The NCAA is at it again. When it comes to how they regulate recruiting, the most generous thing you can say is that they can’t get out of their own way. Worse is that they might really have no clue, and there is plenty of reason to believe the latter.
All of this became painfully clear once again this week, when the NCAA’s change to add a recruiting period in June with high school teams blew up in their faces.
The idea was fundamentally a good one: have a weekend in June where kids can play with their school teams in front of college coaches, and bring the high school coaches more into the picture. It’s not exactly a state secret that with numerous players, their travel team coach and/or program director plays at least an outsize role in their recruitment. As big as camps and travel circuits have become, players spend more time with their travel teams than high school teams save for the rare instances where an entire high school team comprises a travel team.
There are, as you can imagine, plenty of things that will get in the way of this working as many would wish, and they come from all directions. How we got here is a combination of schools, state associations, travel teams and money, and we’re going to do the brief version here.
First, there are the schools. While it sounds nice in theory, plenty of high school coaches have dropped the ball when it comes to a player’s recruitment. From not returning college coach calls to not helping a player academically to trying to influence a college selection every bit as much as is commonly believed travel coaches do, high school coaches are not entirely innocent. The accessibility problem is not minor; even those in the media have it, as I have experienced. One of many reasons why prep schools are ruling the roost in New England is that many state association coaches don’t run the tight ship prep school coaches do.
Next is perhaps the biggest one: state associations. State associations have very tight rules and regulations on things like practice time and what players who are involved in multiple sports must do. In many states, high school coaches are limited in what they can do outside of approximately December through March with their players. If a player has a practice with their school team in one sport but a game – maybe an “all-star” game for lack of a better term in one sport whose season just ended – on the same day, the player may face sanctioning for playing in the game.
We then come to travel teams. From about the second weekend in the NCAA Tournament on through July, and also for some of the fall, travel teams are playing just about every weekend in a tournament or part of a circuit’s season, with camps also mixed in at times. It’s the way of the world nowadays, and it has pros (constant competition) and cons (less practice time to really develop skills). The NCAA thought they would be able to shut these down in various ways, from taking away live weekends for Division I coaches in April (after taking them away in September) to making it a violation for a Division I school to host a travel team event or camp at one of their facilities. There were ways around this, like long-term contracts that got grandfathered in before the latter rule came into play, but it just meant these events moved to other facilities.
Simply put, these events were never going away, at least not that easily. Plenty of events that have never been live for college coaches took place – in fact, Memorial Day weekend used to be one of the biggest ones, headlined by the Bob Gibbons Tournament of Champions and Nike Memorial Day Classic. Just a little later has always been the Rumble in the Bronx. The NCAA could do nothing about it.
Money undergirds a lot of this, but much more is involved. Event operators run events to make money either for their businesses or for a foundation, and sometimes other motives. Shoe companies put money into so much of this in hopes of finding the next big star early and getting them to market their apparel once they become professionals.
While money is often thought of as the root of all, or most, evil, the reality is that how we got here has not been by acts of evil doing and nothing more. And now the NCAA, in its attempt to try and bring high school coaches back in, has, along with the National Federation of State High School Associations, put in place rules for June live periods that would shut out a lot of kids from being seen by college coaches during a couple of key periods. Prep schools, in particular, stand out, as well as other independent schools or schools in leagues that are not part of NFHS associations, will be victimized as it currently stands. Some will argue that these kids have open gyms where college coaches see them all the time, that does not make this right on principle. It also hurts the college coaches from schools with small budgets and less advantageous locations, who are better off being able to see more prospects in one small stretch, and it ultimately hurts the players. For that matter, it certainly will not help stem the tide of transfers every year as well.
It’s unknown if the NCAA will find a workaround for this. The hope is that they will, and frankly, they basically have to. But what this shows is that yet again, the NCAA at best can’t get out of their own way on this subject. We can only hope that the ones who matter the most in all of this – the kids – don’t get the short end of the stick once again.
