Diary Series: Jim McCarthy, Asst. Coach - Northeastern

The NCAA recently passed some new legislation that will significantly impact one of our primary jobs as coaches – recruiting.  It often seems like some rules are changing every year, but this year is different as the NCAA made considerable changes to the recruiting “model”.  While there are probably some disagreements about some of the these changes, on the whole, I think most coaches view them as a positive for recruits, current players on our teams, and us as coaches.

Here are just a sample of the highlights of the new legislation:

College coaches can now go to AAU events in April.  There will two weekends in April, where we can attend AAU events from Friday evening, until Sunday afternoon.  This allows us to see many prospects at one time (as opposed to only going to a high school to see one kid).  It allows uncommitted seniors to play in the spring to earn scholarships.  It allows coaches who get a new job to maximize their time and see multiple prospects.  Finally, it allows kids to play in front of coaches before the summer period, so they have an understanding of who is seriously interested in recruiting them. 

Before this new rule, coaches had to wait until July to see prospects unless they saw them in high school.  That put pressure on assistants to miss practice time with their current team, in order to fulfill their recruiting obligations.  Also, part of making a good evaluation is seeing a prospect in different settings.  Now, there will be opportunity to see a kid develop through his high school and AAU season.

The July Period will now be 12 days, instead of 20.  There will be three, four-day periods (from Wed-Sun) in the month of July for coaches to evaluate AAU events.  It used to be two 10 day periods, with a week of rest in between.  This new rule will allow coaches to be on campus when their current players are back for summer school.  This past year at Northeastern, our guys started summer classes on July 5^th and our staff was out recruiting from July 6-15 and 22-31^st!  It's especially important to be on campus as your new freshmen get acclimated to college life.  In addition, this model should improve to quality of player and the “wear and tear” on the prospects.  By the end of July coaches were tired,  kids were tired, and the overall play deteriorated and it wasn’t a productive evaluation.

There will now be unlimited phone calls and text messages.  This is perhaps the most “controversial” of the new rules.  Beginning June 15^th of a prospect's sophomore year, coaches can call or text them as often as they want.  The previous rule forbid texting of any kind, but allowed one phone call per month.  (Emails are always unlimited).  There is concern that kids will be overwhelmed by too many calls and texts, which certainly could happen.  However, kids and families can also have more control over their recruitment and not respond and simply text back that they aren’t interested, which kids seem reluctant to do over the phone. 

This rule also keeps up with today’s technology.  Kids tweet, facebook, and text more than they speak on the phone.  In addition, all these communication methods go to PDA devices.  In the past, an email to a phone was legal, but a text was illegal.  Finally, texting is much more difficult to legislate than a phone call.  It’s easy to document who you called, who you spoke with, if you left a message, etc.  It’s much more complicated with a text stream – does it count if the kid doesn’t respond?  Is there a limit on the streams or conversations? 

Not all rules are perfect, but these changes are significant and it will be interesting to see the effects on recruits, coaches, and current student athletes.

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