recruiting

Rivals Decision Reveals Deeper Issues in Recruiting Rules

April 9, 2011 by John Infante

The interpretation received by schools today that they are no longer permitted to subscribe to Rivals.com seems on the face of it like a relatively minor decision. In the realm of recruiting and scouting services, Rivals and similar services like Scout.com and ESPN are not the giants they may seem. The fact is if even a diehard college football or basketball fan knows about a set of recruiting rankings or analysis, it likely doesn’t move the needle for coaches.

That’s even is you take into account the owners of team-specific sites passing recruiting information to coaching staffs. I was unaware this was widespread, but it is certainly a concern.

The smaller reason this interpretation is important is that a well-intentioned rule has gotten away from the membership and the staff. The original incarnation of the recruiting and scouting services rule was focused on a single contagion in the recruiting process.

In the sport of men’s basketball, coaches and boosters were buying multiple copies of sham recruiting services for thousands of dollars a piece from AAU coaches and handlers. In exchange for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, coaches would get names, height and weight, and generic rankings or ratings like stars or “high major.” And more importantly, they got access to the AAU coach or handler’s prospects.

That rule was then extended to all sports, a notable recent trend in NCAA legislation. Part is the accurate acknowledgement that many sports are seeing the same trends that men’s basketball saw. And part is a dislike of sport specific legislation cluttering a rulebook that could stand to trim some fat.

This pulled in a number of other services in nonrevenue sports that are critical to coaches who do not have the recruiting budgets of major men’s basketball and football programs. Designed to serve the specific needs of the sport, they were held to a set of requirements that was initially tailored to eliminate a certain type of recruiting service in a different sport. That lead to a fan-centric service being evaluated under that same standard.

The minor issue could be solved by expressly prohibiting the undesirable conduct. Institutions should not be permitted to subscribe to recruiting services controlled by individuals associated with a prospect. This prevents the need for distinguishing between a legitimate or illegitimate business, and doesn’t set a set of requirements that could potentially be met by someone still selling access to prospects as the primary product.

But it’s the reason Rivals is not a permissible service that shows the deeper underlying problem with the current recruiting regulations. It is not permissible to subscribe to a recruiting or scouting service that provides videos of prospects in non-scholastic competition, unless the videos are free and available to the general public.

The NCAA and its members have fought the growth of non-scholastic youth sports vigorously. Subscribing to video of non-scholastic contests is prohibited. In basketball, going to watch AAU events is tightly restricted. In football, coaches are prohibited from going to any non-scholastic event.

This has resulted in two things: the steady, continued growth of AAU basketball, 7-on-7 football, and all other club sports, and diminished NCAA influence in this area. By removing college coaches from many AAU gyms and football camps, it has become the lawless wild west that the restrictions sought to avoid.

There is a success story though: the July evaluation periods. With so many coaches in the same gym with NCAA enforcement staff, it has become a structured, almost business-like period. Coaches go and watch games, go back to the hotel and record their evaluations, sleep, and then get up and watch more games. There’s no reason that a summer evaluation period in football couldn’t be similar.

The NCAA should let go of high school athletics as the primary way prospects prepare themselves for intercollegiate competition. The entire of Bylaw 13 should be scrapped and rebuilt, reflecting the new reality that non-scholastic sports have overtaken high school sports in recruiting. This includes rethinking recruiting calendars to the non-scholastic schedule, changing contact rules to counter the influence of third parties, and altering inducement regulations to reflect the payoffs and under the table deals prevalent in club sports.

And by focusing on non-scholastic sports, the NCAA can become a force to improve them. Preference in recruiting calendars could be given to leagues and organizations that operate according to certain standards. iHoops could spawn a rival to the AAU circuit for talent and development that surpasses it in transparency. And 7-on-7 football could be built in the image of what the NCAA would prefer and what college coaches need, not in image of grassroots organizers and investors.

Every Division I institution being banned from using a recruiting service on the tip of every fan’s tongue is a big story. But the bigger story is just how entangled one specific rule was in the philosophy that underpins recruiting. It’s a philosophy that has become an uphill battle, one we should stop fighting before we lose the war.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: deregulation, legislation, recruiting

Headcounts Are Nader’s Problem, Not Scholarships

March 25, 2011 by John Infante

Ralph Nader’s proposal to replace athletic scholarships with need-based financial aid is a crackpot idea. Mostly because it would be totally ineffective. The cottage industry parents use to get a college scholarship would shift to also help parents maximize financial need. And a financial aid office unprepared for this transition would be raided by college coaches seeking to maximize their scholarship dollars.

But Nader has a point. The problem is he attacks the entire athletic scholarship rather than the more specific problem: the headcount.

NCAA sports have two financial aid models: headcount and equivalency. In a headcount sport, the limit is on the number of counters: student-athletes on the team who receive any athletically-related financial aid. $1 counts the same as a full scholarship, so typically only full grant-in-aids are awarded. In equivalency sports, the limit is on the total amount of athletically-related aid awarded. This limit is expressed as a number of equivalent full grant-in-aid awards, like the 4.5 allowed in men’s golf. There are also hybrid models in sports like FCS football and baseball where there are limits on both counters and equivalencies.

