NCAA proposal could have a disastrous effect

Harry · April 11, 2017

Later this week the NCAA will put to vote a rule that could change employment practices in football coaching more than any in recent memory — a rule that would extend staffs from nine to 10 full-time assistants.

But there is another rule on the docket that could also have a drastic effect on the lives of thousands of coaches. It’s a rule that could severely limit high school coaches’ ability to move into college football.

Bylaw 11.4.3 reads: “In bowl subdivision football, during a two-year period before a prospective student-athlete’s anticipated enrollment and a two-year period after the prospective student-athlete’s actual enrollment, an institution shall not employ (or enter into a contract for future employment with) an individual associated with the prospective student-athlete in any athletics department noncoaching staff position or in a strength and conditioning staff position.”

In plain English: if a college program is to hire a high school coach it must immediately hire him to an on-field position, or it can not have recruited a player from that high school for two years prior to hiring the coach and must also refrain from recruiting players from said high school for another two years after his employment. That’s an entire cycle of high school players a college program would have to bar itself from in order to hire a single coach.

The intent is clear and admirable — to curb basketball-style package deals wherein commitments from highly-recruited players are contingent upon schools finding jobs for coaches or family members. It was referenced in the Michael Johnson saga, where Jim Harbaugh hired an offensive analyst who happened to be a California high school coach and the father of a top-rated quarterback in the class of 2019. (Johnson also happened to be a former NFL offensive coordinator and never actually joined the Michigan staff, accepting the wide receivers job at Oregon just days after the Michigan news broke.)

But the unintended consequence of Bylaw 11.4.3 could essentially choke off one of the major pipelines for college coaching talent in the NCAA. Arizona State’s Todd Graham, Auburn’s Gus Malzahn, Ole Miss’s Hugh Freeze, SMU’s Chad Morris, Tulsa’s Philip Montgomery, UAB’s Bill Clark and UNLV’s Tony Sanchez famously launched head college coaching careers from high school football. All moved into directly into on-field roles, moves that would have been permissible under the new bylaw. But as staffs have grown, programs have moved to hiring high school coaches into off-field roles, where they then move on the field at that program or elsewhere. For instance, Malzahn hired Chip Lindsey from Spain Park (Ala.) High School to become an offensive analyst at Auburn during the Tigers’ eventual SEC championship of 2013; Lindsey is now Auburn’s offensive coordinator. Nick Saban plucked Jeremy Pruitt from his defensive coordinator job at Hoover (Ala.) High School to become the director of player development on his original Alabama staff in 2007; Pruitt is now Saban’s defensive coordinator.

Read more: http://footballscoop.com/news/ncaa-proposal-disastrous-effect-high-school-coaches-looking-move/