The Division I Council on Wednesday introduced potential new rules that would adjust the women's basketball recruiting calendar. The rule changes would be effective immediately after adoption.
The Council also considered the name, image and likeness landscape and examined different approaches that would allow for student-athletes to engage in NIL activity without jeopardizing their NCAA eligibility. The group will discuss the issue again at its meeting Monday.
Recommended by the Women's Basketball Oversight Committee and supported by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, the women's basketball recruiting changes are intended to promote a healthy and safe return to recruiting and work-life balance for coaches, while also recognizing the impact of the transfer rule changes on recruiting and acknowledging the flexibility needed to recruit internationally.
"The last year taught us we can do things differently," said Jamie Boggs, athletics director at Grand Canyon and vice chair of the Women's Basketball Oversight Committee. "These changes will allow coaches and student-athletes to make informed decisions about recruiting while also providing flexibility in this new environment."
The calendar adjustments would include:
- Expanding the August shutdown period from five to seven days.
- Shifting the September contact period to an evaluation period.
- Shifting the dead periods surrounding the National Letter of Intent signing dates (November and April) to an evaluation period.
- Shifting March 1-30 from a contact period to an evaluation period. March 31 would remain the start of the dead period surrounding the Division I Women's Basketball Championship.
- Eliminating the dead period following the championship in April and replacing it with a quiet period.
- Limiting April evaluation days to the third weekend.
- Adding an evaluation weekend in June.
- Shortening the July evaluation periods to two four-day weekends, with a quiet period in between.
Additional proposed changes, including replacing in-home visits with virtual home visits, reducing the number of official visits per prospective college athlete and overall length of official visits and expanding the period of time in which visits can be taken, are aimed at preserving health and safety and work-life balance and providing additional flexibility.
The proposal would allow 10 calendar days in the summer to recruit internationally, with limits on the number of countable coaches who can do so at one time.
Phone calls would be allowed beginning June 1 following the sophomore year of high school, and both staff members and current student-athletes would be allowed to participate in these calls if a countable coach initiated it.
Finally, the model would loosen restrictions around participation in virtual team activities and permanently allow coaches to participate in virtual camps and clinics that do not include prospective student-athletes.
The proposal will be a part of the 2021-22 legislative cycle and could be considered by the Council as early as January 2022.
Additional rules actions
School staff members can scout future opponents who are competing in the same event at the same site as the school's team, and can scout future opponents at NCAA championship events, beginning Aug. 1. The Council adopted the rule Wednesday to help ease the monitoring burden for the upcoming year.
The Council also introduced for consideration other potential new rules, including those aimed at improving the academic performance of wrestling student-athletes. After significant study by a task force that included student-athletes and coaches, the Committee on Academics forwarded the proposed changes to the Council for consideration.
Members also introduced a proposal that would limit women's basketball regular-playing schedule with outside competition to one of the following:
- Twenty-eight contests (games and scrimmages) and one qualifying regular-season multiple-team event that does not exceed three contests, with an exemption for a championship game.
- Twenty-nine contests (games and scrimmages) and one qualifying regular-season multiple-team event that does not exceed two contests.
- Twenty-nine contests (games and scrimmages) during a playing season in which the team does not participate in a qualifying regular-season multiple-team event.
The rule change would, if adopted, provide more flexibility for women's basketball teams in reaching the 31-contest limit and may spur the creation of more opportunities for women's basketball teams to compete.
The Council waived a rule requiring schools to provide a hearing outside of athletics when a student-athlete's athletics scholarship is cancelled or reduced for underclassmen seeking to take advantage of the additional year of eligibility provided by the Council due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