In a headcount sport, the coach has a binary decision: to offer aid or not. Ability to pay and academic merit count, but can quickly be overwhelmed by athletic concerns and are only baselines. Either a prospect can pay or not. A prospect can either keep up academically at the school or not. That’s something of an oversimplification, but the basic point remains.

In equivalency sports, financial need and academic merit matter much more. If a coach is recruiting two prospects of equal athletic ability and one could get half their schooling paid for through academic or need-based grants, that prospect is more valuable than the other. He or she frees up half a scholarship to get another student-athlete.

If headcounts were eliminated, particularly in the revenue sports of men’s basketball and FBS football, the recruiting process would be forced to focus more on academics and financial need. A coach who awards aid irrespective of the other financial aid a student-athlete would be out of a job quickly because the team wouldn’t be competitive. Academically gift or needy prospects would become more valuable in the recruiting process.

Under current rules, the effect would be limited due to the in ability to mix athletic aid with other forms of institutional aid, particularly need-based aid. In lieu of developing best practices for managing the relationship between financial aid and athletics, using institutional aid to augment an athletic scholarship is largely prohibited. The rules would need to be changed to exempt all non-athletically related aid, replacing those regulations with a system for ensuring athletics stays out of the awarding of non-athletically related aid.

Deregulation in this area would more closely align the goals of the athletics department and the university. To field the most competitive team, a coach would need to recruit prospects that will be offered the most non-athletically related aid. In a modern financial aid system, that means the students the admissions office, with the help of the financial aid office, is seeking to attract. Coaches would even be motivated to assist with fundraising for the general student body, since it would mean better financial aid packages for their prospects.

Student-athletes are just that: students and athletes. Ralph Nader is correct that in recruiting for revenue sports, the athlete part has overwhelmed the student part. But it is not the rewarding of athletic merit that is the problem. The problem is requiring coaches to award this aid in such a blunt and simplistic manner. More flexibilit would not just allow but essentially require football and basketball coaches to focus more on which students deserve and need a scholarship rather than just which athletes they need.

About John Infante

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: deregulation, financial aid, recruiting

Limits on Limits

March 5, 2011 by John Infante

Parkinson’s Law is widely reprinted adage that dates back to 1955 and states:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

NCAA critics will no doubt take great pleasure in the inspiration for Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s quote: the fact that bureaucracy employment in the 1950′s was expanding 5%-7% a year regardless of other factors.

The quote has new meaning in the NCAA after two more institutions were cited for major violations that involved excessive phone calls and/or text messaging with recruits. The phone call rules are the poster child for needless NCAA regulations. They generate an enormous amount of work for compliance offices. They tie up the enforcement staff and Committee on Infractions in major violations for relatively benign conduct. And the content of the phone calls is often much less suspect than the phone calls a college coach may make to a street agent or handler.

I don’t buy the fact that technological change alone has made the phone call rules obsolete. The move from one phone per family to cell phones for every person makes it easier, not harder, for coaches to contact prospects. Prior to ubiquitous cell phones for teenagers, prospects couldn’t be contacted easily at school and could simply leave the house to avoid the ringing phone. Until products like Google Voice allow prospects to control who can even make the phone ring, it’s still a burden for them to filter constant phone calls.

But there are other, better reasons for getting rid of the limit on the frequency of phone calls. Across all sports, the vast majority of prospects commit prior to their senior year. Phone call rules often prevent coaches from advising committed prospects. And while coaches are limited to call a prospects once or twice a week, all the parties the NCAA is seeking to drive out of the recruiting process have no such limit.

More fundamentally, we need a new thinking about limits. Limits may be increasing the amount of some activities just as much as they are preventing that increase. If you’re only allowed to call a prospect once a week, there’s a compulsion to use that one phone call. There’s also a drive to figure out how to stretch that one phone call into two voice mails and a phone call. And there’s the temptation that if you make two phone calls, you’ve had twice as much contact as someone who follows the rules.

College athletics is often about keeping up with the Joneses. In any area where the NCAA has set a limit, be it phone calls, coaching staff size, or evaluations, the Joneses can only reach a set maximum. Perhaps having no limits in some areas will cause coaches and athletic departments to think more about what they need rather than what someone else has.

About John Infante

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: arms race, personnel, recruiting

The Glaring Omission in the Local Sports Club Rule

February 12, 2011 by John Infante

When everyone flipped out about Isiah Thomas working for the New York Knicks as a consultant while coaching Florida International, most in the compliance industry yawned. College coaches work with professional teams all the time. Semi-pro leagues like the PDL couldn’t exist with college coaches working in the summer.

The problem, everyone said, was “conflict of interest” and “competitive advantage”. How can FIU know whether Thomas is looking out for the interests of the Golden Panthers or the Knicks when a student-athlete is deciding whether to stay or go pro? And won’t Thomas clean up on the recruiting trail by pitching prospective student-athletes on Florida International as a virtual farm team for the NBA club?

