Cleaning up the Gray
October 29th, 2009 - byCollege Basketball recruiting has long lived in the gray area of the rule book. Top recruits would receive Nike’s for their AAU team and magically end up at a college sporting the swoosh. AAU coaches followed their stars to college. Summer camps would charge college coaches hundreds of dollars for a “recruiting service” just to be admitted to a gym. Brothers, cousins, coaches and hanger-ons of all types would land high paying summer basketball camp jobs.
Now the National Association of Basketball Coaches are putting their foot down.
“There is a very strong feeling amongst our coaches that this money trail has got to be shut down,” said NABC executive director Jim Haney. “We want to break down that perception that everyone has their hand out and is looking at colleges as a bank. I want to stress that it’s not everyone who has their hand out, and certainly there are some among our coaching ranks more than willing to pay the money, but the overall feeling is it has to stop.”
Today the NCAA Division I board of directors will consider a strong reform package.
Among the meatier suggestions in the package:
• Eliminating so-called package deals, making it nearly impossible for a college program to hire any of the myriad of hangers-on associated with prospective student-athletes.
• Disallowing college coaches to subscribe to recruiting services run by people associated with prospects. This would curtail services offered by AAU programs (and others) that charge colleges to subscribe but sometimes offer little to no information on the prospect.
• Preventing payment to nonprofit organizations benefiting summer-club teams, prospects or people attached to prospects.
• Preventing coaches from hiring outsiders to work at their camps and clinics.
All are designed, in the words of Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, to “bright line” what is legal and illegal in a portion of the black-and-white rulebook that has been smudged gray.
The board of directors has the authority to enact some of the changes immediately. Most would go in effect by May 2010.
Reforms like this are meant to get the illegal money out of recruiting. NCSA supports this mission 100%. One of the backbones of our business is allowing coaches access to our recruiting database for free. By freeing up the information, schools can compete for students based on finding the academic and athletic fit. Here’s to hoping the NABC succeeds.
