NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

Auburn University may have landed in hot water after hosting more than 20 of the nation’s top recruits for unofficial visits this past weekend.  Around 9 p.m. Saturday the recruits were greeted by hundreds of fans at Toomer’s Corner, a campus landmark.  Several websites and a local restaurant all advertised the gathering beforehand.  The gathering violates two potential rules.NCAA rules (Bylaw 13.10.1) states “A member institution shall not permit a media entity to be present during any recruiting contact made by an institution’s coaching staff member.”

Another potential violation comes from Bylaw 13.10.5: “A member institution shall not publicize (or arrange for publicity of) a prospective student-athlete’s visit to the institution’s campus. Further, a prospective student-athlete may not participate in team activities that would make the public or media aware of the prospective student-athlete’s visit to the institution (e.g., running out of the tunnel with team, celebratory walks to or around the stadium/arena, on-field pregame celebrations).”

Making matters worse for Auburn the entire event was caught on video.

The purpose of this article isn’t to hammer Auburn, in today’s recruiting landscape this could happen to any BCS School.  I wanted to take the time to point out to recruits that they are always in the spotlight and cameras are always rolling.

This potential violation won’t harm the recruits in any way, but if a more serious infraction would have occurred everything would have been captured.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 10:03 am and is filed under College Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.