The SEC is the most successful conference in college sports’ most lucrative sport, so when it recommends changes to the college football world, the shock can be seismic. And, according to CBS Sports’s Eye on Recruiting blog, the conference is now suggesting the NCAA make host of recruiting changes.
SEC Proposes Major Recruiting Changes To NCAA, Elimination Of 7-On-7 Football
According to a letter received by Eye on Recruiting’s Bryan Fischer, the SEC is recommending a number of changes, including:
- Permitting college coaches to text with recruits, instead of being limited to email and Facebook messaging
- Permitting coaches to field incoming calls from recruits’ families and coaches, rather than just recruits
- Permitting coaches and administrators to accept follow and friend requests on Twitter and Facebook from recruits without running them by compliance
- Redefining the current recruiting cycle, to include moving up the window for off-campus contact with recruits and permitting earlier official visits
- Banning 7-on-7 football and other “non-scholastic” football from college campuses
All that may seem radical, but the SEC’s changes can mostly be explained in terms of trying to lighten compliance departments’ loads by taking machetes to much of the NCAA’s red tape.
Allowing coaches more avenues to contact recruits and authorizing more people to contact coaches on a recruit's behalf may seem like adding more cooks to the kitchen, but it's also something that might greatly reduce compliance requirements, not to mention give recruits more input and a better chance to ascertain where they should attend school.
Similarly, making recruiting windows longer and more open could give recruits a better chance to get a handle on where they should go, and would reduce the threat of illicit contact by making it easier for coaches to make their full cases.
Essentially, this amounts to a pitch for significant deregulation of college football recruiting, with the added idea of banning the shadowy world of "non-scholastic" football that college football coaches fear will turn into something resembling the murky AAU basketball circuit. Those are sweeping changes, but if any conference has the weight to make them happen, it's the SEC.
For more on the SEC, visit SB Nation's Team Speed Kills.
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