content can get downright ugly.
"Some of the other forums are totally unmoderated," said Michelle Hillison, a North Carolina iHigh employee who helps with UNCb. "The worst posts are usually racial or homosexual references that are completely out of line."
Yet message boards -- a handful of them in particular -- enjoy immense popularity. Sherman accepts registrations on Thursdays only simply because of the overwhelming demand. Mike Pegram's Peegs.com Indiana basketball site boasts approximately 3,500 registered members.
And now, perhaps more than ever before, the boards are seeping into the mainstream. No longer are these subject-specific Internet enclaves just for Web geeks and diehard blowhards.
"Everybody reads these boards," said Jeff Brown, a UNC grad and Atlanta resident who posts as Brownie at UNCb. "It's incredible. Coaches, assistant coaches, newspaper guys, players, players' family members -- I'm not saying they all post, but they read."
Don't believe it?
NBA-bound St. John's point guard Omar Cook posted on UNCb during his heavily scrutinized recruitment a couple years ago. Devil Momma -- otherwise known as Jason Williams' mother -- used the DBR's board to refute Sports Illustrated writer Seth Davis' repeated reports indicating that the Duke star wanted to go pro.
Take the Jason Parker hullabaloo from last summer as well. Rob Daniels broke the story in the Greensboro News & Record. Or did he? The first rumblings started on UNCb's board in the wee hours the night before the story appeared.
One poster last month pointed out that Duke and UNC could combine to land 11 of the top 30 high school prospects in America. Eddy Landreth of the Chapel Hill News [and ACCToday.com] ran a column a couple days later saying exactly the same thing.
On the Peegs front, in the midst of the Bobby Knight firestorm last fall, Pegram's boards became the place to be.
"A lot of things were breaking there," said the IU Web guru. "The message boards seemed like a good place for that stuff. It's sometimes good just to get information out there."
Just ask Bearup.
"To be perfectly honest," he said, "one of the things that draws me to posts is when I see some information out there that I know is not true. And there's a whole bunch of stuff I know.
"Message boards are usually the first place you see stuff. It's hard to glean, but if you're around the board, you know who you can kind of trust to say something that has some truth. There's a lot of stuff on there that reporters have no idea about. And now they're starting to think that maybe they should check it out. That's accelerated like you can't believe."
Bearup certainly gives any board an instant dose of credibility -- he's in the know and he shoots remarkably straight -- as do a number of recruiting experts that are active participants on UNCb's forum in particular. ACCToday's Clint Jackson from High Major Hoops and Rob Matera from All Star Sports Report are regulars.
"For me," said Jason Schultz, a Minnesota-based UNCb moderator known as Jetson, "I enjoy talking about the Carolina games and the ACC games because I'm not down there. It's an opportunity to talk to people that go to the games."
"It's like my online bar," Jackson said. "That board is very active and full of great conversation."
But now comes the true test: Will that conversation continue Saturday night at BW3 or will the interaction change with the sudden face-to-face dynamic?
"A lot of people have very flamboyant personalities when no one can see them," Jackson said. "But some posters are very different when you're around them in person. Some of these guys I've met before -- Jetson, Brownie, Rob, Bret -- but there are a lot of new people, too. I'll be excited to meet them all."
And just about everybody will be excited to drink free beer. 
 
Michael Kruse is the lead recruiting writer for the Prep Stars Recruiter's Handbook and prepstars.com. He serves as ACCToday's media scribe with a weekly column that covers those who cover the ACC. He also contributes to Basketball Times and Basketball America. E-mail him at kruse@prepstars.com. 

                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                Unchain My Heart!