The teeth gnashing over Thomas working with a professional team was a giant overreaction considering that those two concerns, conflict of interest and competitive advantage, are much greater when you go down the chain from college, not up. And that’s allowed by one of the more curious NCAA bylaws, the local sports club rule:

Bylaw 13.11.2.3 – Local Sports Clubs.
In sports other than basketball, an institution’s coach may be involved in any capacity (e.g., as a participant, administrator or in instructional or coaching activities) in the same sport for a local sports club or organization located in the institution’s home community, provided all prospective student-athletes participating in said activities are legal residents of the area (within a 50-mile radius of the institution). In all sports, an institution’s coach may be involved in any capacity (e.g., as a participant, administrator or in instructional or coaching activities) in a sport other than the coach’s sport for a local sports club or organization located in the institution’s home community, provided all prospective student-athletes participating in said activities are legal residents of the area (within a 50-mile radius of the institution). Further, in club teams involving multiple teams or multiple sports, the 50-mile radius is applicable only to the team with which the institution’s coach is involved; however, it is not permissible for the coach to assign a prospective student-athlete who lives outside the 50-mile area to another coach of the club. A coach also may be involved in activities with individuals who are not of a prospective student-athlete age, regardless of where such individuals reside. (In women’s volleyball, see Bylaw 13.1.7.12 for regulations relating to a coach’s involvement with a local sports club and the permissible number of evaluation days.) (Revised: 1/10/90, 1/16/93, 9/6/00, 4/25/02 effective 8/1/02, 5/11/05)

So before getting worked up about a coach potentially having the interests of a professional team on their mind, realize that in many sports, coaches have the interests of their college in mind while acting as club coaches for prospects.

Once you read the first four words of Bylaw 13.11.2.3, you could probably guess the next three. But two of those are missing: “football and”. Why is this a big deal? Because while high school coaches have held the reins of power in football for quite some time, that sport is joining all the others where club coaches are at worst equals when it comes to influence over a prospect:

It’s no longer a question of if youth football will mirror youth basketball. It’s a question of when. At some point in the next few years, the experience of an elite skill position player will be almost identical to the experience of an elite point guard or power forward.

That experience could be different in one critical way under current NCAA rules. Right now, it is legal for a college coach to operate a 7-on-7 travel team as long as all the players live within 50 miles of the campus.

The implications for this are huge. Programs like the University of Southern California or the University of Miami could build virtual minor leagues of local skill players, farming the large and talent rich populations right in their backyards. And while programs in rural areas might not get the same benefit in terms of local talent, it can extend your recruiting ranks. Your graduate assistant and director of operations can’t recruit. But they can go coach prospects.

There’s a legitimate argument that the local sports club rule is outdated, harkening back to a time when high schools ruled recruiting and there weren’t enough qualified coaches in most sports. Perhaps the rule should be abolished entirely. But to prevent this exception from turning the rules on their head, football needs to join basketball as off limits.

About John Infante

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: Football, local sports clubs, recruiting

Improving the NLI

February 2, 2011 by John Infante

In terms of pound-for-pound controversy, the National Letter of Intent might be the undisputed champ in college athletics. The NCAA’s Division I manual attracts more complaints, but it’s hundreds of pages vs. the three that make up the NLI. And while the Division I manual attracts constructive criticism and recommendations, more people are of the opinion that the NLI simply sucks.

The NLI is useful because it offers the pinnacle of ending a prospective student-athlete’s recruitment. And the core of the NLI’s bargain, at least in theory, is sound. In exchange for committing to attend a school for one academic year and give it a fair shake, the student-athlete receives at least some financial assistance to attend the school. But the devil is in the details and it’s the details that threaten the NLIs relevancy.

1. Bring the NLI under the NCAA’s umbrella.
Right now if you wanted to change the NLI, you have to go through something of a guessing game to know who you need to talk to. The Conference Commissioners Association controls the terms of the agreement. The NCAA Eligibility Center administers the NLI program. And the NCAA members can pass legislation that changes what happens when an NLI is signed.

The NLI should be brought under one roof and be run by the NCAA. The terms of the agreement could be handled by the Recruiting Cabinet, which is also the source of most of the legislation related to the NLI already. And the Eligibility Center could continue in its role as the administrator of the program.

2. Provide more options to formally end recruitment.
Right now a prospect has many ways to informally or unofficially end their recruitment. Verbal commitments and signing an athletic scholarship agreement are considered the end of recruiting in some cases, but not all. In these situations, the prospect and the institution are not always in agreement that recruiting is over.

A fix would be to split the two primary functions of the NLI, the recruiting ban and the NLI penalty, into two separate agreements. That would create a written commitment, so to speak. I’d make it a nonbinding agreement between prospect and institution which allows the institution to contact the prospect without restriction and prevents other schools from hassling the prospect, but which can be cancelled at any time. That allows the NLI itself to be simply about the financial commitment to a prospect and the prospect’s obligation.

3. Expand Section 7-f.
Section 7-f of the NLI states:

Recruiting Rules Violation. If eligibility reinstatement by the NCAA student-athlete reinstatement staff is necessary due to NCAA and/or conference recruiting rules violations, the institution must notify me that I have an option to have the NLI declared null and void due to the rules violation. It is my decision to have the NLI remain valid or to have the NLI declared null and void, permitting me to be recruited and not be subject to NLI penalties.

That clause could be used in a variety of ways to provide outs for prospects in certain scenarios. The best example might be in instances where a school have oversigned. Programs who have oversigned could be required to offer a release to prospects from the NLI, allowing them to be recruited again while still holding a binding scholarship offer from the first school.

4. Provide more benefits for signing the NLI.
Right now, a prospect gains relatively little for signing the NLI vs. signing just an athletic scholarship. In exchange for committing to the institution for a year, the prospect could receive something a little more.

