Two members of your swim team throw a party and post directions to their off-campus apartment on the Internet. Your basketball team meets at a bar for a post-game celebration, and photos of underage players drinking wind up online. As your volleyball team prepares for a road trip, an athlete posts the travel itinerary on the Web, complete with information about hotels where the team will be staying.

If you think these scenarios present a safety and public-relations nightmare waiting to happen, you're right. If you think they're not happening already, you're wrong.

In most cases, the medium is facebook.com, a Web site your student-athletes probably know well. The site was created to allow college students to network with each other, and it now has over six million members, with more students joining every day. Each member maintains a profile where they can post information about themselves and their personal interests, as well as photos and contact information. Students say it's a fun and easy way to meet new friends and keep in touch with old ones. It is currently one of the most visited Web sites in the country.

But as Facebook has grown wildly popular, athletic administrators are starting to take notice of its potential hazards. Mark McGushin, Life Skills Coordinator at Sacramento State University, had never heard of the site before another administrator brought it to his attention. "When I first checked it out, I saw pictures of our student-athletes partying and drinking, and I was especially concerned to see athletes' cell phone numbers posted, and other types of personal information that could be used to stalk or harass them," he recalls. "And it wasn't just one or two athletes who had profiles. At minimum, half of our student-athletes are on the site."

The potential problems range from the serious, like stalking, to the more benign. In March, a group of University of California students obtained USC basketball player Gabe Pruitt's instant messaging screen name through Facebook, then, posing as a cute co-ed looking for a date, carried on a weeklong dialog with him. When the two schools played each other that weekend, fans held up a sign with Pruitt's phone number and chanted the fictitious woman's name whenever he went to the free-throw line. Normally an accurate shooter, Pruitt finished the game 3 of 13 from the field.

At Sacramento State, McGushin has warned all athletes about the dangers of posting personal information online and has urged them to clean up their profiles. He says virtually everyone has complied, and coaches have since been encouraged to keep an eye on their athletes' Web presence.

Administrators at Northern Kentucky University are taking a more formal stance. Athletic Director Jane Meier says she is currently working with the school's athletic council, student-athlete advisory committee, and legal advisors to develop a policy regarding Facebook and other social networking sites. She says the policy won't likely prohibit athletes from using the sites altogether, but will offer advice about what should not be posted.

"I've seen pictures of underage athletes drinking on Facebook, and if we wanted to be hard-line about it we could have suspended those kids," she says. "I've also seen derogatory comments about a coach who left our program posted by student-athletes, and that was especially bothersome. And I've heard of athletes contacting athletes at other schools to suggest transferring to their team. Our guidelines will make it clear that that type of content is not appropriate."

At Loyola University (Ill.), Athletic Director John Planek told athletes in January they are prohibited from having profiles on the site at all, and failing to comply could result in dismissal from their team. "We are responsible for the well being and safety of our athletes, and most young people don't realize how something like this can put them at risk," Planek says. "I'm also concerned that it creates an inroad for people involved in gambling to contact athletes."

Many schools are also taking an educational approach. "First and foremost, we wanted to teach our coaches about what's out there," says Pam Overton, Associate Director of Athletics at Florida State University. "We had them come to a meeting and write the name of one athlete on a piece of paper. Then we pulled up each one's Facebook profile. We all read what they'd written and looked at their photos, and some of the coaches were really shocked at what they saw."

From there, FSU coaches were told to keep an eye on their team's Facebook use and encourage athletes to remove anything offensive or unflattering from their profiles. "All we really want is for our athletes to protect their own privacy and make smart decisions," Overton says. "We basically tell them, 'If you don't want to see it as a newspaper headline or on the six o'clock news, don't put it on Facebook.'"