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From Rivals.com national recruiting director Adam Gorney today:
The NCAA is attempting to free up college coaches from having to non-stop recruit especially in the month of December, which has become complete chaos. But as I wrote last week, some coaches and recruiting staffers I talked to about unlimited official visits – instead of the usual five that prospects were given – were vexed by that news.
Initial reaction from those people was not positive. Even if a certain player can take only one official visit to each school, there could be an avalanche of recruits lining up free visits across the country just because they can and coaches will be put in the impossible position of either hosting them or burning a recruiting bridge, which probably won’t happen.
Another rule that was put into place by the NCAA was cutting the recruiting days available by 37 between the spring and fall recruiting periods. In theory, that seems like a laudable idea to reduce coach burnout and give these people some time away. In practice, it could be anything but.
Sure, there are fewer days allowable but like one Power Five head coach told me last week, that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer hours. So instead of spreading recruiting responsibilities over a longer period of time, they will be condensed into a smaller window. Some things that need to get done in the recruiting office and by coaches won’t go away, they’ll just get squeezed into a more compact timeframe.
The second issue that has been raised by the new recruiting rules – and this has been overlooked in national stories – is that college coaches can be on a high school campus twice during the spring. The new rule limits that to one. Again, its intention is to limit coach travel during that period but what it forces coaches to do is to recruit for a specific position and not necessarily a specific area which is a crucial part of the process.
Last week, the language was salty about the new rules. And there are some well-intentioned ideas here. But after talking to the people this would affect the most – coaches and staffers in recruiting departments – there is still a long way to go.
From Rivals.com national recruiting director Adam Gorney today:
The NCAA is attempting to free up college coaches from having to non-stop recruit especially in the month of December, which has become complete chaos. But as I wrote last week, some coaches and recruiting staffers I talked to about unlimited official visits – instead of the usual five that prospects were given – were vexed by that news.
Initial reaction from those people was not positive. Even if a certain player can take only one official visit to each school, there could be an avalanche of recruits lining up free visits across the country just because they can and coaches will be put in the impossible position of either hosting them or burning a recruiting bridge, which probably won’t happen.
Another rule that was put into place by the NCAA was cutting the recruiting days available by 37 between the spring and fall recruiting periods. In theory, that seems like a laudable idea to reduce coach burnout and give these people some time away. In practice, it could be anything but.
Sure, there are fewer days allowable but like one Power Five head coach told me last week, that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer hours. So instead of spreading recruiting responsibilities over a longer period of time, they will be condensed into a smaller window. Some things that need to get done in the recruiting office and by coaches won’t go away, they’ll just get squeezed into a more compact timeframe.
The second issue that has been raised by the new recruiting rules – and this has been overlooked in national stories – is that college coaches can be on a high school campus twice during the spring. The new rule limits that to one. Again, its intention is to limit coach travel during that period but what it forces coaches to do is to recruit for a specific position and not necessarily a specific area which is a crucial part of the process.
Last week, the language was salty about the new rules. And there are some well-intentioned ideas here. But after talking to the people this would affect the most – coaches and staffers in recruiting departments – there is still a long way to go.