One idea that has been thrown out is that prospects who sign NLIs could receive scholarships for longer than one year. Maybe not a six-year guaranteed scholarship that can be extended for grad school, but anything from two years through the first bachelor’s degree would be in the realm of possibility if the NCAA allowed (or was required to allow) multi-year scholarships.

Another idea would be increased support prior to enrollment for prospects who sign. Perhaps prospects who sign could receive expenses to enroll at the institution, or the institution could pay for some educational expenses like SAT or ACT registration, currently prohibited by Bylaw 12.1.2.1.3.2. Or in other words, the institution that commits to the prospect has the tools to help them get eligible and enrolled.

5. Provide prospects with rewards for completing the NLI.
Right now, the sole incentive for a prospect to comply with a signed NLI is a stick: the NLI’s Basic Penalty:

Basic Penalty. I understand that if I do not attend the institution named in this document for one full academic year and I enroll in another institution participating in the NLI program, I may not compete in intercollegiate athletics until I have completed one full academic year in residence at the latter institution. Further, I understand I shall be charged with the loss of one season of intercollegiate athletics competition in all sports. This is in addition to any seasons of competition expended at any institution.

How about adding a carrot as well? For instance, in sports that cannot use the one-time transfer exception (basketball, football, ice hockey and baseball), student-athletes who satisfy the NLI by attending the school for one academic year could use the provision that allows for free transfers in other sports. The student-athlete has given the school a fair chance, and could be allowed to leave and compete immediately somewhere else.

Another possibility would be to limit the ability of an institution to withhold permission to contact or use of the one-time transfer exception from a student-athlete. Less drastic would be to give NLI signees an appeal outside of the institution if either of the “releases” are denied or if the scholarship is cancelled. The logic for the former is the same as above. The reason for the latter is that when a prospect signs an NLI, institutional discretion is given up, and that could be extended further into the agreement.

The goal of all these reforms would be to create a system that can respond more quickly to change, and would create a more fluid market. With different options like a written commitment, athletic scholarship, and the current NLI, institutions and prospects would need to negotiate down to a specific agreement rather than just accepting the standard scholarship and NLI then sorting it out down the road.

About John Infante

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog Tagged With: legislation, national letter of intent, recruiting

A Better Oversigning Rule

January 26, 2011 by John Infante

Often times when you see an article title like “Oversigning offenders won’t be curbed by NCAA’s toothless rule” you can safely assume there’s a bit of hyperbole at play. But in the case of Andy Staples excellent evaluation of the issues involved with oversigning in football, his assessment of Proposal 2009-48 and the twin bylaws of 13.9.2.3 and 15.5.1.10.1 is, if anything, generous.

The main problem with 2009-48 and how it affects oversigning is that two documents have been merged in the popular vernacular into a single package. When a prospect is reported to sign a National Letter of Intent (NLI), he or she actually signs two documents: the National Letter of Intent, and a grant-in-aid agreement (GIA), which is the actual athletic scholarship.

The NLI is often said to guarantee an athletic scholarship. In fact, the scholarship guarantees itself. During the period of award (a period that starts as soon as a prospect or student-athlete signs a scholarship agreement), Bylaw 15.3.4.2 allows the scholarship to be cancelled or reduced only if the student-athlete:

Renders himself or herself ineligible for competition;
Fradulently misrepresents any information on an application, letter of intent, or financial aid agreement;
Engages in serious misconduct; or
Voluntarily quits the team.

The NLI does not include any additional protections for student-athletes above and beyond the GIA. The NLI simply provides a bigger carrot for not canceling a prospect’s scholarship, namely that the NLI is declared null and void and the prospect is free to be recruited and attend another university. Fact is, the NLI does not obligate the institution to do anything it wouldn’t otherwise be obligated to do if the prospect signed just the scholarship itself and tossed the NLI.

The NCAA membership has, rightfully in my opinion, recognized that signing an NLI is not the only way for a prospect to end their recruitment. As a result, different proposals have provided many of the benefits of signing an NLI to any prospect who signs a GIA or even a walk-on who sends a deposit. At this point, the two main benefits of signing the NLI instead of just the scholarship agreement are the NLI recruiting ban and allowing the school to announce a prospect’s signing.

While this isn’t an anti-NLI post, the NCAA members and the Conference Commissioners Association should take a serious look at the NLI. The fundamentals are good in theory: in exchange for a scholarship, the prospect agrees to give the school a fair shake before transferring. In practice neither is the case and unless the bargain for the prospect is improved, the NLI risks a long, slow, but inevitable fade from relevancy.

The point of all this NLI talk is to show 2009-48 is not just a toothless rule, it really doesn’t limit oversigning at all. Bylaws 13.9.2.3 and 15.5.1.10.1 only limit NLIs to 28. The number of scholarship that can be doled out is still unlimited. Programs are still permitted to commit as many scholarships as they want, so long as the NLI is not attached. The twins don’t limit oversigning, they just require some of the oversigned prospects to be free to walk, since the GIA commits the school to the prospect but not the prospect to the school. And by a quirk of NCAA rules, institutions are prohibited from mentioning that they have signed these additional prospects.