Side Dishes
It was a light night of game action, with just seven games on tap involving Division I teams, three of which involved a non-Division I school. In the four games where both were Division I schools, Creighton wore down Green Bay 86-65, DePaul rode a career night from Max Strus (34 points including eight three-pointers, plus 13 rebounds) to a 90-70 win over UIC, struggling George Washington held off Howard 70-64 and in the best game of the night, Arkansas State edged Florida Atlantic 75-71 in double overtime as Ty Cockfield scored nine of his 34 points in the second extra session.
UCLA freshman Shareef O’Neal underwent his planned heart procedure on Thursday, and he appears to be recovering well from it. The son of Shaquille O’Neal, the heart ailment was diagnosed following a summer practice when he alerted doctors that he wasn’t feeling right. He will miss this season, but health comes first, especially with something like this, so the most important thing is that he’s on the road to recovery right now.
Kevin Keatts can stay at NC State a little longer as of Friday, as the school’s Board of Governors approved a new six-year contract that will boost his pay to $2.7 million a year. Keatts led the Wolfpack to the NCAA Tournament in his first season and has them quietly off to an 8-1 start this season as well.
Tonight’s Menu
It’s another busy Saturday of action with a lot of good games to keep an eye on, especially in the evening.
- The first game of the day is the opener of the Air Force Reserve Hall of Fame Boardwalk Classic in Atlantic City, a nice mid-major matchup with Princeton taking on Iona (11:30 a.m.), followed by NC State taking on Penn State (2 p.m.), Temple battling Davidson (4:30 p.m.) and concluding with Virginia Tech facing Washington (7 p.m.)
- Villanova goes to Kansas in the big game early in the afternoon, while Tennessee heads to arch-rival Memphis, SMU visits Georgetown and Old Dominion travels to Syracuse at the same tip time (noon)
- The Crossroads Classic in Indianapolis is always a good doubleheader, and we can expect this year to be no different. Notre Dame takes on Purdue in the opener (1:30 p.m.), then Butler takes on Indiana to close it out (3:45 p.m.)
- Buffalo’s latest challenge to their undefeated mark is a visit from Southern Illinois, while Michigan gets a visit from Western Michigan (2 p.m.)
- Arch rivals meet in Newark as Rutgers takes on Seton Hall at the Prudential Center (2 p.m.)
- Radford’s latest big road test is their visit to Clemson (3 p.m.)
- Kent State puts their 8-1 mark on the line at Louisville, while College of Charleston visits VCU at the same time (4 p.m.)
- The Hy-Vee Classic featuring all four Iowa teams in Des Moines starts with Drake taking on Iowa State (4:30 p.m.) and concludes with a battle between Iowa and Northern Iowa (7 p.m.)
- In a game of interest in large part because we’re trying to figure out the home team, Utah heads east to visit Kentucky (5 p.m.)
- Belmont heads out west for what should be a good game at UCLA (5 p.m.)
- Arizona State’s latest challenge is a trip to Georgia (6 p.m.)
- In a rematch of the national championship game from 2017, Gonzaga visits North Carolina (7 p.m.)
- A good one to check out will be Georgia State traveling to Kansas State (8 p.m.)
- A couple of in-state rivals that are off to a good start will take to the floor as Louisiana Tech travels to Louisiana (8 p.m.)
- Cincinnati will try to stay hot in a tough one as they travel to Mississippi State (8:30 p.m.)
- Old Mountain West rivals meet as UNLV hosts BYU (8:30 p.m.) in the first of two in the Neon Hoops Showcase, with LSU taking on Saint Mary’s in the nightcap (11 p.m.)
- In the same state but tipping a bit later is Mike Daum and South Dakota State visiting Nevada (9 p.m.)
- Oklahoma tries to keep their hot start going as they host USC (9 p.m.)
- A sleepy good matchup out west is San Diego hosting Northern Colorado (10 p.m.)
- Two more solid matchups close out the night with an 11 p.m. tip: Texas A&M taking on Oregon State in Portland and Baylor at Arizona
