Fifth in a series of occasional articles on the recruitment of Gilman football player Ambrose Wooden.

Surrounded by posters of Michael Vick and Deion Sanders, the teddy bear that his girlfriend gave him and his Gilman football helmet, Ambrose Wooden hunkers over his home computer most nights. He logs onto the Internet and fires off missives to friends, far and near.

The distant ones are star players, like him, with one thought in mind: Where will they be playing next year? Some know; others, like Wooden, do not.

But surfing the Net may help take him there.

"It [the computer] has enlightened me on what to look for," he says of his college search.

For prize Division I prospects and the schools that are courting them, the Internet has become a staple in the recruiting process. With the click of a mouse, phenoms can size up everything from a team's facilities to its depth charts. They can chew the cyberfat with college players to learn what campus life is like. And they can contact others being recruited by the same schools to compare notes on a coach's sales pitch.

On the other hand, mining the Internet can be time-consuming. And some for-profit sites on football recruiting are fraught with gossip and misinformation, making a tour of the Web seem like broken-field running.

"What is disguised as 'truth' is often rumor and innuendo, which gives these kids mixed statements," says Marc Isenberg, co-author of the Student-Athlete Survival Guide. While recruits can glean useful information from the Internet, he says, "so much of what is out there is an adult-driven cottage industry designed to make money off these prospects.

"It's like a People magazine for athletes."

Wooden, the senior quarterback of Gilman's top-ranked state team, ignores the warren of tongue-wagging chat rooms. Instead, come evening, he sits at the keyboard of his aging Compaq desktop and trades hellos with allies, including a dozen recruits from distant parts and some college lettermen he met on visits to Notre Dame, Boston College and Maryland.

Mostly, Wooden corresponds via an instant message system. One night last week found him swapping banter with an out-of-stater who has already committed to Notre Dame. More and more these days, players who have chosen their college try to persuade Wooden to join them.

"They want you to go where they're going," he says. "They pull your leg and say stuff like, 'Are you coming or not?' It's like [the recruits] have become salesmen, too."

Wooden, The Sun's Offensive Player of the Year, will not be rushed. This weekend, he was to fly to California to visit Stanford. Next week, a lineup of coaches - including Tyrone Willingham of Notre Dame and Ralph Friedgen of Maryland - are to call on Wooden at his home in East Baltimore.

The recruiting chase, which includes 238 Division I schools, culminates on National Letter of Intent Signing Day on Feb. 5. By then, every prospect must declare his college intentions - if the Internet doesn't beat him to it. Competitive Web sites such as Rivals.com, Sportsline.com and ESPN.com enlist networks of analysts whose job it is to tag after top prospects and flesh out the teams that will play next fall.

For prospects, the upside of the Internet is an unvarnished look at a college's personnel and how well they may mesh with other recruits.

"It levels the playing field a bit," says Shannon Terry, president of Rivals.com. "The more information, the better.

"Coaches have to watch what they say to these young men. They must be on their Ps and Qs and paint an accurate picture."

On the downside are the relentless inquiries from cyberscouts out to satisfy the demands of alumni, fans and those who partake in football pools.

"Some of these kids now get four or five phone calls a night from recruiting 'experts' wanting to know where they're going," says Mike Karwoski, assistant athletic director for compliance at University of Notre Dame.

The volume is vast, but so is the margin of error. Karwoski says he receives "hundreds" of calls from Irish followers upset by alleged recruiting violations described online. His job requires that he check each one out.

If it's a falsehood, there is no one to report it to because the content of Internet recruiting sites is not regulated.

"The use of the Internet in recruiting has exploded in the last few years," says Karwoski, "and I don't think NCAA regulations have kept pace with it."

What the NCAA does regulate are the electronic communiqués between college coach and prospect. Unlimited e-mails are allowed; instant messages are restricted.

"E-mails are like letters - they're unlimited," says NCAA spokesperson Laronica Conway. "If a coach and kid want to write back and forth into the wee hours of the morning, to learn about each other, that's up to them."

Contact by instant message is considered a phone call. Such access is limited during recruiting season, says Conway, adding that electronic IMs "are hard to monitor. Unless it were a self-reported violation, we probably wouldn't know it."

Wooden says he does not chat online with coaches, and that the only e-mails he has received from them are holiday greetings.

Some coaches reach out to cautious recruits by creating their own sites. Examples are Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer, at BeamerBall.com, and Arkansas' Houston Nutt (HoustonNutt.com). The latter opens: "Greetings, Prospective Student Athlete."

When Wooden goes online, he says he laughs off the commercial sites and their give-and-take on high school talent. "I don't dwell on it," he says. "I think it's hilarious how people who don't even know you can judge you."

Biff Poggi, Gilman's head coach, is no fan of computer-enhanced recruiting: "The Internet can be helpful. It's also very time-consuming and distracting.

"When you're a sensitive kid, what people say tends to mean something to you," he says. "This is a personal decision that should be made by the player, parents and a trusted adviser. At most, you want three or four voices, not 40 or 50."

Wooden's mother, Robin Petty, tries to stay abreast on what's on the Web to better fill her role in that respect. Each day at work, she logs on for half an hour during lunch.

"I look up [a school's] staff, facilities, alumni and resources," she says. "I read up on coaches." The other day, Petty says, she studied the University of Maryland's honors program after it accepted Wooden, should he choose to go there. On a visit to Notre Dame's site, she says, she made a list of pros and cons.

"I keep it to myself, trying to let this be Ambrose's decision," says Petty. "I know I'll play a part in it. First I'll see what he says, but if I don't feel comfortable, I'll put my two cents in."