For a true oversigning limit, scholarship agreements rather than NLIs need to be regulated. A real oversigning limit puts into force the following math problem:

GIAs to current SAs + GIAs to new SAs ≤ NCAA Limit

The question then is at what point is a scholarship committed to a prospect and student-athlete? Much has been made on websites like oversigning.com of verbal commitments and the Oversigning twitter feed (unaffiliated with oversigning.com) treats decommitments as possible attrition. Considering how fluid verbal commitments are in football, that’s not appropriate. Neither is the written offer referenced in the recently defeated Proposal 2010-74. Here the commitment is easy to see: signed scholarship agreements.

It’s much tricker on the student-athlete side. Proposal 2010-74, which addressed an issue specific to baseball uses “executed financial aid agreements” which doesn’t help limit scholarship offers in February since most student-athletes have signed agreements for next year. But the NCAA rules offer us a natural ending point for a scholarship. It may be only a one-year guarantee, but according to Bylaw 15.3.5.1, you must affirmatively take away the scholarship until the student-athlete exhausts his or her eligibility. The agreement can only naturally expire at that point.

So a true oversigning limit captures this slightly more complicated math:

GIAs to Current SAs with Eligibility Remaining Next Year + Signed Scholarships by Prospects ≤ NCAA Limit

Does that rule eliminate abuse? No, but it requires it to be managed much differently. At no point could a school be over the limit for next year. So in football, a program would need to nonrenew student-athletes right now. At the very least, it means a football student-athlete knows he needs to find a new school before the vast majority of the scholarships are given away.

Andy Staples’ recommendations are good, but are focused on protecting the prospects, potentially at the expense of current student-athletes. Even the most ardent defender of the one-year scholarship limit must agree though that every student-athlete deserves a fair shake to earn that scholarship for the next year and we should work to limit victims of an accounting requirement or the “bright and shiny” problem.

About John Infante

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: Football, oversigning, recruiting

Philosophy Change Slows Down Reform Even More

January 5, 2011 by John Infante

Everyone in compliance has bad days. There are the run of the mill bad days, when a waiver falls through or you deal with a difficult coach or student-athlete. Then there are the real bad days, the ones that make you question how long you want to stay in this business.

So far I’ve had few soul-crushing days. But one in particular sticks out. Really more of a depressing hour and a half. It was during the 2010 NAAC Convention at a session titled “Assessing the Climate and Hot Topics within Men’s Basketball.” Gene Marsh might have given the keynote, but this was highlight of the two days. A superstar panel that included Julie Cromer, then Director of Academic and Membership Affairs; LuAnn Humphrey, head of the Basketball Focus Group; Pitt Head Coach Jamie Dixon; Long Beach State Head Coach Dan Monson; and Pitt Athletics Director Steve Pederson.

The panel was a frank and honest how the NCAA had come to think about basketball regulation and what basketball coaches thought about the NCAA. And like all frank and honest discussions, it wasn’t pretty. I left the session with a couple of lasting impressions. Most important was the impact of the following points:

The vast majority of men’s basketball prospects select a school based on the head coach;
Head coaching turnover in Division I is roughly 20% per year.
40% of men’s basketball student-athletes transfer before their junior year;
The urge to quickly prepare for professional basketball influences even the smallest decisions prospects make; and
The carrot, rather than the stick, is most effective in regulating men’s basketball

Those five bullets were laid out as the boundaries of what can be done to solve the recruiting and academic problems in men’s basketball. It was discouraging to see it accepted as gospel since the implications for programs like the APR and Basketball Focus Group reforms were omnious.

But I got over it. I didn’t agree entirely with the NCAA’s strategy, but I understood it. It was based on a lot of research and careful thought out. It also defined a clear direction and made a lot of the tactical choices more palatable, chief among them Proposal 2010-58, the basketball summer school legislation.

All that hard work is now in jeopardy with a new, sweeping review of the recruiting legislation by the Leadership Council. And instead of seeing some of the above issues as constraints, the Leadership Council sees them as targets:

“We’re not here for the grooming of athletes. We’re here for the grooming of students,” [Missouri AD Mike] Alden said. “Our hope would be at the end of this to come up with a process that aligns more with the values we hold true in higher education.”

Rolling back the clock on the rise of AAU basketball for talent development and identification and the attitude of taking the next step as quickly as possible are now back on the table when previously it seemed like they weren’t. The greatest danger is not that the NCAA members might be attempting an impossible task though.

It’s that developing a whole new strategy is going to take time, and time is not on the NCAA’s side. Every year that passes without a consistent direction in men’s basketball recruiting reform is a year that the NCAA loses ground to the people they are combating. As the NCAA reviews the landscape, nefarious third-parties think up new ways to control the college decisions of prospects and profit from that control.

Without spending enough time, perhaps years getting the membership on board, the legislation that comes out of this review as early as next August will suffer the same fate as the legislation proposed by the Board of Directors last year. A cohesive plan is picked apart by the membership who adopts the proposals it likes and discards the rest.

There’s precedent for a better way though. The “agent” part of the Agents, Gambling and Amateurism staff made headlines this summer in part because the membership has never seriously considered an alternative. While it’s easy to disagree with the NCAA’s unmoving stance, it gave the AGA staff the freedom to catch up with the agents by never changing their goal. Taking the gap literally, the AGA staff was only six months behind the agents, and closing.

