Athletics Veritas is a weekly series aimed at helping higher education executives, faculty, and other stakeholders stay tuned in on trending national issues impacting college athletics, especially NCAA Division I. Athletics Veritas is created by senior DI athletic administrators around the nation.
When Will Your Coaches Start Recruiting My Kid?
The universal recruiting dead period extended through summer shrinks recruiting opportunities
Verbal commitments by prospects are increasing of late as unknown future recruiting landscape weighs
New ideas for near-term and one-off recruiting engagement opportunities discussed
Division I schools dropping sports is increasing the angst, decreasing the opportunities
“When Will Your Coaches Start Recruiting My Kid?” is a question that is being asked more than ever before by parents across the country (and world).
The calendar has turned to June and the NCAA Council Coordination Committee recently extended the universal dead period for recruiting through the end of July. This declaration means that the traditional evaluation, off-campus contact, and on-campus official and unofficial visit opportunities for prospects through most of summer will be extinct.
These in-person opportunities are the most valued recruiting transactions because coaches are able to see with their own eyes (in lieu of just video clips) prospects in competition or training. In-person recruiting also allows for coaches to showcase -- through official and unofficial visits -- their campuses, athletic facilities, academic, cultural and research offerings, and other facets unique to their programs, including current student-athletes, coaches and staff.
By definition, a dead period prohibits all in-person, on- or off-campus interactions with prospects (9th grade and up). The pandemic has led to a cascade of cancelled summer sports leagues, travel tournaments, showcase events, and camps and clinics involving prospects. In addition, camps which include prospect-aged individuals may not be conducted on or off-campus during a dead period.
The evaporation of opportunities has led to concerns of missed evaluation and engagement, especially for “21s” as coaches like to refer to them -- Class of 2021 prospects -- the rising high school seniors graduating in spring 2021. Even current high school seniors who have not committed yet or purposely deferred their decision may be finding their ability to make an informed decision on a school all the more challenging when complete recruiting visits cannot be taken.
Recruiting has not ceased altogether though. Phone calls, video calls, texts, emails, handwritten letters, and other written correspondence may continue during a dead period. This has spawned the new “virtual tour” dynamic whereby coaches walk-through their facilities, locker rooms, and more while on video calls with recruits. The pandemic-led restrictions on recruiting have also put more emphasis on well-branded and polished videos that showcase campuses and sport programs.
There’s an interesting parallel between the migration of college courses to online formats due to the pandemic and the migration of recruiting activity through purely online and remote communication means like Zoom or MS Teams calls and more texts and other correspondence. The last several weeks have also seen an uptick in verbal commitments for Class of 2021 high school football prospects compared to this same time-period in years past. There may be a sense that prospects don’t want to be left behind if a verbal offer from a Division I program was made to them and they don’t take it now knowing opportunities for the prospects to be evaluated this summer are scant. Verbal offers from a Division I sports program are not binding, but a prospect going public that he or she has accepted that verbal offer helps create a sense of finality to the recruiting courtship.
Many Division I sport programs are still on the (virtual) recruiting trail and have not filled their recruiting classes for next year or years after.
A few ideas may surface in the coming weeks to assuage the consternation around lost recruiting engagement by all parties. Here are some ideas that may be explored.
First, there are rumblings that a short “quiet period” could be carved out for July for all sports. Quiet periods are slightly less restrictive than dead periods within Division I’s recruiting rules. A quiet period allows prospects and Division I coaches to have on-campus contact only -- no off-campus contact (e.g., visiting prospect’s home or high school) or evaluations (e.g., watching prospect compete in summer tournament). A quiet period would at least allow prospects to visit Division I campuses, take official or unofficial visits, and be better informed about the schools on their shortlists before committing. Prospects (and their parents and guardians) could meet coaches, current student-athletes, take a campus tour, walk through the facilities, meet with faculty, academic counselors, and other university staff while adhering to campus health and safety protocols of course.
For Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools specifically, another temporary exception that may be worth exploring is what Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) programs already permit: coaches attending regional recruiting fairs. Assuming public gatherings with sizable groups can be managed from a health and safety standpoint, it may be helpful and cost-efficient to allow FBS coaches to attend recruiting fairs whereby coaches could gather information (e.g., transcripts, videos) and meet with various high school and club coaches to discuss a high school prospect at a single location.
Recruiting fairs for FCS coaches often occur in conjunction with an actual 7-on-7 competition or other football event where prospects can be evaluated. FCS in 2011 adopted the option for its coaches to attend recruiting fairs because it allowed institutions to be more efficient in their management of recruiting resources. There is no question that technology, and specifically video quality, has enabled Division I coaches to receive better film of prospects and evaluate those prospects remotely, but a recruiting fair could enable more tangible evaluation interactions and information-gathering.
Taking the recruiting fair concept a step further for football recruiting purposes, a third idea would be for Division I to create a one-time, centrally managed regional football camp series. The series could include camps in regional quadrants across the country and invite the Top 600 to 800 (150 to 200 per site) non-committed high school rising senior prospects in the nation, similar to the recently launched NCAA regional basketball academies. The timing of the series would be one critical variable to sort. Could it be scheduled before high school and college football preseason practices? What activities would be permitted at such camps? More combine-related activities like broad jump, bench press, and 40-yard dash drills?
One key to success for any centralized recruiting camp or academy series concept is getting the better prospects to attend one of the camps. The NCAA created a boys basketball academy a couple of years ago as follow-up to Rice Commission recommendations. Still in its infancy, the basketball academy struggled in summer 2019 to draw the better non-committed basketball prospects which, in turn, stifled interest and attendance from Division I basketball coaches, especially from Top 50 basketball programs. The NCAA basketball academy for summer 2020 was canceled due to the pandemic.
Prospects in non-revenue sports like tennis, swimming and diving, baseball, soccer, and others, are getting particularly nervous. Several Division I schools (e.g., Akron, East Carolina, Brown, Cincinnati, and others) have announced the elimination of sport programs altogether, which means fewer scholarship dollars to go around. Across all three NCAA divisions and NAIA, approximately 100 sport programs have been cut by American universities during the pandemic.
The NCAA recently granted a blanket waiver to allow Division I institutions to provide less than the legislated aggregated minimum institutional financial aid requirements during the 2020-21 academic year. This waiver does not provide relief from Bylaw 15 requirements such as financial aid commitments to prospects and student-athletes or guar4drails around reducing or canceling a stuent-athlete's scholarship. This one-year waiver could have an adverse impact on unsigned high school seniors and transfers who may see the unallocated athletic scholarship dollars that would have otherwise been available for 2020-21 disappear through athletic department austerity measures.
College sports is in its own version of a bear market and, unfortunately, prospects, their families, and college coaches and university administrators are feeling the anxiety.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
