Tag Archives: college sports

Is The NCAA In The Way Of High School And College Sports?

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Are there too many rules and regulations set by the NCAA that slows down the college recruiting process?

Are there too many ridiculous NCAA rules that hurt college sports?

We all know that the NCAA is the governing body of all of college athletics. The NCAA has their hand in high school athletics as well.  I think the NCAA is a little bit slow and outdated when it comes to the modern world of athletics.

I understand there has to be rules to protect the student athletes and I’m really OK with that part of the NCAA.

A college coach making too many phone calls to a student athlete that they are trying to recruit to another college program, I don’t see why that would be considered wrong.  The NCAA has penalized college programs for excess phone calls to recruits; they’ve also penalize college programs for having barbecues where potential recruits were in attendance and again, what’s wrong with that?

There’re restrictions on phone calls, there’re restrictions on texting student athletes, there’s close scrutiny with Facebook and Twitter and I say what is the big deal?

All of these things mentioned are very harmless. I know you can’t give money to high school recruits or gifts to persuade a student athlete to your college program; we all know that’s illegal and wrong.

This generation of high school athletes is totally different from players 30 years ago.  These young players today expect something in return, other than a full athletic scholarship, for their athletic ability that generates millions of dollars to that university.  The players are not blind; they see the amounts of money being made because of what they do on the football field, the basketball court or anywhere else money is being made.

Just about every day when I watch ESPN there’s always a story about the NCAA opening an investigation about a college athletic program.  Sometimes the infractions, like with the OhioStatefootball program, are major and other times the infractions are so small that it makes no sense to even mention them at all. Getting a tattoo in exchange for an autographed football helmet is enough to destroy an entire football program and get the coach to resign.  Why?? How is this a crime? Who, in this entire scenario, is being victimized?

When the NCAA does decide to punish an athletic program it’s only hurting the student athletes who are still there and who’ve done nothing wrong to receive such punish. That is totally unfair to them.  What the NCAA should do is fine these college programs millions of dollars and the coach must be fired or banned from coaching for a particular period of time.  In the situation atOhioState, the university should be fined millions of dollars and the coach must lose his job for a certain amount of years.

John Calipari, the head men’s basketball coach at Kentucky, is the coach who had major NCAA violations at the University of Memphis and at the University of Mass.  But the entire school was punished. It had to give up victories and was put on probation but the coach received no punishment at all.  Coach Calipari was free to leave those programs and get another coaching job without any problems. John Calipari can break the rules, leave the school and the players he’s leaving behind have to serve his punishment.  That is totally wrong and unfair to college athletics overall.

There’s going to come a time where big-time major college programs are going to get sick and tired of the NCAA and form their own league and create their own governing body.  Any time major college football programs can switch to new conferences or even think about switching to another conference makes it a possibility that the top 30 college programs in this country can form a new league.

The University of Texas has a television network called the Longhorn Network. This will create millions of dollars for the University of Texas.  Many other major programs might end up starting their own TV networks so they can have more control of their money which will give them more power to do what they want to do.

I can see a time where there will be separate college conferences away from the NCAA where the players will receive some type of compensation and there will be more modern and updated rules to accommodate this generation of student athletes.

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Four Things I Dislike About Parents Of High School Student Athletes

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Parents have high expectations when it comes to the college recruiting process especially when they’re spending their own money.

I’ve dealt with a lot parents as a college recruiter and many feel that if they can put some money on it the college recruiting process will work exactly how they want it to work. Because of that mindset, many parents of high school athletes have problems and I thought I would develop a list of 10 things I dislike about parents in the college recruiting process.

Ridiculous expectations when it comes to playing time. I’ve attended many high school sporting events and there have been times where I’m sitting there next to some out of control parent who’s complaining about how their kid is not getting enough playing time.  Parents like that find every excuse in the world to find fault with the high school coach. These knucklehead parents will complain about the style of play, the outcome of the game or anything else that seems, in their opinion, wrong.  This is why many college programs don’t want to have anything to do with parents at all.

Parents tell many lies. The college recruiting process sometimes comes down to stretching the truth. In all the years that I’ve been a college recruiter, I have heard some of the strangest lies coming of the mouths of parents.  Parents will tell me or even college coaches that their son who plays basketball is 6’4 and 212 pounds. When more investigation is done, we find out that the kid is only 6’1 and 190 pounds.  Stretching the truth about the GPA is also a problem but many parents do not have a problem with falsifying information because they think it will give their kid an advantage with college coaches.

Parents not knowing anything about the recruiting process. When it comes to the college recruiting process, a huge percentage of parents know absolutely nothing about how the college recruiting process works and many parents don’t care.  Parents would rather let the high school coach be totally responsible for getting their kid recruited for college programs.  If parents knew more about the college recruiting process they could better assist their student athlete and assist with all the many details that are involved in the college recruiting process.

Parents should not talk to college coaches. Parents should be involved in the college recruiting process but there should be limits.  Some parents believe that they are the ones who are being recruited by college programs so therefore, they want to be the ones to place calls to college coaches, take phone calls from college coaches and dominate the conversation with college coaches.  College coaches are only interested in the student athletes, not having some long, boring conversation with the parents.

Final thoughts: I truly believe parents want the best for their kids when it comes to going from high school athlete to college athlete.  But parents need to take the time to understand the college recruiting process and stop blaming others for their lack of participation.  The college recruiting process is not easy and, for the most part, it makes absolutely no sense which is why all parties who are involved in the process need to begin the college recruiting process very early.  Give yourself enough time to try and make sense of what’s going on.  Understand how to gain the exposure, understand how to build a strong list of college programs and also understand that things may not always go your way.