I know of a midwestern private school that brought on a seemingly pleasant athlete on paper but she spun webs around the program.
She demanded a lot of one on one time with the coach who is married and took extra time out of his day to meet her "needs" emotionally. No sex but just a typical histrionic who can extract codependency from the least likely sources. The bigger the authority the better but she would tap into the youth as well. Her range extended from professors to the "cute" delivery guy and everything in between. She subtly manipulated the coach into allowing her to "run on her own" through sweet talking while the rest of the team was held to early Saturday morning practices and Sunday morning long runs. This caused a lot of second guessing of the rules by other team members. Athletes saw the problem from afar but no one took it up with the coach directly.
A secondary effect of her presence was over the course of four years she strung along more than half the mens team into love triangles and further drama. Almost every year she'd have her holidays (december - valentine's day) with one guy on the team who would then run on a different level (beast mode for him) because of his new ego boost. That is until the outdoor season when she started to play mind games with the guy and on cue, the guy sh!ts the bed entirely before conference.
The latest takes the cake however. She begged and pleaded with academic advisers and other athletic staff to get her into a graduate school program so she could use her remaining year of eligibility. She had that whole staff working until finally something clicked and she got in. Less than two months later and over $40k in scholarship and financial aid money issued to her, the girl dropped out of the grad school program and never even competed once.
Moral of the story this one was a HUGE WASTE of money and energy.
How do you identify and avoid athletes like this in the recruiting process?