MAYAGATE links deleted by ESPN moderators

Today I posted a simple link to this NYT Story on the WCBB board

A very nice story AurabassPost #1: 1:54 pm Quote | Report ViolationTotal Posts: 2140
from the New York Times
the original link

These are links to an article and they in no way violate any rule of this board.

These posts were deleted by the moderators FIVE TIMES while threads containing links to the Jim Rome Pat Summitt story by cferraro
and links to the Geno article in CT newspapers were allowed to remain

ESPN moderators are deleting perfectly acceptable posts on the WCBB forum at the request of UCONN fans and it has to stop.

MAYAGATE from the NYT

RECRUITS NOT WELCOME BUT COACHES ARE

"You can't just call ESPN willy-nilly and ask for a tour, so you have to be a somebody or a friend or relative of someone at ESPN. I called the ESPN switchboard Thursday and asked for group tours.

Those tours ended, for security reasons, after the 9/11 attacks.

ESPN has changed its policy to end all visits like Moore's, which makes you wonder how many other hot recruits coveted by local universities like UConn have taken the tour."

So there you have it from the venerable NYT.

These open tours have not been available since Sept 2001 long before the arranged visit and the question is raised was this tour gambit used before or since?

"So the call went to ESPN's programming department, which schedules a billion hours of college hoops for the 7,321 ESPN platforms. If any part of ESPN should have known, or at least guessed, that such a tour might give Moore a benefit, however minor, that could help UConn woo her, you would think it would be programming. Yes, you would think."