NCAA satellite camp ban lifted, but deep-seated discord remains
Source: Sports Illustrated
NCAA satellite camp ban lifted, but deep-seated discord remains
BY CHRIS JOHNSON
Posted: Thu Apr. 28, 2016
Theres a new development in the storyline college football fans cant wait to go away this off-season. The NCAA Board of Directors decided on Thursday to rescind the ban on satellite camps announced earlier this month. In a release, the NCAA said that the board wanted the governing bodys Division I Council to conduct a broad assessment of the FBS recruiting environment.
The upshot is that the ban is gone, but the NCAA is seeking a thorough examination of how recruiting can be improved. The Board of Directors is interested in a holistic review of the football recruiting environment, and camps are a piece of that puzzle, board chair and South Carolina president Harry Pastides said. We share the Councils interest in improving the camp environment, and we support the Councils efforts to create a model that emphasizes the scholastic environment as an appropriate place for recruiting future student-athletes.
The ban prohibited FBS schools from conducting camps for prospective recruits away from their campuses. It theoretically would have benefited the ACC and SECwhich previously had rules in place for their conference members barring such campsby denying coaches from other Power 5 conferences access to their talent-rich territory (Michigans Jim Harbaugh ruffled feathers when he embarked on his seven-state Summer Swarm tour last year). But the ban represented a much more severe blow to Group of Five schools, which rely on the camps to unearth low-profile prospects.
Like myriad other pieces of NCAA legislation, the ban felt like yet another instance of multimillionaire officials and coaches getting their way at the expense of unpaid athletes. The mother of one five-star wide receiver in the class of 2017, Cass Technical (Mich.) Highs Donovan Peoples-Jones, had gone as far as to create a petition seeking to overturn the ban. Recruits were getting shafted, it seemed, because some schools didnt want Harbaugh swaggering through their states with his shirt off handing out dozens of scholarship offers.
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