The model for the regulation of basketball recruiting that was presented at NAAC wasn’t perfect. It was unsatisfying and made some tough compromises. But it was also practical and realistic. In short, it was good enough. The Leadership Council has lofty goals for this review. Most of it could be achieved even if you accepted the constraints above. The recruiting model needs be rethought, but practically, not philosophically. Then hand it to the Basketball Focus Group so they can build the knowledge and connections needed to bear fruit.

About John Infante

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: academics, basketball, committees, recruiting

Closing the Cam Newton Loophole

December 7, 2010 by John Infante

The decision of the NCAA Student-Athlete Reinstatement Staff to reinstate Cam Newton’s eligibility with no penalty produced a response that was loud and clear. Not one, not two, but four commissioners of major conferences have spoken out. All disagreed with the decision itself and/or expressed worry about the potential impact of the decision going forward. That has prompted a response from NCAA President Mark Emmert stating that the NCAA membership will review the recruiting rules.

I don’t share some of the doom and gloom regarding the impact of the decision going forward. Case precedent, NCAA or otherwise, extends only as far as its facts. And here, the facts are that no money changed hands, the student-athlete did not know about the activity, and the student-athlete did not enroll at the institution where the solicitation occurred. Case precedent can always be extended to logically similar cases, but that takes additional decisions, each of which is a chance to stop a trip down the slippery slope.

There appears to be an unstoppable momentum behind some change though. That change could take one of three forms.

New Reinstatement Guidelines
It’s important to note that a violation was committed and it did impact Newton’s eligibility. It just did not impact his eligibility as much as some wanted. The Committee on Student-Athlete Reinstatement (which oversees the NCAA staff that made the decision) could establish stricter penalties, which would likely include a requirement that the student-athlete be withheld from at least some competition.

Slight Legislative Change
Legislation could be proposed that would address the exact situation in the case. Specifically, Bylaw 12.3.3, the bylaw cited by the SAR staff, could be editted to read something like this:

12.3.3 – Athletics Scholarship Agent.
Any individual, agency or organization that represents a prospective student-athlete or his or her parent(s), guardian(s), or immediate family for compensation in placing the prospective student-athlete in a collegiate institution as a recipient of institutional financial aid shall be considered an agent or organization marketing the individual’s athletics ability or reputation. (additions in bold)

Major Legislative Change
An alternate new version of Bylaw 12.3.3 may read very similarly, but would have a much greater impact:

12.3.3 – Athletics Scholarship Agent.
Any individual, agency or organization that represents a prospective student-athlete or an individual associated with a prospective student-athlete for compensation in placing the prospective student-athlete in a collegiate institution as a recipient of institutional financial aid shall be considered an agent or organization marketing the individual’s athletics ability or reputation.(additions in bold)

The phrase “individual associated with a prospective student-athlete” has a defined meaning, in men’s basketball at least, from the interpretations issued by the Division I Board of Directors in November 2009. It includes parents, guardians, family members, coaches and anyone who is associated with the prospect as a result of their athletics ability or reputation, or participation in men’s basketball.

Along with the amendment to the bylaw, that portion of the interpretation could be removed and placed in a separate interpretation (or incorporated into an actual bylaw) applicable to all sports. It would not however expand the new men’s basketball recruiting regulations to all sports, since they still mention men’s basketball in the interpretation and the relevant legislation.

None of these are mutually exclusive, and all three exist on a continuum with many other options in between. I have no idea what the Legislative Council, Board of Directors, or Committee on Student-Athlete Reinstatement will do. What I do know is that it would be foolish to act hastily.

The Board of Directors is empowered to propose and adopt legislation that is of an “emergency” or “noncontroversial” nature. An emergency exists when:

Significant values or harm are at stake; and
The use of the regular legislative cycle is likely to cause undue hardship to the Association or the Division I membership because of the delay in its effective date.

While preventing pay-for-play is a significant value in the NCAA rules, it’s hard to see the undue hardship that is suffered between now and January 2012, the next opportunity to pass brand new legislation if it travels through the regular legislative cycle. Especially if we’re talking only about the limited issue of not suspending student-athletes who didn’t know that an institution they didn’t go to did not give their parents any money.

Legislation is noncontroversial if it meets the following criteria:

Broader consultation and debate are unlikely to improve the proposal in any substantial way.
Significant disagreement or alternative points of view will not be generated.
Such proposals do not have a significant impact (unanticipated consequences, undesirable precedent) on existing legislation or proposed legislation.

Considering the options for dealing with this issue, there’s strong evidence that more debate will lead to a better decision and there are more alternatives than even the ones above. And considering the proposal is designed to strength penalties in cases where a prospect or student-athlete might not even know a violation is occurring, it seems unlikely that all consequences will be anticipated in such a short time.

For instance, imagine if a high school coach could harm a student-athlete’s eligibility at every institution just by discussing a pay-for-pay plan with a booster at one school, regardless of whether the prospect knows about it. Third parties gain a valuable tool to dictate where prospects enroll, and gain allies in boosters who have control of a stick, in addition to the existing carrots, to entice prospects to enroll at their favorite institution.

The idea of a student-athlete being shopped to colleges by parents, coaches, or anyone else is certainly outrageous, to use President Emmert’s words. And the notion of significant punishment for even attempted violations of the recruiting and amateurism legislation has merit. But just like the July recruiting period in men’s basketball, there are too many moving parts in this area to use a blunt object. Another year-long study with legislation to be voted on over a year from now won’t please many commentators. But it’s the best way to close a loophole without opening another.

