Knight group to study gender equity, recruiting in athletics programs.(NEWSWATCH)

Recruiting and gender-equity problems in college sports were big agenda items at a recent meeting of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.

With the use of the Internet and text messaging, potential college athletic recruits are being pressured at younger ages. Some recruiting Web sites get millions of visitors a month who gawk at athletes in their early teens, or younger. These sites focus on bench-pressing and sprinting data, but provide little info about academics or the person as a whole.

"Young kids--some of them in grade school and junior high--are getting taken out of the homes and away from their peer groups and groomed for professional sports," said Harry Edwards, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. "The elite athlete ...