Coaches aren't thrilled with proposal
Parents and prospects will be in the dark a little longer if new proposal goes into effect

O'Neil By Dana O'Neil
ESPN.com
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After years of wooing and schmoozing, Florida coach Billy Donovan moved to the other side of the coffee table.

He was the one who was wooed and schmoozed as college coaches came to his home to court his eldest son, William, a 6-foot-1 guard with his pop's shooting prowess.


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Florida's Billy Donovan says parents who are looking for information won't get it right away under the new proposal.

"I wanted to know, 'Are you offering us a scholarship? What's your level of interest in my son?'" Donovan said. "I wanted to know where we stood so we could move forward with a school or cross it off the list. I'm not unusual. Parents want to know. They want the information."

If a new proposal takes root, parents and prospects will be in the dark a little longer.

The Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet has put together a proposal prohibiting coaches in all sports from offering scholarships before July 1 between a recruit's junior and senior years of high school.

Stunningly, coaches aren't thrilled. "It's like everything else," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "It's a knee-jerk deal. We make rules that affect the multitudes because of what the very few do."

UCLA senior associate athletic director Petrina Long, who chaired the cabinet, said the impetus came from prospects and coaches who complained that the pressure to accept and offer scholarships to younger and younger recruits was spinning out of control.

Two years ago, then-Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie memorably offered Michael Avery a scholarship.

Avery was in the eighth grade.

"When you're in seventh grade, how can you make a commitment for college?" said Long, whose cabinet has been looking at this issue for five years. "You don't know what major you'll want. You don't know whether physically you'll be ready. You can't know."

But basketball coaches -- quick to acknowledge the inanity of offering a middle schooler and appreciating the intent of the proposal -- find a rash of problems with both the impetus and the language of the proposal.

For starters, the idea that a prospect can't be offered a scholarship until he finishes his junior year contradicts the NCAA's very definition of a prospect.

According to Bylaw 13.02.11, "a prospective student-athlete is a student who has started classes for the ninth grade."

So if a prospective student-athlete can't be offered a scholarship, who can?

"I can see how in some sports you aren't physically mature and coaches don't know," Donovan said. "But basketball is different. You mean to tell me if you were recruiting LeBron when he was a freshman or sophomore, you wouldn't know if he was going to be good enough?"

Coaches are disputing the claims that prospects are being pressured to decide before they are ready.

Every kid is different. Some love the attention and the process and wait until the last deadline to announce in spectacular multimedia fashion where they are going to school; others are so sick of the recruiting treadmill they can't wait to put the questions to bed.

But every kid -- according to coaches who are seasoned in the business of recruiting -- wants to know who is offering him a scholarship and who isn't.

"They want to know right off the bat," Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt said. "Parents will say to you, 'Are you offering him a scholarship? Because if you're not, we're going to move on to someone who is more serious about our son.'"

Which leads to the second problem. "If someone asks me if I'm going to offer a kid, how do I answer that question?" Donovan said. "What's the right thing to say?"

Technically, the right answer would be "no," since offering a scholarship would be against NCAA rules.


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Like some of his colleagues, West Virginia coach Bob Huggins is not a fan of the new NCAA proposal regarding early scholarship offers.

But like much of the NCAA rulebook, this proposal seems ripe for a loophole-exposing game of semantics.

"We understand that there are some ways around this," Long said. "But we hope that coaches will be on board with the spirit and ethics of this. We're all adults here, and it's time we start honoring the spirit of these ideas."

Which is great in theory, but in practice, there's a reason the NCAA manual is thicker than the Chinese phone book.

"If there's a kid in this state who from his freshman year said he wants to be here, that [as] he's grown up he's always wanted to be part of this program, what am I supposed to say?" Huggins said. "Am I supposed to tell him, 'Talk to me in two or three years'? That's not going to happen."

No, what will happen is a coach will tell a recruit that, per NCAA rule, he can't officially offer a scholarship until July 1 before the recruit's senior year but -- wink, wink -- you have a scholarship waiting for you.

And since nothing really means anything until the letter of intent is signed, what's the difference?

The good news -- nothing is set in stone. The cabinet will meet again in September, and any proposal won't go formally before the membership for a vote until January.

In between, the cabinet members will meet with the various coaches' associations to hear their concerns and issues and also put together a best-practices document -- basically a how-to guide for following this should it become an actual NCAA rule.