About John Infante

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: eligibility, legislation, recruiting, violations

Facebook Provides New Challenge to Recruiting Rules

November 29, 2010 by John Infante

On Monday, November 15, 2010, Facebook made the NCAA recruiting rules obsolete. No one would have argued the rules were perfect before that date, but they still worked well enough. And one company didn’t do all the damage overnight. This was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Because on that Monday, Facebook introduced a new messaging system that blends email, text messaging, instant messaging, and social networking. And with that announcement, the NCAA membership is forced to come up with a new paradigm for how we regulate recruiting.

Much of the backbone of the NCAA’s regulation of recruiting contact is based on the medium a coach uses to get in touch with a prospect. An email is seen as different than a text message (email is unlimited starting with the junior year of high school, text messaging is prohibited). A voicemail is seen as different than an audio file sent via email (voicemails are treated like phone calls, audio attachments are mostly prohibited). Videoconferencing is treated like a phone call rather than face-to-face contact.

Social networking has always had to fit into these definitions. If a message looks like email, it’s regulated like email. If a conversation looks like instant messaging, it goes into that pigeonhole. Not to mention that social networking introduces a much more nuanced approach to the idea of public vs. private messaging.

It may seem like tortured logic to say that Twitter direct messages were like email, and thus permissible to prospects who had started their junior year. It might make you scratch your head further to learn that if the prospect received updates of those messages via text messaging, they suddenly became impermissible.

Even if it was a fiction, that fiction was still hanging on. Until Facebook created a system that might turn a text message into an email. Or turn an email into an instant message. Or where an email might trigger a “push notification,” a potential intrusion into a prospect’s life that the rules don’t even consider. All in a system that might change the nature of a message not just based on a preference selected by a user, but even by whether the user is logged into a website or not.

Facebook isn’t the first to try and meld different types of communication together. Google Wave could have resulted in sweeping change to the NCAA rules by melding email, instant messaging, chat, and document collaboration into one. Another Google product, Google Voice, mixes phone calls and text messaging with email.

The reason Facebook’s announcement disrupts the recruiting rules in a way those Google products never have is Facebook’s user base. With a few lines of code, Facebook could push these changes to over 500 million people. Besides sheer numbers, the most active users of Facebook have always included the same target demographic as college coaches: high school and college students.

When Facebook rolls these changes out to their users, there won’t be time to see how coaches and recruits use these new tools. With any marketing at all, we can expect to see a large number of prospects switch to @facebook.com email addresses right off the bat. That means coaches could find themselves in a position where a prospect is offering a means of getting touch that carries no guarantee that any message is allowed under the rules.

To fix the rules, we must first acknowledge a couple of things. We must acknowledge that trying to differentiate between different forms of text communication is no longer possible. We must acknowledge that these are the tools prospects want coaches to use to get in touch with them. And we must acknowledge that these tools put prospects in control of who contacts them through confirming friends, blocking users, and other privacy controls.

As it gets more difficult to regulate recruiting based on the medium used or the frequency of contact, the only option left is the time contact occurs. That could mean one of two things. It could mean that after a certain date (say August 1 prior to a prospect’s junior year in high school), there are no limits to how a coach can get in touch with a prospect. Or it could mean that during certain periods (like during a contact period), all recruiting contact is permitted with all prospects, and contact is prohibited outside of those periods.

The former is the easier to implement and brings greater benefits. Tying phone calls, emails, and text messages into the recruiting calendar means significant additional legislation. Some sports do not have enough time for communication in their existing recruiting calendars to allow for effective recruiting. And other sports don’t have recruiting calendars at all. Plus allowing significant contact in the junior year reduces the influence of handlers and gives coaches a chance to catch up with agents who are identifying and contacting athletes at younger and younger ages.

The idea is not without drawbacks. Opening up recruiting tends to favor prospects whose families are more prepared to deal with college coaches. One of the reasons text messaging was banned was because coaches were running up massive cell phone bills for prospects who did not have unlimited text messaging plans. That is alleviated some as communication moves to a model where coaches just get the message onto a prospect’s radar and the prospect chooses how and when to receive it.

More early contact also means more early scholarship offers and more early commitments. Hopefully the promise of unlimited contact in the junior year will reduce commitments by sophomores. A drastic solution would be to remove the early signing period entirely. That would mean more time in the recruiting process at the back-end, more time for a committed prospect to realize he or she is missing out on face-to-face contact with coaches and official visits.

Whatever solution the membership ultimately chooses, it needs to be acknowledged that the assumptions many of the recruiting rules are based on no longer apply. It’s time to treat it all contact that isn’t face-to-face as the same cheap, flexible, and valuable way for prospects to get the information they need to make a good decision and for coaches to connect directly with the people they should be selling their programs to.

About John Infante

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: recruiting, social networking, technology

Cut Out The Middlemen, Not July

October 27, 2010 by John Infante

Somewhere along the way, the two July evaluation periods became the epitome of everything that was wrong with college basketball recruiting. Perhaps it was the anecdotes of coaches signing 11 month leases on apartments and then spending an entire month on the road recruiting. Perhaps it’s the fact that the entire evaluation period is solely focused on AAU basketball, which gets the somewhat negative moniker of “nonscholastic” in the NCAA Manual. Whatever the reason, the popular image of July is that it’s the Wild West, an unregulated feeding frenzy of coaches looking for players and any number of people looking to profit off that fact.

