Captain U certainly isn't a scam, but it's not something that you should use as your primary recruiting device. As a college coach, I get e-mails often from girls through their Captain U accounts. I think Captain U naturally encourages girls to e-mail coaches through their Captain U accounts and I'm sure it includes an online management system so the girls can monitor the activity. The problem is that when we open these e-mails in the Captain U portal, we either have to respond through the Captain U portal - which means I am not using my e-mail and I have no record of my response - or we have to go to our own e-mail and type the girl's e-mail address from scratch. The other problem with the girls e-mailing through the Captain U website is that, frankly, we don't want to have to click a link to get to the message they send us. And then if the link takes us to a sign-in page or even an error page, forget it, the message will not get read. Captain U is now integrated with Front Rush (recruiting software that many colleges use), but I don't use Front Rush to do my e-mails. We read and send out a ton of e-mail. I have no desire to create extra steps (whether Captain U, Front Rush or anything else) to be able to read or send e-mails. I always tell recruits to e-mail me directly from their e-mail account, not through another website or messaging system.
As a result, I think having Captain U is fine, but maybe use it as a place to store videos, profiles and that type of thing.