There's a Happy Middle Ground in the Satellite Camp Debate

For the second straight offseason, satellite camps are all the rage. 

Penn State head coach James Franklin and Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly lit a fire in the bellies of SEC head coaches last year with satellite camps in fertile recruiting grounds like Georgia and Florida, and Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh and Nebraska head coach Mike Riley took it to the next level this summer with camps of their own in the SEC.

Coaches in the SEC have gone "full Twisted Sister." They're mad, and they're not going to take it anymore.

The conference announced at spring meetings last week that it would propose national legislation that would mirror the SEC's current rule, which prohibits coaches and coaching staffs from working camps outside a 50-mile radius from campus and outside state borders.

The reason SEC coaches are upset is more because these schools that "guest host" at satellite camps are recruiting when SEC (and ACC) coaches aren't allowed to. I mean, come on; are we really supposed to believe that Nebraska's two-week trek across Georgia and North Florida isn't essentially a recruiting combine?

If the SEC's national rule doesn't pass, it's on in 2016.

"[The coaches] talked very specifically about their intent to canvas the nation if we're in the same circumstance next year," new SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said.

Coaches are already preparing for the future.

"Should that not be a violation, I promise you, we'll do it all summer next year," LSU head coach Les Miles said. "Next year, we'll be in all different locations."

Mark Humphrey/Associated Press

It likely won't pass.

Sankey said that it takes a simple majority of FBS conferences to get the measure passed, with votes from the Power Five conferences counting twice. Three of those conferences—the Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12—are already in the satellite camp business, and lower-tier Group of Five conferences benefit from high-profile coaching staffs attending their camps.

There's a happy middle ground.

SEC coaches can put on the facade that they want time off in the summer to unplug, but let's be real—if allowed, coaches would absolutely love to visit satellite camps and expand their respective brands. Sure, they can say that they're "unanimous" against satellite camps, but that's only because they'd rather them be outlawed.

Gareth Patterson/Associated Press

Arkansas already puts a huge focus on Texas and Florida, and head coach Bret Bielema would absolutely benefit from camps in those talent-rich states.

"I can see Bret and Arkansas...they need to move around a little bit more than some of us," South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier said. "I can see the advantage for Arkansas to have a camp in South Florida."

Would national programs like Alabama, LSU, Auburn and others benefit from expanding their presence in fertile recruiting grounds that they don't get to often? Like, say, California? You bet they would.

Would Kentucky—a program that has made a concerted effort to focus on the state of Ohio on the recruiting trail—benefit from them? Absolutely.

"We enjoy getting guys to our campus and getting them to our camp," Wildcats head coach Mark Stoops said. "It would benefit us to go to Ohio, but we also do a good job of getting kids to come to our camp and come to campus for us. That was the original intention with instructional camps—to get them on campus."

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So let's compromise. 

Let's create a three-weekend window—say, during the first three weekends of June—when coaching staffs can "guest coach" at three camps of smaller schools.

Three camps in early to mid-June, and that's it.

That way, these roving recruiting tours don't happen, schools within the SEC that could benefit from satellite camps can have them and coaches from outside of the SEC who weren't "born on third base" from a geographical recruiting perspective still have a chance to get exposure for their programs in talent-rich areas.

Everybody wins.

SEC coaches aren't mad because they're not getting time off; they're mad because they can't recruit when others can and do. 

So let's meet in the middle and allow satellite camps (or recruiting combines, if you will) during a very specific time period, allow the smaller schools to continue to get exposure that they otherwise wouldn't get and allow everybody to benefit while playing under the same rules.

It's really not that complicated.

Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All stats are courtesy of CFBStats.com unless otherwise noted, and all recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports' composite rankings.

Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and college football video analyst for Bleacher Report, as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on Sirius 93, XM 208.

Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.