How the NCAA's recent emergency ban on recruiting could impact college athletics long-term
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.
The Idles of March: The NCAA Shuts Down In-Person Recruiting for a Month due to COVID-19. What if the NCAA banned all recruiting for a couple of weeks every year? One NCAA Sport Already Does and Finds It a Slam Dunk.
Executive Summary
The NCAA adopted emergency legislation on March 13, 2020, to create a universal dead period prohibiting coaches in all NCAA sports from in-person recruiting for a month.
One Division I sports' coaches already adhere to two weeks of complete recruiting shutdown.
Other Division I coaches could learn from the current COVID-19-inspired recruiting shutdown and embrace holistic breaks from the frenzied recruiting trail.
In addition to improved work-life balance for the coaches, Division I institutions’ athletics budgets could warm up to the additional cost savings of a pared back recruiting cycle.
Sometimes people simply need a break -- a quiet stroll, jazz music and a New York Times best seller, or even a good, old-fashioned nap. Understandably, breaks and carefree moments are hard to come by these days in light of COVID-19.
With the world, including college athletics in America, grappling with COVID-19, the NCAA opted earlier this month to shut down in-person recruiting. This decision was a nod of support and adherence to medical and public health leaders’ guidance on social distancing and stay-in-place directives.
The NCAA press release from March 13, 2020 stated:
"The [NCAA Division I] Council Coordination Committee adopted emergency legislation to establish a temporary recruiting dead period in all NCAA Division I sports, effective immediately. The dead period will remain in effect at least until April 15, at which time the Council Coordination Committee will re-evaluate the status of the situation. Based on the immediate effective date, reasonable measures should be taken to cease all recruiting activities that are not permissible during a dead period (e.g., official and unofficial visits, contacts and evaluations)."
As NBA games, industry conventions, and watering holes were all succumbing to the rising tide of warnings about COVID-19 and the health risks of convening large groups, the NCAA Council Coordination Committee adopted emergency legislation earlier this month to pump the breaks on coaches hitting the road to recruit. No recruiting for an entire month. In the world of college athletics, this is big news.
Coaches juggle their teams’ competition, practice, and training schedules leading up to their respective NCAA championship tournaments, while also still recruiting. It is not unheard of, and in some sports, like basketball, it can be a way of life, for a Head Coach to navigate his or her team to a hard-fought victory on a Sunday afternoon and be three time-zones away the next morning evaluating a high school junior prospect. In light of the public-health concerns, the NCAA’s edict was sensible and, from a competitive-equity standpoint, helped stave off the inevitable finger-pointing between coaches from competing institutions.
The art of Division I recruiting is meshing it into the fabric of your playing season and, seemingly, being in two places at once. Tight flight schedules, sleepless nights, countless car rental counters, and for those who can afford it, charter flight time. Charter flight time can take a coach directly from the competition site in central Pennsylvania one night direct and non-stop to a prospect’s high school gym in southern Oregon the next morning.
That insatiable pursuit by Division I coaches to land top prospects is not going away. Coaches know recruiting good talent is one ingredient to keeping their job.
The current COVID-19 recruiting shutdown restricts in-person recruiting of all kinds. Prospects may not make official or unofficial visits to campus and coaches may not venture off campus to evaluate prospects or even make in-person home visits. The only recruiting allowed at this time is via electronic devices. Phone calls, texts, emails, and the like are the one safe haven for coaches to get their recruiting fix.
As the Ides of March pass by, could the NCAA and its entire coaching community across all sports learn from this "grounding"? Could we enhance work-life balance for our coaches by keeping all off the road a bit longer each year? Help coaches help themselves? Did someone mention the upside of cost savings to the university if recruiting travel was trimmed back?
One sport is on it.
In spring 2018, Division I Proposal 2017-23 was adopted and outlined that Division I women’s basketball would have two “shutdown periods” -- one week in August and one week in May with no prospect visiting campus, no prospect evaluations at off-campus sites, no home-visits with prospects and their families, no visiting high schools to meet with guidance counselors, as well as no phone calls, no texts, and no receiving phone calls from prospects either. Shut the recruiting engines down from all sides!
The proposal arose from recommendations by the NCAA Division I Council Women's Basketball Oversight Committee Ad Hoc Working Group on Recruiting. This group included coaches, student-athletes, athletics department administrators, faculty and conference office administrators.
Interestingly, the proposal was developed based on guiding principles that include the academics, health, safety and well-being of student-athletes and prospects.
However, coaches could benefit, too. A complete recruiting shutdown was a key piece to the proposal and provided “...coaches a timely break from recruiting and allows coaches to balance their personal and professional lives.”
The women’s basketball coaching community has not rebuked these two weeks of total shut-down either. The weeks continue to be blocked on the 2019-20 Division I women’s basketball recruiting calendar and seem to be achieving their intended effect. Women's basketball coaches' vacations are now built around these weeks.
Could other Division I sports’ recruiting calendars be amended in a similar fashion?
The life of Division I coaching can lend itself to burn-out and exhaustion. The possibility of coaches in all sports spending more time with their family, more time with their current student-athletes on campus, and less time on the road for whatever number of weeks make sense to their sports is worth a conversation.
The famous warning “Beware the Ides of March” is uttered by a fortune teller in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The Ides are both a warning to Caesar on the threat to his life as well as a time to settle debts.
Perhaps one silver lining for coaches idling this March is that coaches in sports other than women's basketball could settle their own 'debts of time' and reclaim their work-life balance by shutting down recruiting in their respective sports a couple weeks a year.
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.
