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The call came from a former head coach not long after I tweeted links to my recent columns -- one is here, the other is here -- about the ways in which event organizers exploit an NCAA-approved system by charging outlandish prices for "packets" that college coaches are often required to buy before being allowed to enter a gym to evaluate high school prospects during the month of July.

I wasn't able to answer the phone at the time.

But the coach left a voicemail.

"You should tie it into the scouting services, as well," he said. "Because the scouting service thing is even more ridiculous."

Truth be told, I've written about sketchy scouting services before, way back in 2007, by exposing a man named Troy Cotton, who ran a summer team out of Wisconsin and sold a completely worthless scouting service to college programs. (You can read that column here, if you want. Just please excuse the dated and trite Pete Doherty reference.) What Cotton would do, according to multiple sources, is pressure college coaches into purchasing his scouting service -- it was really just a piece of paper with names on it -- by leveraging his influence over the prospects in his summer program. In other words, you had to buy the scouting service in order to effectively recruit his prospects. One coach told me it cost $500.

Again, I wrote that column back in 2007.

Now here we are, nine years later, and, yes, it's still going on.

In fairness, I'm told, it's not as bad as it used to be because the NCAA does better regulate scouting services these days, and member institutions are no longer allowed to subscribe to services that the NCAA doesn't approve in advance. Regardless, the ridiculousness remains. And I don't mean to pick on Jeff Schneider again, but he's such an easy target. This is a man who is the CEO/President of an organization that runs summer events, has a summer team, and sells a scouting service. So here's how it works: if you're a college coach, you can pay $1,500 for the "Big Shots Schneider All Stars Recruiting Service," which also provides you with admission to all Big Shots certified events. But if you didn't buy that recruiting service this year, you had to pay $295 to attend Big Shots' one-night event on July 6, another $295 to attend Big Shots' two-day event that started the following morning, on July 7, and yet another $295 to attend yet another Big Shots' two-day event that started two days after that, on July 9. And never mind that all three events were in the same building. And never mind that all three events basically featured the same prospects. Don't ask questions or complain. Just pay up.

Needless to say, no sensible person thinks it reasonable to pay that kind of money just to watch high school players compete, and I couldn't find a single college coach who described Schneider's scouting service in positive terms. But if you don't subscribe to his scouting service or pay those outlandish fees to attend his events, well, recruiting prospects over whom Schneider has influence might, you know, become a little difficult. So college coaches subscribe to his scouting service and pay those outlandish fees to attend his events. Every year. And, again, this isn't unique to Schneider. There are a lot of men running similar scams. From coast-to-coast, they're exploiting the system and using their influence over prospects to pressure college coaches into spending big money on packets they do not need and real money on scouting services that are mostly useless.

"And if we tell them we're not paying, they kill us with the kids we're recruiting," one coach said. "These guys really do think it's their God-given right to make thousands of dollars off of every school in the country."

FIVE OTHER THINGS ON GP'S MIND

1. The NCAA case that's lingered over North Carolina for years has affected recruiting, most notably when Brandon Ingram picked Duke over UNC at least in part because of possible sanctions he wanted to avoid. And that's why Class of 2018 standout Coby White's commitment this week is a big deal -- because it suggests the UNC staff is successfully convincing prospects that those possible sanctions other programs have suggested are coming aren't actually coming at all.

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There are signs Roy Williams and UNC may avoid serious NCAA sanctions. USATSI

2. That said, nobody really knows for sure whether North Carolina's men's basketball program will face serious sanctions. It seems unlikely, for a variety of reasons. But the future does technically remain uncertain. Either way, I can tell you this: the UNC staff genuinely believes they'll be fine. It's not just something they say on the recruiting trail. They really do believe they'll be OK. (North Carolina is expected to formally respond to the NCAA's notice of allegations next week, by the way.)

3. Washington picked up another commitment early Friday -- this time from Class of 2017 standout Mamoudou Diarra. That's four commitments for the Huskies, who could easily end up with a top-five class nationally. The star of the class, of course, is Michael Porter Jr. He committed a few weeks back -- just a couple of months after Washington hired his father to be an assistant on Lorenzo Romar's staff.

4. SI.com's Pete Thamel wrote an interesting column this week about Big 12 expansion in which he explained how conference administrators, specifically the Pac-12's Larry Scott, believe Netflix, Amazon and companies like that could be in a position to bid for media rights to Power-5 leagues in the next five to 10 years. It's a fascinating thought, if only because it's so untraditional. But, for what it's worth, I have a 13-year-old son who rarely watches television in a traditional way. He never grabs a remote and just flips channels, never even turns on the DirecTV box in his room. He streams everything -- point being we really are raising a generation of people who do not consume media in a traditional way, meaning there will be nothing strange about it, to that generation, if we're someday watching Oklahoma and Texas play on, say, Facebook.

5. Folks keep asking, so I'll answer here: Yes, my best guess still has the Big 12 expanding by four schools. And, yes, I still believe the four schools will be BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and Memphis.

FINAL THOUGHT: D.J. Harvey is a four-star prospect from the Class of 2017 who recently cut his list of possible college destinations to ... 10!

Grand scheme of things, why should I care? But I've said this before, and it's worth repeating: there is no way, in my opinion, that a high school basketball prospect -- or any high school student, really -- can seriously consider 10 different colleges less than a year away from when he or she is expected to enroll. It's asinine. And yet, year in and year out, prospects "cut" their lists to 10 or some other outrageous number, which is never not hilarious.

Nobody who is eighth on a list now will finish first later.

Recruiting just doesn't work that way.

Grand scheme of things, again, not a big deal -- although it will likely lead to Harvey and some coaches spending unnecessary time on the phone discussing a relationship that's going nowhere, and what's the point in that? Answer: there is no point in that. And on that note, college coaches, a word to the wise: if you're closer to the bottom of that list than the top, you are totally, and I mean totally, wasting your time. This isn't a horserace. You're not winning from the back of the pack.