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February 18, 2013
Some Major Colleges Fear Looser N.C.A.A. Recruiting Rules
By RAY GLIER
Greg McGarity, the University of Georgia athletic director, gathered the coaches from various teams in his office one morning several weeks ago to discuss the pending deregulation of recruiting in college athletics.
McGarity became the shopkeeper of a candy store and told his coaches to stuff their pockets. He gave his coaches 15 minutes to present ideas about all they could do under the N.C.A.A.’s new legislation, which includes no limit on recruiting contact with high school athletes, no limits on recruiting materials that can be sent in the mail and no limits on staff size to use in recruiting, meaning they could hire a whole different staff in football to pursue players.
McGarity could see his athletic department’s budget surplus growing smaller.
“It was an immediate red flag,” he said. “We now have about 35 items on the list of what the coaches would love to do. Think about if we gave them a few months to come up with things.”
On the wish list were 200-page, four-color brochures. Fathead posters made in the likenesses of recruits and stuffed inside media guides. Videos of a recruit in a Georgia uniform. Four or five extra staff members devoted to recruiting.
“Some school is going to want to get on the high dive with this and go all in and spend and spend,” McGarity said. “It is going to start a round of competition among schools that is going to be limitless.”
For years, athletic administrators and coaches have complained about N.C.A.A. recruiting rules being too cumbersome to enforce. So at the organization’s convention in Dallas in January, university presidents passed legislation to tear some pages from the rule book. Universities could add recruiters in all sports they wanted. Deregulation also would allow any employee at a university, like a professor or a counselor, to contact a prospect.
Under the legislation, some of which takes effect July 1, prospects could exchange unlimited phone calls and text messages with universities. There would be no rest for coaches or recruits.
Big Ten coaches and athletic directors issued a statement last week opposing key parts of the legislation.
“We have serious concerns whether these proposals, as currently written, are in the best interest of high school student-athletes, their families and their coaches,” the statement said. “We are also concerned about the adverse effect they would have on college coaches, administrators and university resources.”
McGarity said he talked to four other athletic directors in the Southeastern Conference who were also opposed to the legislation, and his goal was to have the SEC vote, 14- 0, to override the legislation. The SEC’s athletic directors are scheduled to meet next week in Birmingham, Ala., to consider the legislation.
Opponents of the measures adopted in Dallas have until March 20 to gather 75 votes from presidents of Division I universities to start an override of the deregulation legislation.
The Big 12 and the Pacific-12 Conferences declined to comment on the pending legislation.
Kansas State might be considered a relative have-not in college sports because its athletic revenue is about $70 million, compared with $150 million at the University of Texas, a Big 12 rival. But John Currie, the Kansas State athletic director, indicates he does not see his department through that prism and does not feel threatened by deregulation.
“We have won 21 games in the last two years,” Currie said of his football program. “I have 139 staff members, which I believe is the smallest full-time staff in the Big 12, but that does not affect our ability to be successful.”
He added: “If we lose out on somebody because our media guide was only 200 pages and somebody else’s was 400 pages, then so be it. I don’t think every school is going to add 25 new quality control coaches and recruiting coaches, because adding 25 new personalities to your building is not necessarily going to make you better.”
Currie said Kansas State supported the deregulation of electronic communications. And that, in itself, would save money.
“I am a proponent of close examination of ways to improve and streamline the rule book,” Currie said. “We spend too much time and money trying to legislate something that is impossible to regulate. A text message ban has unintended negative consequences and causes more waste of resources than unlimited texting. If a kid does not want to return a phone call or text, he won’t.”
www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/sports/ncaafootball/some-major-colleges-fear-looser-ncaa-recruiting-rules.html?ref=ncaafootball&pagewanted=print
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