General

The “Tiger Prowl” Is Dead: Long Live Many Smaller Tiger Prowls

Apr 30, 2010, 7:40 PM UTC

â†µThe NCAA officially instituted a 68-team NCAA tournament Thursday, thus completing a brilliant end-around where the NCAA managed to convince the nation that bloating an NCAA tournament that already lets half the Big East in was a good idea. Either that or the nationwide panic at the idea of 96 teams was totally unexpected by the bureaucrats who brought you the inches-thick, confusing, and largely ineffectual NCAA rulebook. It’s a coin flip.â†µ

â†µâ†µSpeaking of, one of the bevy of bylaws the NCAA officially adopted yesterday is another seemingly arbitrary restriction that will spur a flurry of secondary violations: â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥Although during an evaluation period no in-person, off-campus recruiting contact may occur with a prospective student-athlete, it has become commonplace for institutions to send numerous coaches to a prospective student-athlete’s educational institution. Oftentimes arriving in limousines and extravagant buses, these multiple coaches are appearing at the high schools of the prospective student-athletes just as much to be seen as to actually conduct an evaluation. Many institutions are unnecessarily expending resources in order to have multiple assistant coaches attend these evaluations as a result of the perceived recruiting benefit. By permitting only two football coaches per institution to visit a prospective student-athlete’s school on any given evaluation day, it would preclude institutions from sending a large number of assistant coaches to a school just for perception purposes.â†µâ‡¥

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â†µâ†µThat is: no more Tiger Prowl, no more Jacuzzi-laden limos, no more of this one particular way to up your school’s recruiting budget and reap a whirlwind of tailback recruits. Okay, I guess, but if there’s a better recent example of sticking your finger in a dike only to watch Hurricane Katrina drop by, I’ve yet to see it. “Coaches will do any absurd thing to get an advantage” and “You cannot ban all absurd things” are the first and second Newtonian laws of recruiting. The NCAA should try to ban gravity next. â†µ

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â†µWith this avenue closed off, what will Auburn and other schools do? Fan out in six different limos, in all probability. You can't tell a man how to make an entrance, and if Gene Chizik proved anything last year it's that running around like Big and Rich gets results. The SEC is just as much of a copycat league as the NFL is these days. â†µ

â†µâ†µI guess they had to try, but it’s decisions like this that lead to a zillion silly secondary violations while in no way leveling the playing field. I’d rather see the NCAA repeal damn near everything and spend all that effort spent on monitoring the size of recruits’ fruit cups on bigger and more important items. â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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