Don’t expect a head football coach to show up during the evaluation period

The NCAA always seems to change it rules quite often during years in every aspect. It can be about a sport in season but they love to fine tune things during the recruiting process. While I am not exactly sure they make some of the changes, there is one recent rule that is effecting head college football coaches.

During the month of May, when many college coaches are spending the month on the road evaluating potential prospects, head coach will be sitting on the sidelines waiting on campus. The NCAA recently implemented a new rule that prohibits new coaches from visiting high schools in May.

So if you are a top prospect expecting to see many coaches over the next month plus, don’t be surprised when it is an assistant coach. These assistant coaches are still legally able to visit high schools during May (At least right now they can). The question is why would they take this away from a head coach?

The first reason is pretty obvious. When college coaches visit schools, they are supposed to say no more than hello to the prospect. Chances are great that the coach will say more and see if the player passes the standard eye ball test. Because athletes have been saying for years that they were talking to the coaches, could the NCAA really crack down on each and every case?

Instead, the rules still apply that the coaches are supposed to say no more than hello if they happen to run into the college coach. Considering the high school coach sets it up where they run into one another, now the prospect will just be running into the assistant and not the much publicized head coach.

This hurts the head coaches because it limits the amount of contact that they will have with high school coaches. Building these connections over the years have helped many programs win recruiting battles over time. Without that face to face interaction every spring, the college head coach will have to adjust. That may make it harder to build pipelines at high schools that normally send a lot of their Division I athletes to the same college.

What college coaches will do and continue to do in the future is hold more clinics for high school coaches on their campus. While that does not help the fact that they will not get to see the prospect up close, it will help foster the relationships between the high school coaches and the college coaches.

Two articles were used for this article: Click here for the PJStar.com Article | Click here for the Post Gazette Sports Article