Remember how the NCAA pretty much threw up its hands and surrendered to the notion that recruiting was out of control and there was nothing the NCAA could do about it? So the NCAA pretty much decided to allow almost everything that was previously forbidden and left it up to the individual conferences and schools to police themselves.
Now the stern organization has done a do-over. So what brought on this change of heart?
It seems some of the sane-thinking athletic people at the school levels objected to the deregulations. They complained and, amazingly, the NCAA listened. The organization realized it had perhaps acted irresponsibly (read: foolishly) in passing the buck on trying to ride herd on recruiting.
One of the most controversial aspects of the recruiting rules was RWG 11-2, which allowed non-coaches to also handle recruiting duties such as concerned unlimited texts, phone calls to recruits, Facebook messages and Twitter, etc. Recruiting would be 24/7 every day of the year with unlimited contact.
“I’m not for it,” Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said. “I’m totally against being unlimited in the number of people who can call. I don’t think that’s right for the high school student-athlete. I think it’s almost out of control now. Just imagine the chaotic life that that high school kid is going to have if we can now have everybody off the field trying to get in touch with him also. I’m not in favor of that. I’m totally in favor of us being able to text kids. That’s the way of the world right now. I still think there should be some restrictions on it. My counterparts in our league felt the same way. We’d like to see that slow down.”
There were two downsizes to this measure. First, it meant an unlimited amount of work and effort on behalf of the coaches who suddenly had to try to keep up with the other coaches they were recruiting against. Second, it meant high school students (read: athletes) were facing the prospect of an unlimited deluge of contacts during the recruiting process.
“It puts the burden on the high school kid more,” said Freeze of the unlimited contact idea. “I kind of like the idea that somebody has thrown out about the four-week dead period. I think that makes sense for families and things that are important to us outside of football.
“Recruiting is what I believe in strongly. If they let us do that, I’m going to try to get as many staff people as I can. We’re not as fortunate as some to be able to staff as much. Staff chemistry to me is huge. To me it could mess with your chemistry also,” he said.
Florida coach Will Muschamp said, “These guys got to go through a lot. You see guys going back and forth, a lot of pressure on these young men to make decisions in the different factions pulling them different ways. You’ve also got to respect that.”
Muschamp admits that recruiting is already such a competition and that a coach has to constantly work at it because every other coach in the SEC attacks recruiting with a necessary passion and you never know who is going to emerge as a winner each year.
“Everybody understands the importance of what it takes to go out and recruit and evaluate and develop players — and that’s what it’s all about,” he said. “Hats off to James Franklin and Hugh Freeze for the job they have done. They have done a good job recruiting. They understand the importance of getting out and evaluating guys and getting them on campus.
Several schools around the nation made new hires presumably to handle the expected additional work under RWG-11-2. For instance, Alabama hired Clemson defensive coordinator Kevin Steele and VigorHigh School coach Kerry Stevenson. Auburn hired Dell McGee of Carver High School (Columbus, GA) Chip Lindsey of Spain Park High School.
But now that the NCAA has backed off RWG 11-2, what will happen to the new additions to the athletic department hires?
“We will just use those guys in a different capacity,”Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. “We’re going to definitely play by the rules. We’re like everybody else. We’re going to wait and see how all of these new rules transpire.”
RWG 11-2 has been suspended … at least for now. That could still change and throw recruiting back into a mess.
LSU coach Lee Miles recently talked to Michael Carvell of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about what he would do about recruiting rules if he was suddenly put in charge of the NCAA. His reply was interesting.
“If I was the head guy in the NCAA,” he said recently, “I think I would take the approach that there’s some real quality rules out there and maybe the enforcement piece could be stepped up, and a review of the style of penalty that could be given or implement would be really in relationship to the rule that was broken — so those guys that did something inadvertently and by mistake, and something that was not repeated and not understood to be a violation could be treated differently than somebody who knowingly violated the rule.
“If there are guys that knowingly violated the rules, they should maybe be subjected to a little bit of a stiffer penalty.”
So there you have it. A logical solution to the recruiting conundrum was offered by an unlikely source — keep rules in place but enforce them with the severity of the penalties reflecting the offense. Sounds simple, but why has it been so hard for the NCAA to get a grasp on it? Enforce the rules, don’t just give up and change them. It doesn’t sound like it should be so hard to understand.
The NCAA should be ashamed that it tried to take the easy way out. It should also be ashamed that it took sound logic from LSU’s Mad Hatter to put it simple enough for even the NCAA to understand.