On Wednesday, the NCAA Division I Council announced a slew of proposals that would alter the college football recruiting calendar significantly and tweak the structure of coaching staffs.
Included in the proposals…
-Two new 72-hour early signing periods, one in June and one in December (the same as the current junior college signing period) for football recruits, along with the national signing day on the first Wednesday in February.
-The addition of a 10th full-time assistant coach for programs. Currently, programs are limited to nine full-time assistant coaches.
-Limiting programs to 10 non-consecutive days to have camps and clinics, cutting back from the previous two 15-day period. It also states that satellite camps must be owned, operated and conducted by NCAA member schools. For example, it’s cool for say Mercer or Georgia State to have a satellite camp and invite other programs to attend, but the satellite camp at the local high school run by an outside party is eliminated.
There is plenty to digest here.
On the early signing periods, there has to be a way for a player who signs with a certain school in June to get out of his letter-of-intent if a coaching change occurs. This process must be easy because most coaching changes occur in November/December and if a prospect is a January enrollee, then time is of the essence for him to find a new home. That should be the first concern.
Outside of that, it depends on what program you are aligned with as to where you fall on the early signing period, the June signing period in particular. Obviously, Alabama’s Nick Saban and Ohio State’s Urban Meyer are going to be against it. These two programs recruit better than the others and have the ability to identify a talented player who may be committed to another program and perform a flip, so naturally they want access to all the talent they can have. There’s a ton of interest in these two programs and because of that, they have big recruiting boards and regardless of how good they are at evaluating and projecting, there is a ton of time and an entire football season to be played where they can split the hairs needed to identify one top prospect over the other. One of those top prospects may very well be verbally committed to another school and if that school signs him in June, he’s off-limits to programs like the Tide and Tigers.
I also believe that Meyer and Saban both make good points about prospects who have that much time left in high school signing a binding contract that early. I would counter, though, that only those prospects who absolutely know without a doubt where they are going will sign during that period. For example, the four or five-star player from the state of Ohio who has lived in Ohio his entire life and whose dream is to play for the Buckeyes can just shut the process down early. That’s a positive thing in my opinion.
On the other side of things, this rewards programs who identify top talent early and can get them in the boat. Baylor under Art Briles was great at this in particular. You’d see a prospect commit early to the Bears and then by the time signing day rolled around, he’d have 20-plus offers. More times than not, Baylor was rewarded for being first, but the Bears did lose a few along the way.
This also helps the senior riser prospect. If a program has several prospects already signed, you can use your time and resources to scout for talent that emerges late. That creates more potential opportunity, which I support.
On the subject of the 10th coach, I am all for it. There are a lot of very good coaches out there who work hard, do things the right way and generally serve the student athletes in a positive manner. Anything that gives more opportunity career-wise for coaches and from a financial standpoint to their families (remember that assistants are very rarely on multi-year contracts), I am all for. Plus, the more coaches you have on the road, scouting and evaluating players, the more opportunities there are for players.
With satellite camps, I would have preferred that the proposal was to create a certification process for the off-campus camps so some could stay alive. I understand the need to have some sort of certification process, but limiting it to college programs only seems a bit limiting. I can see the benefit of having an off-site satellite camp in an area where there aren’t college football programs and I can also see the benefit of having off-site satellite camps in areas with loads of talent, like south Florida, Los Angeles, Dallas-Forth Worth, Houston, etc., so that the many prospects in those areas get maximum exposure. The 10-day limit, in my opinion, is a good number.
Overall, this is one of the more sound proposals to come from an NCAA committee in quite some time. With a few tweaks, it could really make sense and benefit coaches, prospects and the health of the recruiting process in college football. The old saying goes, the “devil is in the details” and that rings true here. If the details don’t make sense, then these proposals aren’t going to make sense. If they do, then the take here is that I hope it passes and is implemented.
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