Quote:New NCAA rule will block Auburn from signing Opelika High football players for 2 years.

Opelika High School has a history of sending football players down the road to Auburn University.


T.J. Jackson, Matthew Motley, Tez Doolittle, Will Herring, Corey Grant and the late Jakell Mitchell are among the former Bulldogs who played for the Tigers over the past 15 years. Opelika alum Stephen Roberts is in line to start at safety for Auburn as a senior in 2017, and James Owens Moss and Devin Guice are both redshirt freshman walk-ons.


But that relationship will be put on hold for at least the next two years. One of the new rules passed by the NCAA’s Division I football council in April prevents schools from “hiring people close to a prospective student-athlete for a two-year period before and after the student’s anticipated and actual enrollment at the school.”

Because Auburn hired former Opelika head football coach Brian Blackmon as an analyst in February, it will not be allowed to recruit or sign any Bulldogs players for the next two years.


That means any rising junior or senior on Opelika’s football team who played under Blackmon in high school will not be able to sign a scholarship to play football at Auburn.


“I think it’s unfair,” said Opelika athletic director and defensive coordinator Erik Speakman, who worked under Blackmon throughout his eight years as head coach. “Of course, they didn’t ask for my vote on it. But I think it really limits opportunities for some of the players in high school.”


The good news for the Bulldogs, if you want to call it that, is that Speakman and first-year head coach Caleb Ross agree that there aren’t currently any upperclassmen on Opelika’s roster who they believe are SEC-type talents.


Speakman said that was something Blackmon closely considered when weighing whether or not to make the leap to the college ranks. Though the rule hadn’t yet been made official when Blackmon and Auburn were discussing the job in January and February, both parties knew it was imminent.


“When he and I were meeting, (Blackmon) said, ‘You know what, if that goes through, we really don’t have anybody for probably the next year or two that Auburn could recruit,’ so he felt better, being the head coach of Opelika, leaving knowing that he would not affect any of our kids for the next two years,” Speakman said. “You never want to hurt a kid that you coached.”

http://www.oanow.com/sports/college/aubu...67861.html

Not only that but they also prohibited high school coaches from working college camps during the summer. This hurts these coaches financially because they usually got paid a decent amount and it also hurts them professionally from working and learning with college coaches to learn new skills and develop a network of contacts for future employment.

Of course the NCAA has never been accused of not throwing the baby out with the bath water.