I'm no great lover of the NCAA, but had the experience of going through division 1 recruitment process with one of my kids and learned a lot in that process.

A lot of the rules are about preventing the recruiting "arms race" disparity between super wealthy and successful schools from getting even bigger than it already is. So, for example there are contact rules about when and how college coaches can contact high school kids. People assume that those rules are about protecting high school kids from being overwhelmed with coach communication, but in reality they are also about providing times of the year when coaches can stop focusing on high school recruits and work on their football team. If you look at the contact/no-contact calendar you will notice that many of the "dead periods" line up with times that most coaches are in fall camp, prepping for post-season play or taking time off around Christmas/New Years. Coaches will only stop communicating during those times if they know that other schools have to play by the same rules. Bigger programs have more effective people and tools to manage that communication.

I suspect that the "don't talk about recruits" rule is along the same lines. If you allowed unlimited communication about recruits, you would have big budget schools producing slick, expensive social media videos about recruits and hyping the the school that they are being recruited to. As it stands today, those sorts of videos and graphics ARE being produced by schools but only after the kid signs a national letter of intent. This is important because the reach that Alabama would have in this situation would be WAY different than the reach of Middle Tennessee.


[Post edited by BirdHerd at 07/25/2019 11:35AM]