"It's not going to be something everyone embraces. I understand that," Long said. "But we are very early in this process. There's a lot more time for people to comment or make alternate proposals."

As coaches dive into the summer recruiting period -- when they will kibbitz and commiserate on bleachers while watching the next best thing -- expect plenty of both.

"I don't know what we're trying to accomplish," said Donovan, whose son ultimately chose Catholic University. "I get that they don't want us going to eighth-grade camps and offering kids scholarships, but what I see is they keep cutting away from communication more and more with people. That's why so many bad decisions are being made. People want information. I know I did."

Dana O'Neil covers college basketball for ESPN.com and can be reached at espnoneil@live.com.

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NCAA eyes ban to certain early offers

Associated Press

If Alabama basketball coach Anthony Grant needs any perspective while recruiting, he need only look to his own family.

"I'm a parent of a 14-year-old, and I know right now my son is in no position to make a decision mentally or physically in terms of what he wants to do when he turns 18 or 19," Grant said. "For me, I'd be a coach that would rather wait a little longer and see a kid mature a little bit better and see where he's at academically and where he ends up physically before any of those life-changing decisions are made."

The NCAA is looking at the same issue. Last month, the Division I Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet backed a proposal to ban scholarship offers to recruits before July 1 in the summer between their junior and senior years in high school.

The rule would apply to all sports if passed, and some coaches are hopeful it could slow an arms-race mentality that has led to earlier and earlier commitments by unproven prospects.

Just this year, the father of a seventh grade quarterback from Delaware said his son had already committed to Southern California. Such statements are nonbinding, along with anything else a recruit does before signing a letter of intent, but many coaches clearly feel pressure to secure even a verbal commitment from a potential program-changing prospect.

Barry Gebhart, the athletic director at Fayetteville High School in Arkansas, said one of his athletes was recently offered a scholarship as a ninth grader.

"On one hand, it's good for that young man, but what does it really mean? Are we to think that if he breaks his ankle in his senior year or he has a career-threatening knee injury, that they're going to honor that commitment? I don't think so," Gebhart said. "To me, it's a gimmick. That might be too harsh, but it's something that college coaches do so they can go back to that young man and say, 'Hey look, we were the first to offer you.' "

When a young recruit is offered a scholarship, there's plenty of wiggle room, but although there are no official consequences for backing out, a coach and a recruit can end up in a tough spot.

"It actually happened to us where a kid committed to us early," Villanova basketball coach Jay Wright said. "By the time he was a senior, we both knew he hadn't developed to the point where we thought he would. We both agreed on that, and he was able to go elsewhere."

Two years ago, the National Association of Basketball Coaches said it opposed accepting commitments from students who had not yet completed their sophomore seasons in high school. Jim Haney, the group's executive director, said membership hasn't had much time to discuss the NCAA's new proposal, but he understands the reasoning behind it.

"It can be cool to be able to say as a sophomore, 'Hey, I committed to so-and-so,' " Haney said. "But a couple years, a year passes, and his whole attitude toward where he's going to go can change."

The proposal would also require coaches to receive a high school transcript documenting at least five semesters or seven quarters of academic work for a recruit before offering a scholarship.

Not everyone is enamored with the proposal. West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins isn't buying the idea that early scholarship offers are a widespread problem.

"What are you supposed to do if a kid says he wants to come? You have a state like ours where we pretty much are the predominant university, and a kid comes up following Mountaineer sports and says he wants to come. I don't know what we're supposed to say." Huggins said. "There's 360-some schools. How many of those 360-some made offers to eighth graders? A couple? ... Nobody should be recruiting eighth graders. That shouldn't happen.

"It concerns me that we continue to make legislation for a couple people."

For his part, Grant said prospects and their families should still have some say over when to start the recruiting process.

"If a kid is in a position early in his career, to gather information, to visit campuses and get a feel for where they fit and what's a good situation for them ... I think some of that needs to be left up to the individual families," he said.

There's also the question of how the new rule would be enforced. Any scholarship offer is unofficial until a letter of intent is signed, so it would be difficult to monitor what coaches are saying to prospects in private.

Petrina Long, the recruiting cabinet's chair, said the plan can still be modified and feedback is welcome. At the very least, she figures the rule might postpone the hype surrounding a recruit's choice until he's a bit older, meaning there could be less pressure on the athlete to commit early -- and on coaches to offer him that chance.

"I think that's unfortunately been what the coaches have been complaining to us about," she said. "They don't want to do it, but other people do it, so they have to."

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