Thursday, August 16
Your coffee today involves an interesting item posted recently on the NCAA's official website.
It appears that the NCAA is considering relaxing some of the rules regarding prospects and contact by coaches. This would allow coaches to potentially contact recruits as young as eighth-grade ... but the reasoning is that the only topic that can be discussed is new (and far more strict) academic standards set to be in place in 2016. The thinking is this contact could help students make wise choices on classes and academic direction before it's too late to qualify. This wouldn't be phone calls permitted but instead letters and e-mails, and it is "not to recruit them but to help them understand the new standards."
"Not to recruit them." ...
Suuuuuuuuuuuuure ...
OK, this may sound good in theory, but does anyone honestly expect each coach to not push some sort of recruiting agenda in the correspondence? The contact itself, after all, represents interest from a school, doesn't it? Is this something we really need to start allowing that early in the process? Coaches rushing to send personalized letters to eighth-graders to inform them about the rules before the next guy?
But that's not really the issue here. It's the reason behind this little rule suggestion that really makes you shake your head.
If these new academic guidelines are so complex that you need to change contact rules so everyone is able to understand them, why are you instituting them in the first place?
Why does the NCAA want to make it so much more difficult for prospects to get into school than it already is?
It accomplishes what exactly?
We've come to expect such things from the NCAA, and this whole academic switch for 2016 is already just another example of the NCAA making things more complex and far more difficult than needed.
I'd imagine that a person wanting these stricter guidelines has never had to call a signee on the phone and personally hear the disappointment and shame in his voice when he bravely talks about the indignity and embarassment of being rejected by the NCAA Clearinghouse. It's an awful ordeal. Instead of the school he picked to great fanfare, he's now headed to someplace like Hargrave Military, Fork Union Military, Georgia Military or a JUCO in Mississippi or Kansas. And some never make it back, and they're often the ones that need assistance the most.
Some of this, of course, is going to happen. There should be standards administered by colleges to not allow just anyone to enroll in each school, and players should share some of the responsibility in getting academics in order on the front end.
But the current Clearinghouse process -- which is hardly perfect -- is confusing enough already. Why not make efforts to streamline and improve that instead of making it more complex for everyone?
Do we really want to create more of these instances of kids not making it into school than we already have now?
Because if this new legislation goes through, beginning in 2016, that's exactly what we're going to have, no matter how many coaches speak with them in middle school to try to prevent it.
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LINK(S) OF THE DAY
Florida shed more light Wednesday on Jeff Driskell's injury.
Mississippi State is expanding its stadium.
And the NFL is experimenting with use of new footballs that the quarterbacks aren't crazy about.
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TWEET(S) OF THE DAY
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247Sports' Shannon Terry
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OL Xzavier Ward
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Finna have a perfect day at practice no dropped passes
WR commit Tramel Terry
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TE Jay Rome
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DL Sterling Bailey
I still don't get why people just walk out In front of cars and scooters on a crosswalk...come my last year and I'ma just run you over
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