BTO Exclusive: Winds of Change Sweep the NCAA

BTO Exclusive: Winds of Change Sweep the NCAA

The NCAA Board of Directors is meeting today.  The docket includes a new set of rules that intend to drastically alter the environment that surrounds recruiting.  But the question remains … will it actually make a difference?

By BRENDAN F. QUINN

Basketball Times Online 

“Chaos.”

That’s what Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany calls it.

There are countless adjectives to describe the environment surrounding men’s basketball recruiting.  How about “shameless?”  “Cut-throat?”  “Shocking?”  “Immoral?”  “Nauseating?”

They all work.  And that is why the NCAA has said enough is enough.

Now, change is a’coming, whether folks are ready for it or not.  

“It’s like a locomotive,” said Saint Joseph’s coach Phil Martelli.  “They’re coming right at us and I think it’s going to make a difference.”
Today, the Division I Board of Directors will meet to consider a lengthy set of recruiting restrictions that would “curb compensatory relationships with people associated with prospects and suspend coaches who violate those rules,” as the NCAA puts it. 

Everyone knows how the story goes – college coaches deal with characters that operate on an uneven, unnerving plane of curtained corruption.  These are the shadowy figures behind the deals.  The agents.  The handlers.  The hangers-on.  They watch and wait like coiled rattlesnakes as coaches navigate the recruiting landscape.  

Some coaches end the recruitment of a player just at the sight of these swindlers.  Others try to work around them.  But then there are the coaches that succumb to the pressure.  They walk past the moral impasse and convince themselves that it’s really OK – “Everybody is doing it.” “If I don’t, someone else will.” “My job is riding on this.” “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” “Whatever it takes to win.” – and just like that, hands are shaken, wallets are padded, promises are made.

Money is funneled.

And just like that, a coach becomes no better than those shadowy figures. 

Well over a year ago, the NCAA formed a three-person team of enforcement investigators to shine a light on the game’s back alley.  Dubbed the “Basketball Focus Group,” the team was enlisted to take a proactive approach in reviewing recruiting practices.  They reached out to both high school and college coaches, along with prospective student-athletes and their parents.

The Basketball Focus Group then presented its findings to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Issues Committee (16 members, comprised of coaches, athletic directors, conference commissioners and one student-athlete, chaired by Kevin Anderson, Army AD) and the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) to hear the opinions of those two groups.  From there, the focus group submitted its recommendations to the Division I Board of Directors in August.

Now, today, the Board is expected to approve each proposal.  Specifically, they target:    

* Noncoaching staff hiring practices by prohibiting institutions from hiring as noncoaching personnel individuals associated with prospects two years before or after the prospect’s actual or anticipated enrollment. The legislation is intended to offer coaches a choice between recruiting the prospect and hiring the person associated with the prospect.    

* Institutional camp/clinic employment by allowing institutions to hire only its own staff members or enrolled students at its camps and clinics.    

* Institutional camp operation by allowing recruiting during institutional camps and stating that prospects do not have to leave the locale to begin an unofficial visit.    

* Nonscholastic events on campus by prohibiting Division I institutions from hosting, sponsoring or conducting nonscholastic men’s basketball events on campus or in facilities regularly used by the institution.    

* Payment of consulting fees by prohibiting payments to individuals associated with a prospect.

If (or when) these proposals are approved, they will go into effect immediately – as in, tomorrow.

“I think it’s almost a foregone conclusion that it’s going to go through,” said Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon, a member of the NCAA’s Ethics Committee, which also added its two cents to the ongoing legislation.  “Nobody can really find negative components to the proposal, so I think it’s going to go through.  (The ethics committee) is supporting it.”

But …

“There are going to be things that come out of it – loopholes that people try to find – and that’s what we need to be prepared for,” Dixon continued.   “We need to explain (to the Board of Directors), ‘OK, where will we go from here?’  What are going to be those loopholes?  As we know with any new regulations, people are going to try to find a way to get their agenda through.”

And therein lies the troublesome thorn in the side of the NCAA’s 419-page rulebook. 

When new rules are created, they lead to new gray areas, which lead to new loopholes.  Then more rules are passed to clip those loopholes, but those rules have their own gray areas, which lead to new loopholes.  So more rules are written, which … well, you get it.

The result?

The NCAA rulebook now boasts approximately 7,800 rules.

“So let’s get another 200 rules and that will solve all our problems,” quipped Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun.  “Legislating ethics and legislating morality is really difficult to do.  It hasn’t worked really well on Wall Street.  I don’t know how it would work here.” 

And that’s not the only problem that arises.  

Many of the focus group’s findings take aim at individuals who are associated with high school prospects.  Individuals who promise to “deliver” a player to a certain school as long as they’re compensated with cash or a job are clearly prevalent.  These are people – whether it’s a family member, a friend, an AAU representative or high school coach – that taint the fiber of the recruiting process.  In theory, banning associations with this type of individual makes perfect sense.  But it’s actually not that simple.

“There’s always someone that will have influence on a high school kid,” said Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, the former president of the NABC.  “The intent (of additional rules) is always very good, but it’s just a question of whether you can make significant changes in what is around the high school kids.  

“It’s been my experience that the people that have influence on high school kids are the ones that have been around them for six years or so.  You’re not going to legislate those people out of the kid’s life – that’s not going to happen.  I’m not sure it should happen.  A lot of these people help those kids, in a lot of cases.”

As for rules pertaining to coaches only being allowed to hire members of their own staff for summer camps, West Virginia’s Bob Huggins set up a hypothetical scenario. 

He pointed to a sportswriter. 

“I’ve known ‘Dan’ for a long time,” he began.  “Now ‘Dan’ has a player.  I’ve always wanted to hire ‘Dan,’ but never had room on my staff.  Well, now I have room on my staff, but I can’t hire him because he has a player.”

In short, Huggins feels that the new set of rules could potentially ban qualified coaches from the college game, only because they are associated with talented prep players.  He concluded that the real problem is the programs that create new positions – director of player development, administrative assistant, coordinator of operations – to load up a swollen staff with guys who can “deliver” players.

“The problem is that now we have assistants to the head coach and all these other things that are going on that are totally ridiculous,” Huggins said.  “The problem is that we have a few guys that circumvent rules, and we all have to suffer the consequences for a few guys.  My complaint for all these years has been, why (doesn’t the NCAA) just go in and say, ‘You can’t do that, man.’  That would stop all that.  There’s a handful of guys who start all that stuff and nobody does anything to them – except make more rules for the rest of us.”

And who are those “few guys?”

“You know exactly who they are,” Huggins responded.

Fair enough.  

On the bright side, according to Boeheim, the NCAA’s ongoing efforts have combined with today’s hovering, 24/7 news media to actually improve the recruiting environment.  We just don’t realize it.

“The process of recruiting has been in effect for a long time, and it’s probably a lot better today than it was 20 or 30 years ago – no matter what people might say,” Boeheim said.  “There’s a lot more daylight out there on every recruiting situation.”

Following today, it will be the NCAA shining the light.  Will it work?  Can they change “chaotic” to “controlled?”  That can’t be answered. 

The track record says no.

But now there’s a locomotive on the tracks.

Brendan F. Quinn is the content manager of Basketball Times Online.  A freelance writer in Philadelphia, Quinn has contributed to Basketball Times since 2006 and is currently providing coverage for The Philadelphia Inquirer.  He can be reached at bfquinn06@gmail.com