In reality, the July evaluation periods in men’s basketball are the most structured and heavily regulated periods in the entire recruiting landscape. While college coaches may attend open gyms at high schools, the vast majority of evaluation takes place at certified events. Certified events must register with the NCAA and meet the lengthy list of 17 requirements in NCAA Bylaw 13.18 covering topics from the price of event packets to when games can start. Not to mention they are some of the only recruiting periods that is monitored in person by members of the enforcement staff, who are making their presence felt:

“We have the NCAA gestapettes around here like World Cup officials,” one coach said, referring to the NCAA representatives — most of whom are women — who monitor the summer circuit. “You smile at a kid, they give you a yellow card. Do it twice, it’s a red card and you’re off the road.”

While that comment shows that the Basketball Focus Group has a great deal of work to do in their primary goal (building a healthy respect for the enforcement process), it’s a start that would not be possible during any of the other recruiting periods on the men’s basketball calendar.

The impetus behind ending July recruiting has little to do with what actually happens in July (largely a bunch of coaches cordoned off in little pens watching games for 12 hours a day) and more what the rising importance of the July recruiting period represents: the growing influence in the recruiting process of third parties not tied to educational institutions.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way to reduce the influence of corrupt AAU coaches, agents, handlers, trainers, runners, and other intermediaries is to provide coaches with more direct access to these events. The best evaluations are ones untainted by someone else’s subjective opinions or underhanded motives. Prevent coaches from evaluating first hand at July events and the events will still go on, the evaluations will just be placed in the hands of the same people above whose power in the recruiting process the Collegiate Commissioners Association is looking to reduce.

The same goes for contacts and communication. I’m not a college basketball recruiting expert but I have to believe that one of the most valuable opportunities a coach can get is a chance to sell a prospect on his program without another voice whispering in the prospect’s ear.

The trouble with the basketball recruiting model as it stands now is that it exists in limbo between the tightly controlled football recruiting rules and the looser rules that apply to other sports. Rather than crafting a new model, the basketball recruiting calendar seems to be an evolution of the other sports, with fewer contact/evaluation periods and a second limit (recruiting person-days) imposed to contain costs. To that was later added a ban on attending nonscholastic events during the academic year.

If you start with the premise that the July recruiting period works rather than fails, the path to a new basketball recruiting model seems clear. Three major evaluation periods (roughly late-September/early-October, mid-April, and July) outside of the basketball season where attendance at nonscholastic events is permitted. A smaller number of evaluation days for use during the season to scout high school games. And removal of off-campus contacts from counting against the use of off-campus recruiting days.

Such a model would move most of the in-person evaluation of prospects to outside of the periods where coaches are needed on campus most (finals and the basketball season). It would provide coaches with increased direct contact with prospects. It would give coaches direct access to cost-effective AAU tournaments that have continued to exist despite the lack of college coaches in attendance. And it would expand the opportunity for in-person monitoring by the Basketball Focus Group during periods of intense recruiting.

While the model proposed by Santa Clara head coach Kerry Keating has merit, it would be a large step in the other direction. With expanded evaluation and contact periods and more freedom to use recruiting person-days, it would spread recruiting so wide and far that the ability of institutions and the NCAA to monitor what is happening in gyms would be severely reduced. Not to mention that it would be hurt by the idea floated by the recruiting cabinet in some potential recruiting models (pdf) to abolish the annual limit on evaluations of one prospect. It’s not hard to imagine burnt-out coaches spending a large chunk of their recruiting days evaluating—or more accurately babysitting—committed prospects.

The core of Coach Keating’s plan—evaluation of prospects based on institutional discretion—could be accomplished through a different bit of deregulation, allowing coaches to watch any video of a prospect they can get their hands on. Specifically, changing this interpretation from April 29, 2009:

The academic and membership affairs staff determined that it is not permissible for an institution to obtain video (e.g., live streaming video, recorded video) of any nonscholastic activities, including regular game and all-star competition, or any summer camp or clinic competition, through a subscription fee or other associated fee paid to a recruiting or scouting service. Further, it is not permissible to obtain any nonscholastic video that is available only to a select group of individuals (e.g., coaches), even if there is no charge associated with such individuals accessing the video.

That would open up coaches to view any video of prospects playing in any sort of game at any time. There would be one issue to be sorted out: who would provide the video of prospects? Eliminating or changing this interpretation would create a market for another middleman. If that middleman is a legitimate business providing a needed service, there are few worries. However, if it became another tool for handlers of prospects to charge a price of admission for access to a prospect, it could exacerbate the current problems. Done right thought, it allows for more evaluation of prospects without the costs (both monetary and otherwise) of having coaches on the road throughout the year.

The problem with the July recruiting period has little to do with those 20 days themselves. Rather, the problem is what the focus on those 20 days allows to happen during the other 345. The idea of eliminating the July recruiting period is not without merit, especially as the membership considers the possibility of summer practice in men’s basketball. But it’s just as likely to exacerbate the problems in men’s basketball recruiting as it is to solve any of them.

About John Infante

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: enforcement, legislation, men's basketball, recruiting

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