Well, I was one of the original football recruiting hostesses at Troy State University in L.A. ( Lower Alabama) exactly 20 years ago. I remember we were each given a little booklet to read on NCAA recruiting rules. We were known as the TROJAN HOSTESSES.
To this day, I am still ribbed about that name by everyone I tell it to. LOL
On a side note, I also had a bumper sticker that read " I love the TROJANS" ! My mother thought it was awful when I put it on my car.
To add to what Cluey posted earlier, the Georgia Girls at UGa are now the Georgia Girls and Guys...Read on...
Not just a girl thing
College football recruiting corps adds guys
By Kristen Wyatt
Associated Press
ATHENS - The Georgia Girls have a new weapon in their fight against those who say college football hostesses are just flirts to lure top recruits:
Men.
The University of Georgia football ambassadors who volunteer to show recruits and their families around campus are now the Georgia Girls & Guys. For the first time this fall, khaki-wearing men will join the ladies in high heels escorting high school football stars to Sanford Stadium.
And there are other changes for the 90-member group, once called the most exclusive sorority on campus. Gone are the tight black dresses, replaced by sporty sweaters and pants, even an athletic-looking warm-up suit.
The host group has also started volunteer projects, all to get the word out they're not just there to twirl their hair and smile at recruits.
Adding men gives the Georgia Girls an air of respect that all the new outfits and hospital visits in the world may not bring, adviser Connie Connelly says.
"If it can help their image as far as their peers, it's a good thing," Connelly says. "That would be wonderful."
Georgia is the latest school to overhaul its recruiting volunteer program in the wake of unflattering news reports about using pretty coeds to persuade high school athletes to sign with a school.
Decades after Alabama coach Bear Bryant enlisted campus beauties to visit high school stars considering the Crimson Tide, hostess programs nationwide are adding men and changing their image. Clemson's Bengal Babes are now called the Tiger P.A.W.S, and Miami's Hurricane Honeys are the Cane Connection.
The days of eye-candy-only hostessing are long gone - the ambassadors work long hours arranging game day visits and now are expected to answer questions like what defensive scheme a school is running or how the conditioning program works.
But the stigma remains, and no one knows that better than 19-year-old Blake Varner, one of five men who signed on to this first year of coed hosting.
For one, Varner's friends insist on calling him a Georgia Girl.
"I tell them I'm a recruiting ambassador and they say, 'Naw. You're a Georgia Girl.' They ask how the recruits like me," Varner says, laughing.
"That perception is still there. People think we're just there for the recruits to show 'em pretty girls and show 'em a good time," he says. "That's not what it is."
At Auburn University, where the Tigerettes were joined by male Tiger Hosts in 1992, adviser Sue Locklar says their reputation improved, and so did their recruiting.
"We realized there were a lot of places these young ladies cannot go, the locker rooms and so on," Locklar says, adding that some recruits are flustered by the women and would rather talk to a guy.
Male recruiting hosts also stop the biggest problem facing football hostesses - unwanted advances from recruits. Tigerettes are never left alone with the athletes, Locklar says.
"I don't want it to have any semblance of a date or anything like that," she says.
At Georgia Tech, men have been invited to join the hostess group, called Solid Gold. But so far, no takers.
"We've just never had any guys express any interest," says adviser Shanny Burge.
Georgia is hoping that after this first mixed-sex year - 86 women and just five men - more males will want to join. The sales pitch includes preparation for a future sports marketing or management career.
Or, in the case of senior Michael Thomas, a chance to meet the players and coaches he's been watching for years from the student section in a stadium of 90,000 people.
"I'm a sports fanatic," Thomas says. "I'm looking forward to being on the field, meeting all the players, just the experience of it."
And the original Georgia Girls are hoping for fewer raised eyebrows when they tell their friends why they're not in the stands at home games.
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