College Football Satellite Camps May Not Be Madness After All
GREENSBORO, Ga. — The ebbs and flows of the satellite camp debate in college football are as choppy as the ocean shortly before a big storm.
They've been on for some, off for all and, on Thursday, the NCAA announced that—for this summer anyway—they're on for all.
It certainly seems like it's going to be the "wild, wild west" this summer, with staff members "guest coaching" at smaller colleges, junior colleges and high schools all over the country.
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Some schools are going to blow out the satellite camp circuit like it's a bachelor party in Las Vegas, right?
Ole Miss and Georgia have satellite camps set up with the face of the pro-satellite camp movement, Michigan's Jim Harbaugh, according to Angelique S. Chengelis of the Detroit News. LSU has signed on to work at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College's camp, per MGCCC Athletics. Former Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville is working to lure his former school to a camp with his new school, Cincinnati, as reported by Brandon Marcello of SEC Country.
This has the chance to get out of control in a hurry.
But while Harbaugh's "Swarm Tour" is back on, most coaches seem to be approaching the lifting of the ban with caution.
"We have a bunch of them that people are calling us about, but we have to be selective," Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Challenge. "Our time is valuable, and we want kids on our campus. So there's a fine line.
"We have a calendar right now that has every satellite camp on it. If you look at the dates of them and the amount of them, they're going to get really diluted. You want your coaches to go where the players are, and we want to be really selective about that."
In fact, some programs are passing on satellite camps altogether.
Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney is known for his outgoing personality and ability to market his program to the national audience. Despite that, the defending ACC champion and national runner-up will be staying in the Upstate during the camp circuit this summer despite the ACC's ban being lifted.
"It's business as usual for us at Clemson," Swinney said prior to playing in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Challenge. "We're going to continue to have our camps at Clemson and hope that kids who are interested in Clemson will come and see us. I don't need to go somewhere to evaluate a young person. I can do all of that. I do need them to come to Clemson to make sure it's the right match."
He won't be alone.
His opponent in the ACC Championship Game, North Carolina's Larry Fedora, won't be hitting the satellite camp circuit either.
"We don't have any satellite camps this year," Fedora said. "All of our camps are set up on campus. It doesn't matter to me one way or the other. Just tell me what the rules are.
"We still feel like it's important to get players on our campus rather than going to them, and we haven't had a problem getting players to our campus over the last four years."
The Tar Heels will be on the sideline this year but, like Smart, will be selective in the future if they decide to hit the road in the summer of 2017.
"If we do, we'll probably go outside of our footprint," he said. "Because the kids within our footprint seem to get to our campus. We might step outside of our footprint. We may go up north into New Jersey area or into Birmingham. There are a lot of great areas to go into. We could go as far as Texas."
It's not just Power Five schools that are approaching satellite camps with caution; Group of Five schools are too.
Houston made national headlines last year when it earned a New Year's Six bowl berth and topped Florida State in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. If you thought head coach Tom Herman wanted to hit the road and capitalize on the momentum generated from last year, you'd be mistaken.
"We all know why the NCAA voted to ban satellite camps [initially]," Herman said. "They wanted recruiting to stay regional—at least the camp version of recruiting. I was thrilled to death that we were going to keep all of these schools out of Texas, and we would get an opportunity to put a fence around our state a little bit. But they went too far, and there has to be a happy medium.
"There's got to be a way to close the loophole that exists that we don't like, but yet, let's still make it beneficial for the student-athletes."
Instead of taking his program regional or national, Herman is content hitting key areas in the Lone Star State and cleaning up in the Houston metro area.
"For us, we will still have our camps in Dallas, Austin and East Texas like we did last year, but it won't change anything other than that," he said."
While Clemson and North Carolina won't be going out actively on the camp circuit, Swinney understands how important the lifting of the ban is for some of his younger coaches who are looking to make an impact in the coaching industry.
"It does free up some of our younger guys, if they're interested in going to work another camp somewhere, they can go do that," he said. "In the past, you could only work on campus. So we might have some graduate assistants who have friends at other places and are trying to advance their coaching careers, so that's a good opportunity."
The satellite camp debate has dominated the offseason for three straight years, but it doesn't seem like the uniform set of rules this summer is going to make a big impact or change the plans of coaches who suddenly have the ability to hit the road.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics courtesy of cfbstats.com unless otherwise noted. Recruiting information courtesy of 247Sports.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report, as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
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