Power of the media, combined with the Internet
According to this New York Times story (registration required):
On a lark last month, Mr. Williams agreed to chronicle his recruiting trips to big-time college football schools to Manny Navarro, a reporter at The Miami Herald. Such diaries are standard stuff in local newspapers nationwide; empty of all but the most polite observations, they are usually buried in the backs of sports sections, to be sniffed out by only the most obsessed fans.
But Mr. Williams decided to tell his tale differently. In a personal style — part Dennis Rodman, part "Nanny Diaries" — he pulled back the curtain on the world of private jets, police escorts, squads of cheering co-eds and a conveyer belt of steak and lobster tails that has come to characterize big-time college football recruiting. As many Americans were Googling stills of Janet Jackson's exposed breast at the Super Bowl last Sunday, Mr. Williams's experiences were already spreading like a virus. They were sent by e-mail from fan to fan and posted on Web sites, and they eventually sluiced into the electronic white water that flows between friends' e-mail boxes during the long work day.