Sports

Tennessee Recruiting Hostesses Scandal: Who is Lacey Pearl Earps?

by Jon Azpiri | December 9, 2009 at 08:56 am

22525 views | 3 Recommendations | 1 comment

The NCAA is investigating the University of Tennessee football team's recruiting practices and its Orange Pride booster club. Specifically, some female Orange Pride members are also recruiting"hostesses,"who welcome potential football recruits.

A New York Times piece about the Tennessee recruiting hostesses talks about how hostesses travel as far as 200 miles to attend football games of prime high school recruits. Hostesses also communicate with recruits through Facebook and MySpace.

Marcus Lattimore, a running back who made an unofficial visit to Tennessee but said he would not enroll there, said multiple Tennessee hostesses attended a game at James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., in September. He said they brought signs, including one that read, “Come to Tennessee.”

“I haven’t seen no other schools do that,” he said. “It’s crazy.”

The Tennessee hostesses have achieved cult hero status among some Vols fans. If anything, the Tennessee recruiting hostesses are seen as something of a secret weapon.

Some recruits say their influence is significant.

“You don’t want to go to a college where they ain’t pretty,” Lattimore said.

So who are the Tennessee hostesses? There have been internet forum threads dedicated to Tennessee recruiting hostesses that have since been taken down. Deadspin has some snippets including photos of Lacey Pearl Earps, who is the captain of Orange Pride. Deadspin's story highlights MySpace photos of Lacey Pearl Earps with Tennessee football players. Here is a screen capture of a Volnation thread about Lacey Pearl Earps and other Tennessee recruiting hostesses. Here is a current Volnation thread about the Tennessee hostesses controversy.

Here is an Orange Pride photo taken from the Tennessee football media guide.

College football recruiting hostesses are hardly new and certainly not exclusive to Tennessee. This 1987 Sports Illustrated story highlights several recruiting hostess groups throughout the country with names like Gator Getters, Hawk Hunters, Bengal Babes, Hurricane Honeys, and Catamount Kittens.

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Gary G- Houston (not verified)

at 15:35 on December 10th, 2009

I sat in front of the Vol Hostesses with the Mostest one time a football game when I was in the student section, and was just being a regular fan, standing up on third down and making a lot of noise. But they kept telling the students in the section to sit down, I guess they didn't want a crease in their skirts or mess up their jackets--- but that was in the mid 90s-- so who knows maybe things have changed?