Yesterday, the NCAA approved some fairly significant changes to the recruiting rules. These rules do
not apply to basketball or football.
First, unofficial visits will not be allowed until September 1 of the "individual's" junior year of high school. Second, coaches cannot discuss recruiting with prospective student athletes (PSAs) during camps. Third, PSAs can take official visits starting September 1 of their junior year.
The stated intent of the rules is to slow down early recruiting/commitments.
There is some good and some bad in here...leaning more toward bad, I think. And I don't think the rules will slow down early recruiting all that much.
Regarding the new restriction on unofficial visits, I think this is a big mistake. Athletes visit colleges all the time, and if they're genuinely a potential recruit, it seems stupid to limit this interaction. Kids tie visits to tournaments they play in, summer vacations, etc. I know the NCAA's position is, "kids can still visit, they just can't meet with anyone from athletics. Just like other kids." As much as they want to pretend that student-athletes are just like every other student, it's absurd. For good or for bad, nobody will have a larger impact on an athlete's time at college than the coach and the team. To specifically exclude them from talking to those people is ridiculous. Notably, the new rule refers to "indivdiuals" and not just PSA. The clear implication of this is that it applies to middle school kids as well, who used to be completely unrestricted.
I don't have as big of a problem with the camps rule, but it raises some of the same issues. One reason I don't have as much of a problem is that most camps are purely cash cows and not terribly heavy on the recruiting. Not a big fan of college camps in general.
The new rule on official visits is fantastic. I've been advocating for this for a while, but didn't think it would ever happen. This will allow the rule to serve it's initial purpose: visit multiple schools in the decision-making process. For many kids in other sports, the official visit had been relegated to spending a weekend at the school that you committed to months or years ago. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Schools with lots of money may end up using a lot more, while schools with less money may not change much.
I don't think these rules will do all that much to slow the early recruiting (and I'm not entirely convinced it needs to be slowed). Coaches are still allowed to talk/skype/facetime with PSAs if the PSA initiates the call. There still are no limits on middle school kids. This will give clubs, club coaches and HS coaches greater influence as they will be used as intermediaries (which I think is a bad thing). I think kids will still be recruited and commit early, but quite possibly without having had any live face-to-face interaction with the coaching staff.
As a side note, Lacrosse took a much more serious approach to attempting to limit early recruiting last year when NCAA approved rules in that sport only that prohibits
any contact with PSAs before September 1 of their junior year. I haven't heard too much yet about how that is working.
