Patrick Patterson might be one of the most talented high school basketball players in the nation, but he is also a typical teenager and, as such, is among the legion of young people who populate the Internet website MySpace.com. But unlike his classmates, this West Virginia teen must navigate a cesspool of lewd photographs and comments placed on his personal web page by zealous fans of University of Kentucky basketball.

It's all done, purportedly, to help entice Patterson to play college basketball for Kentucky. In reality, the action is a violation that would necessitate UK having to submit a report to the NCAA while players like Patterson could be forced to choose another school.

"When this young man set up his account he probably did it to communicate with friends," said Sandy Bell, UK's compliance director charged with policing the activity. "And now it's being used by fans trying to influence his decision."

MySpace.com, for the computer challenged, is an electronic bulletin board of sorts. Other people may visit your personal page and post or view messages, photographs and video. While friends typically display goofy photos or banter the latest school gossip, Patterson's page has become a depository for an unflattering, digitally enhanced photo of UK super fan Ashley Judd and others of UK's dance team and cheerleaders. The implication in photo captions is that this could be Patterson's "reward" should he come to Lexington.

Besides being tasteless, the action is illegal. The NCAA deems it "impermissible contact" and references Bylaw 13.02.13, sub-paragraph C to equate such action by fans to be "assisting in the recruitment of prospects."

"The key was they were a fan until they took it upon themselves to enter the recruiting process in a very specific, targeted, personal way," Bell said. "They are communicating directly with a prospective student athlete, which is a violation of the regulations."

"There are exactly four people who can recruit for the University of Kentucky for men's basketball – Tubby Smith, David Hobbs, Reggie Hanson and Scott Rigot. That's it," Bell added. "These coaches are using every permissible new interactive technology to develop a close relationship with the recruits on their list. We just have to make sure the same technology isn't used by those who aren't permitted to use them."

Bell's job is becoming more and more difficult with each passing day. The enormous popularity of the Internet and the instant access it affords people has drastically changed the culture of recruiting and following your team. But make no mistake, the ease in accessibility via sites like MySpace.com doesn't make it any less illegal in the eyes of the NCAA.

"It's very hard to limit the impermissible contact that takes place," Bell said. "But we are expected (by the NCAA) to do the best job we can."

The onslaught of unwanted communication from UK fans recently caused one top prospect to remove the Cats from his list of potential schools. DeAndre Jordan, a power forward from Houston, received similar messages to Patterson before having a friend inform UK fans their attempts to sway Jordan had actually backfired. Shortly after the message appeared, Jordan sliced UK off his short list.

Compounding the problem for Kentucky is the fact that Cat fans seem to be the primary culprits.

"I'm not sure why this is predominantly a Kentucky issue. That I don't understand," Bell said. "We haven't seen North Carolina fans out there. We haven't seen Duke fans out there. The first challenge for us is to try to explain why there are more of our fans than anyone else.

"If this was an equally distributed phenomena among all the top programs then we'd all be dealing with the same issue and solve the same problem on a national level," Bell added. "But at this point, that's not the case. That's the first challenge. The expectation is that we control our fans and if not, we are responsible for their actions."

Given UK's checkered past with the NCAA the school is leaving nothing to chance. Bell said college athletics' governing body has made is crystal clear that schools are responsible for controlling their boosters and fans, even in tough to monitor arenas like Internet chat boards. It's a job that is both thankless and difficult, yet the university does have legal avenues it can pursue if fans insist on pushing the limits.

"Any time there is impermissible contact we are expected by the NCAA to take steps to stop it," Bell said. "Some of these contacts are being made by a particular message board, so one of the things we will have to do is go out on that message board and do a cease and desist instructing them to stop contacting prospects.

"It would be our hope that anyone who truly cares about this program and wants to protect it would do exactly that, would say they didn't realize it was a problem and now that they do, won't do it anymore because it threatens the program. That's what we hope. But we know that in a few cases it's more about the individual and their obsession with recruiting than it is the program. It makes it hard to stop but the expectation is that we will."

As one would expect, Bell also worries about the national perception of UK and its fans because of such actions. Like most top-level programs, the vast majority of the fan base has no problem following NCAA guidelines as it pertains to recruits, but there are always a select few that push the boundaries.

"There is not a group of people we appreciate more. They are the ones that make this whole thing go. They have a passion for UK athletics, which is a huge part of what makes this program so special," Bell said. "We have to channel that passion so it doesn't result in violations that can hurt the program.

"Ninety-nine percent of them do exactly what they're supposed to, which is support this program by screaming their heads off and being joyous when we win and being destroyed when we don't," Bell said. "But there is a very small minority that doesn't do that and we spend a great deal of our time dealing with them."