By Dustin Dow
Enquirer staff writer

The latest providers of scouting information are summer league coaches.

It is not illegal for a college program, which might pay anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 a year in scouting services, to put up $300 for a summer basketball coach's service simply for the right to recruit his player.

"If I was making a suggestion to the NCAA, I would love for them to create something where only legitimate services were able to be bought by coaches," Prepspotlight.com scout John Stovall said. "There are hundreds of quote-unquote scouting services, but some of them are services run by (summer) coaches who are looking for money from that school to recruit a kid."

It's the latest turn in the scouting process that in some 30 years has morphed from a humble hobby into a lucrative business.

"We'll be leery at times of an AAU coach, because you don't get an unbiased report," Connecticut assistant coach Tom Moore said. "If we subscribe to their service, a return call about a recruit might come quicker than if we don't subscribe. It might not be the most moral way to go about it, but we may be inclined to do it if we feel it's a kid we want to recruit and that's the only way to go about it."

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E-mail ddow@enquirer.com