WASHINGTON — Scott Meyer doesn't consider himself a complicated person. He chose his college based on straightforward criteria: It had to be a big school with a good football program.

Meyer visited Penn State and quickly became enamored with coach Joe Paterno and Beaver Stadium, where more than 107,000 white-clad fans cheer madly for the Nittany Lions. "It's so easy to fall into all of it," said Meyer, now a senior political science major. "It's everything I could want."

And he believes it's everything any top high school football prospect could want, too. That's why Meyer reaches out to some of those recruits via online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, reasoning that if recruits see that students from a certain school who aren't associated with the athletic department take the time to initiate a relationship, it might influence their choice of schools.

"When you follow recruiting, you wish you were the coaches going into the houses and telling kids about the tradition," Meyer said. If coaches can't recruit through social networks, "students can do it."

Innocent as Meyer's intentions may be, his actions constitute an NCAA recruiting violation, one schools cannot protect against and one the NCAA cannot closely monitor. Meyer is not the lone culprit by any means. Many top football recruits in the class of 2009 contacted for this story said their Facebook or MySpace accounts have been bombarded in the past year by friend requests and messages from fans across the country. Numerous top men's basketball recruits in the class of 2009 have a following on social networks, as well.

Current students cannot serve as representatives of their schools' athletic interests and thus are not allowed to contact recruits, according to Stacey Osburn, the NCAA's associate director of public and media relations. The NCAA rules state that any individual who is known or should have been known by a member of a school's athletic administration to be "assisting in the recruitment of prospective student-athletes" qualifies as a representative of that institution's athletic interests. Therefore, any fan with a social networking account could possibly cause a violation, not merely those currently enrolled at a school.

"If a school found out this was going on, it would have to self-report it," Osburn said. "The NCAA then would look at the situation within reason." She added that reports of major violations concerning this subject have yet to surface.

According to NCAA rules, electronically transmitted correspondence with recruits or their legal guardians is permissible only in the form of an e-mail or a fax; "all other forms of electronically transmitted correspondence (e.g., Instant Messenger, text messaging) are prohibited."

Contact via social networks is "the middle ground of sorts between e-mails and instant messages," said Tim Parker, senior assistant director of athletics for compliance at Virginia Tech. "It would be impossible to be proactive in a meaningful way on this. All you can do is educate fans on what is and is not permissible."

Some sought-after high school football players called recruiting via social networks unfair; others said they were flattered by the attention. Either way, the trend poses a potentially serious problem for university compliance officers charged with keeping their respective team's contact with recruits above board.

"It makes it exceedingly difficult, no doubt, with the proliferation of what goes on with the Internet," said Mike Karwoski, Notre Dame's associate athletic director for compliance. "If anybody in the country says they know everything that's going on with those sites, they're not telling the truth. They can't. It's impossible."

When it comes to monitoring students' and other fans' contact with recruits through social networking sites, the issue is threefold. Most university compliance departments have small staffs. Many Division I schools have tens of thousands of students and an exponentially larger base of fans.

So even if compliance officers could gain access to the social networking accounts of each of their school's fans (privacy restrictions prohibit such access), they would not have the time or manpower to ensure no contact was being made with potential recruits.

"Is there a chance that we're going to miss something? Absolutely. I'll be the first one to admit that," said Karwoski, whose compliance staff usually consists of four full-time employees, himself included, and a part-time assistant. "You just hope these people are doing the right thing. I hate to put it in the context of crossing your fingers, but that's what you have to do."

Several compliance officers contacted for this story said attempting to educate their school's coaches — and their school's fans — is vital. Most do so through staff meetings for coaches and newsletters for fans.

Meyer said he has not been contacted by Penn State regarding his unofficial recruiting efforts and that he sees no harm in contacting recruits through social networks so long as it is done "in a sensitive way."

If a school were to report a violation regarding fan usage of social networks to contact recruits, Osburn said the NCAA would have two questions: Did the university have a system in place to monitor such activity, and was it responsible for encouraging students to contact recruits?

Because there have been no reported instances of major NCAA violations regarding social network recruiting, Osburn said, the NCAA has established no penalty guidelines for such cases. She said secondary violations have likely occurred but said she had no access to such information.

In April 2007, Penn State administrators instructed two students to shut down a Facebook group the pair had created in an attempt to influence the college decision of high school quarterback Terrelle Pryor. The group then had nearly 1,000 members, and only about one-third of them left the group upon request. In this case, the school made a concerted effort to halt the recruiting violation, and therefore the NCAA did not further investigate the matter.

"We're not different from any other place," Penn State compliance coordinator John Bove said. "We like to believe we are, but unfortunately we have fans that sometimes want to walk the line where if they step to the left, they're in a violation area."

Since the incident with the Pryor Facebook group, Bove said he was not aware of any cases in which Penn State students were using social networking sites to reach out to recruits on such a grand scale.

"In today's age, I wouldn't be surprised if kids at Penn State go home and if they have a great player in their area, tell that player to come to Penn State," Bove said. "On a smaller scale, yeah, that might be going on, but the NCAA understands how difficult this can be, and everyone's pretty reasonable when these things arise."

For schools, the possible consequences of their fans' actions are problematic, but for the fans, the only potential drawback to reaching out to recruits is disappointment if their attempts fail. Meyer considers his contact to be nothing more than a friend telling a friend about a college.

"If he goes to a Penn State rival, that would be unfortunate," Meyer said. "I'll not have to like him as much."