NCAA Reformation: Fixing the Recruiting Process

In the early weeks and month after National Signing Day, the nation’s hottest senior prospects begin to commit to various schools.

Some commitments are strong, some are as weak a feather.

However, there are many athletes who have bought into the process involved in recruiting and have used it to its fullest.

This is not wrong. What is wrong is the way things go down.

Recruits telling coaches they want to enroll at their school is nothing uncommon. Likewise, the hostage crisis involving these players and the captive coaches is also prevalent. Too many athletes have too many coaches fooled, and in the end it ends up hurting multiple people in the process. The waiting game is put into full force, and the school’s head coach is resolved to sitting and waiting. All the while, the athlete is parading around telling multiple coaches the same exact thing.

Thus, there are two motions that need to be made. I propose the NCAA institute two signing days. The first preliminary signing day should be placed in mid-December or late November.This allows for the strongly committed prospect to go ahead and sign his letter of intent. The school can keep this on file, and when the official time comes, the student athlete can be enrolled.

The second signing day should remain untouched. This would be for the honest-to-goodness undecided players. Wavering would not happen as much and the players who indeed are clueless about their future destinations would have the time they need to decide, with a lot less distractions.

If a coach filled up his scholarship allotment by the first signing day, the athlete would not have a spot. This would encourage decisiveness, as opposed to the clueless state expressed by many athletes today.

Secondly, I propose an amendment in the contact rules between athletes and coaches. For some athletes, this is not a factor. However, for the elite athletes, making the absolute most of their recruiting process, it is.

In the case of many of these athletes who receive numerous scholarship offers, contact with the coaches recruiting them is constant. This has proven to have a direct effect on their grades. In an age where many of the most talented prospects in the nation are struggling to “make the grade” as it is, the coaches' greatest priority should be allowing the recruit to qualify academically.

However, the cost of constant communication between coaches and athletes is falling grades. This means for the school, a scholarship opportunity may be wasted. For the athlete, their options may be reduced to enrolling in a community college. Instead of landing in the big show of the NCAA, they land in the small world of intercollegiate athletics (NAIA, NJCAA).

In the coming years, these issues will be hopefully brought to the forefront. Whether or not the majority of the nation will support reform remains to be seen.

One thing, however, remains certain—the NCAA is not a perfect association.

There are certain issues that need to be reviewed and there are certain issues that need to be amended. Only time will tell if the NCAA will step up to the plate and knock these issues out of the park.

If they do not, the issue of reforming big-time college sports will become an even larger issue every year.

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