NCAA recruiting rule changes spark divisions

[Harry]

In Gilman School football parlance, it’s called recruiting fatigue. After guiding the Baltimore-based Greyhounds for 16 years, Biff Poggi can immediately recognize the symptoms. First, the college coach calls, wondering why Recruit X switched off his cell phone’s voice mail, or why his Facebook account lay dormant for several days. Poggi then approaches the player, asking about a broken phone. “No,” the player typically responds. “I’m just tired of talking.”

Thursday, the NCAA Board of Directors will meet in Indianapolis to reconsider legislation deregulating communication between coaches and recruits. Seventy-five schools requested an override of the initial proposal, which eliminated phone call limitations and overturned periodic bans on text messaging. Last week, the board also suspended two other proposals that lifted restrictions on which staff members can recruit and which printed materials they can send to prospects.

The issue has frustrated many since the Board of Directors initially tried to simplify the NCAA’s rulebook by passing 25 changes last January, including the contentious deregulation measures. Big Ten coaches and athletic directors issued a collective statement expressing “serious concerns” about their “adverse effect.” Maryland football coach Randy Edsall called it “ridiculous.” Towson’s Rob Ambrose appreciated the reform effort, but said he “hasn’t met a single person who’s in favor of it.”

The Board of Directors can either “maintain its action on the proposals” or “rescind the proposals,” according to an NCAA press release. If it passes, most athletic officials and coaches forecast an unregulated environment in which recruits are bombarded with calls, letters and text messages. Speaking at the Football Bowl Association annual meetings,

NCAA President Mark Emmert defended the action. Monitoring calls and text messages, he said, was virtually impossible.

“I think the NCAA is going to find out that this is going to be a disaster with kids,” Poggi said. “However, they can’t control it anyway, which is why they’re opening it up. The reasons the rules are coming down is because they can’t enforce them, but it will wind up backlashing onto the kids, which is what always happens. The kids wind up getting the short end of the stick always.”

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/ncaa-recruiting-rule-changes-on-phone-calls-and-texts-spark-divisions/2013/05/01/057932ea-b28c-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html

[JesseMartin]

You'd think it would be smartest to put the power in the hands of the kids, parents, and maybe even HS coaches. If a recruiter is becoming a nuisance, ask them to cease and desist until a later date, if not permanently. If they continue, then contact the NCAA and have a set of possible punishments dependent upon the severity, number, etc of violations just like with everything else.

Plus, the last thing a recruiter wants to hear is, "We said you were calling too much and you didn't listen, so our kid is signing with your rival." So you'd think the schools would want to police things in-house already anyway.

[Arkstfan]

You'd think it would be smartest to put the power in the hands of the kids, parents, and maybe even HS coaches. If a recruiter is becoming a nuisance, ask them to cease and desist until a later date, if not permanently. If they continue, then contact the NCAA and have a set of possible punishments dependent upon the severity, number, etc of violations just like with everything else.

Plus, the last thing a recruiter wants to hear is, "We said you were calling too much and you didn't listen, so our kid is signing with your rival." So you'd think the schools would want to police things in-house already anyway.

Schools would rather miss on a kid by calling, texting, writing too much than not enough.

Lord help the parents of a hot prospect who goes into the recruiting process without unlimited texting on the cell phone account.

I'm not a pay the players person but the whole lot of the leadership of the NCAA, member conferences, and member schools should be horse whipped if they don't put together a group of players, say three or four HIGHLY recruited players and three or four more middle of the road recruits and find out what they liked and what they hated and craft rules that reduce the things they hate and encourages the things they liked.

[JesseMartin]

Schools would rather miss on a kid by calling, texting, writing too much than not enough.

Lord help the parents of a hot prospect who goes into the recruiting process without unlimited texting on the cell phone account.

I'm not a pay the players person but the whole lot of the leadership of the NCAA, member conferences, and member schools should be horse whipped if they don't put together a group of players, say three or four HIGHLY recruited players and three or four more middle of the road recruits and find out what they liked and what they hated and craft rules that reduce the things they hate and encourages the things they liked.

The latter part of this speaks volumes. As to the earlier part, I wonder how much kids and parents consider "too much"? If your kid is getting 20 texts a day, not to mention calls, tweets, etc., God forbid they pay attention to their studies in order to be academically eligible or even *gasp* honors students.

I'm certainly not one to favor over-regulation, but you'd think they would at least consider how much contact would be a distraction from not only academic performance, but of course their HS practices and other important activities. I know this is another slippery slope argument with no easy answer, but there must be some level of awareness that, regardless of any other extracurriculars, distracting a student from academic and athletic achievement could have a negative effect on their ability to properly achieve once placed in the collegiate atmosphere.