The newest NCAA recruiting restriction

[HannahO]

News broke Friday morning that the NCAA issued a new staff interpretation that clarifies recent bylaw changes as they relate to a scouting/recruiting service. CBSSports.com has obtained two emails that were sent out on the issue, both of which point out that the NCAA has classified recruiting website Rivals.com as a scouting service.
“If a recruiting or scouting service, such as Rivals.com, provides nonscholastic video that is not available for free to the general public, then an institution may not subscribe to the service per Bylaw 13.14.3. All recruiting/scouting services are held to the same legislated standard and we consider Rivals.com to be a recruiting/scouting service… The league coaches were instructed to immediately cancel any subscriptions to Rivals.com and to report a secondary recruiting violation if they were or ever have been subscribed (paid or complimentary).
As you can see by the bolded passage above, the issue is with non-scholastic video (camp/combine footage, etc) being behind a pay wall.
I'm assuming there wouldn't be an issue if all that footage was free, but that's just a bit of a guess.

The academic and membership affairs staff determined that it is not permissible for an institution to obtain video (e.g., live streaming video, recorded video) of any nonscholastic activities, including regular game and all-star competition, or any summer camp or clinic competition, through a subscription fee or other associated fee paid to a recruiting or scouting service. Further, it is not permissible to obtain any nonscholastic video that is available only to a select group of individuals (e.g., coaches), even if there is no charge associated with such individuals accessing the video.

The league coaches were instructed to immediately cancel any subscriptions to Rivals.com and to report a secondary recruiting violation if they were or ever have been subscribed (paid or complimentary).”

read more at:

http://eye-on-recruiting.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/26895818/28365572

The article states that in addition to Rival.com, the classification as a scouting service (and restrictions) would apply to Scout.com and ESPN.com as long as any non-scholastic video is part of a paid service.

 

[FreeBird]

Thanks HannahO, note that this is a current interpretation of an existing By-law. Thus the need to report past secondary violations. I believe the intent is to stop these recruiting services from acting as agents for players. There have been accusations of BCS schools hiring recruiting services at very large sums, with those recruiting services having access to players, and possibly influencing their choices.

Makes you wonder if the NCAA, now headed by someone that came from the University of Washington, may penalize the University of Oregon to the similar extent that the NCAA, once headed by someone from the University of Oregon, once punished the University of Washington.

Paybacks a biatch.

Kids can still post their videos for free and send coaches emails to see them. That would mean the coaches have to do the actual analysis. :shock:

If nothing else, this is entertaining. :clap:

 

[eaglesfootball]

interesting

 

[HannahO]

Thanks HannahO, note that this is a current interpretation of an existing By-law. Thus the need to report past secondary violations. I believe the intent is to stop these recruiting services from acting as agents for players. There have been accusations of BCS schools hiring recruiting services at very large sums, with those recruiting services having access to players, and possibly influencing their choices.

Makes you wonder if the NCAA, now headed by someone that came from the University of Washington, may penalize the University of Oregon to the similar extent that the NCAA, once headed by someone from the University of Oregon, once punished the University of Washington.

Paybacks a biatch.

Kids can still post their videos for free and send coaches emails to see them. That would mean the coaches have to do the actual analysis. :shock:

If nothing else, this is entertaining. :clap:

Yes, it is a clarification of a rule that went into effect in January 2010 and the two emails that are printed in their entirety in the article are in response to a request for clarification of a couple of points. You are, no doubt, correct that it is in response to the big schools paying big bucks to recruiting services but the unfortunate fall out for the little schools with small recruiting budgets will be to make it harder to see video on kids at far flung locations for a small subscription fee. I also wonder about the viability of some of these websites. It should be interesting ... sometimes the unintended consequences of even the best laid plans are the big news.

 

[eaglesfootball]

could make it harder to see video of recruits outside the normal recruiting radius although most coaches put videos of their kids on youtube these days. probably won't be much of an issue for EWU as most of our recruits come from Washington and Oregon anyway.