The NCAA Division I Council approved new rules at its April meeting on Friday, one of which requires schools to only conduct football camps and clinics at their own facilities, essentially banning “satellite camps.”
At the Ducks’ spring football practice on Friday, Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich said he was surprised by the sudden rule change, and that Oregon was “on the other side of that vote.”
“We’re in a place where we’d like to be able to go out and visit guys or have an opportunity for us to pay for it,” Helfrich said. “We’ll play the rules as they come, but it was surprising to have it happen that quickly.”
The proposal for the rule change came from the SEC in response to Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh’s ambitious “Swarm Tour,” which was comprised of stops at nine different football camps in cities across the country, including some in SEC recruiting territory. The SEC complained about the potential recruiting advantages it would create for Harbaugh, despite it being commonplace for teams in the past decade. The SEC, as well as ACC, had previously banned their coaches from satellite camps, but said it would have lifted its ban if the proposal did not pass.
According to ESPN’s Brett McMurphy, the SEC, ACC, Pac-12, Big 12, and Mountain West conferences voted against satellite camps, while the Big Ten, AAC, C-USA and MAC voted in favor of them.
ESPN’s Dan Murphy — and many others — wrote that the ban doesn’t hurt Harbaugh, but rather hurts the prospective student-athletes who depend on such camps to get noticed by coaches.
Washington State head coach Mike Leach expressed his dissent in regards to the rule change.
“It appears that the selfish interests of a few schools and conferences prevailed over the best interests of future potential student-athletes,” Leach told The Seattle Times. “The mission of the universities and athletic programs should be to provide future student-athletes with exposure to opportunities, not to limit them.
“Some universities and conferences are willing to sacrifice the interests of potential student-athletes for no better reasons than to selfishly monopolize their recruiting bases.”
Another new rule the Division I council passed deregulates electronic communication with prospective student-athletes who participate in football, cross country, track and field and swimming and diving.
Helfrich said the rule change will benefit Oregon, presumably because Oregon is far away from regions of the country that are established as recruiting hotbeds, but will be a nuisance for “blue chip” recruits — high school players who have proven themselves to be among the best at their positions.
“I think for us that will be easier,” Helfrich said. “If I’m Johnny Blue Chip, I’m not liking that very much. I’m getting a new phone.”
Helfrich said some programs will employ automated machines to send messages to prospective athletes “literally a thousand times a day.”
“Say you’re Royce Freeman coming out of high school, and you’re getting just inundated with 100 teams — the head coach, the recruiting coordinator, position coach and all those things — texting you on a daily basis, that can get very annoying very quickly.”
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