NCAA makes moves to clean up basketball recruiting

Image via Wikipedia

INDIANAPOLIS — The NCAA moved Thursday to clean up a college basketball recruiting environment that Big Ten Conference commissioner Jim Delany said had reached the point of "chaos."
The association's Division I board of directors endorsed a series of measures designed to clamp down on the funneling of money to prospects' handlers and other associates, prohibiting schools and college coaches from paying them consulting fees, employing them at camps and clinics and giving them specialized, noncoaching jobs, among other things.
Head and assistant coaches violating the provisions could face both regular-season and postseason suspensions. Prospects could be barred from signing with their schools.
The first phase of the crackdown simply toughens the NCAA's interpretation of existing rules and goes into effect immediately. New proposals — including one that would ban the hiring of "an individual associated with a prospect" for two years before or after the player's arrival on campus — would come to an initial vote by a legislative council in January.
Basketball coaches and conference commissioners had urged the action. "It really provides a very bright line for all of our coaches with respect to the acts and conduct which are now prohibited," Delany said. "I'm not sure that we've had the clarity that we now have."
The sport also is the target of efforts to shore up its players' academic performance, and the Division I board voted support for several measures — one trimming the number of men's basketball regular-season games from 29 to 28 (or 26 plus one exempt tournament), another providing for a gradual ramp-up of practice in October.
Final approval could come in January. Additional recommendations calling for more emphasis on summer school will get more study.
Meanwhile, the NCAA formally launched its search for a successor to President Myles Brand, who died of pancreatic cancer Sept. 16. Oregon State President Ed Ray, the new chairman of the association's top-level Executive Committee, will lead a six-person search committee — all university CEOs.
The panel, which met for the first time Thursday, will engage a national search firm and hopes to have a new president in place by the beginning of the 2010-11 academic year, Ray said. His predecessor as executive committee chairman, Georgia President Michael Adams, has pointed to what he calls "a strong consensus" to hire another university CEO, as Brand was at Oregon and Indiana.
Ray was more noncommittal, saying "my responsibility is to make this search as open and inclusive as possible."
Adams, an oft-speculated candidate, stepped down from the executive committee position several months before the scheduled end of his term but reiterated "my intentions to continue as president of the University of Georgia." One other potential candidate is indicating interest, however: Hartford President Walt Harrison, a former executive committee chairman who has played a lead role in the NCAA's academic reform efforts.
"I think it's very intriguing to think about," Harrison said Thursday. "I also think I've had an unabashed, very public, 11-year love affair with the University of Hartford and I still love being there."