Coaches dealing with roadblock
Posted on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/224925/
FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas Coach Bobby Petrino isn’t among the seven Razorbacks coaches out on the road this spring making in-person recruiting evaluations.
Not after what happened last year.
Last spring, reports of Alabama Coach Nick Saban’s “bumps” into prospects in Florida during the evaluation period, when conversations between coaches and recruits is prohibited, spurred his coaching colleagues into action.
The SEC sponsored an NCAA proposal to take head coaches off the road during the evaluation period, which runs from April 15 to May 31, and the legislation is now in effect.
Some in college football refer to it as the “Saban Rule,” though he was not the only coach who has bumped into prospects in the spring.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” Saban said on a recent SEC teleconference. “The way I’ve always done it — and I know I’m one of the people that everybody complains about, but [Florida Coach ] Urban [Meyer ] did it the same way — is I put it upon myself to make all those decisions by going to a lot of places in the spring.
“ Because I wanted to meet a lot of people and I wanted to make those evaluations with the assistant coaches’ input rather than having nine different entities out there trying to make those decisions, and everybody making a little different decision.”
Asked if he thought the rule was directed at him, Saban said, “I would rather not answer that, but I guess everybody can make their own assumptions.”
Petrino, in his first spring with the Razorbacks, said the rule slows down the evaluation process.
“You miss out on a lot of information that you can gather,” he said.
Tennessee Coach Phillip Fulmer said he typically went out recruiting for a couple of weeks in the spring.
“We probably, honestly, were our own worst enemies, with some people taking advantage of the [previous ] rule,” Fulmer said. “When a head coach walks into a high school it almost ends up being an event.
“ And the contact with prospects -- or the threat of that, not everybody was [having contact ], but the concern about that -- probably was the reason they took everybody off [the road ].”
Petrino, who isn’t fond of the new rule, would spend at least part of the evaluation period on the road during his years as head coach at Louisville.
“I didn’t really like [the rule ], because I like being out in spring and you like going and watching practices, watching the spring games and going to the areas where they have spring ball,” Petrino said.
“It feels different. It feels weird to be sitting around and watching video and evaluating and not watching practices. But that’s the rules and we have to go by them.”
The new system will require better communication among the head coach and his assistants who are on the road evaluating.
“We’re just going to have to do a good job of working with the rules and having the assistant coaches be very detailed, and myself being able to watch video here and use up that cell phone with the assistant coaches,” Petrino said.
Meyer and Southern California Coach Pete Carroll also are advocates of the previous system.
“[The rule ] kind of bothers me,” Meyer told The Gainesville (Fla. ) Sun. “I wanted the interaction with the principal and guidance counselors and coaches. I enjoyed it.”
Carroll said the restriction hurts head coaches who typically work the hardest in the spring.
“I don’t want to sound like a jerk,” Carroll told The Sporting News, “but other coaches... they’re just lazy.”
Obviously not all SEC head coaches disagree with having head coaches pulled off the road during the evaluation period.
Former Arkansas Coach Houston Nutt, now the coach at Ole Miss, said he could live with the rule, though he enjoyed being out in the spring.
“I can understand [the rule ],” Nutt said. “You do get to a point where there’s a lot of stopping and signing of a picture here or there, especially when I was in Arkansas. There would be a lot of time wasted, and I can see that point.”
Vanderbilt Coach Bobby Johnson felt the rule was needed because of the difficulty in following and enforcing the no-bump rule.
“Especially when some of the high-profile coaches go out to a high school, it’s just like an event,” Johnson said. “Everyone’s waiting for him. Everyone comes by. It’s just a hard rule to enforce. [The new rule ], I think, is the only way to do it.”
Of course, even new rules can’t keep up with constantly changing landscape of college recruiting.
Saban, according to the Birmingham (Ala. ) News, held a video conference via a Web cam with defensive end prospect William Ming of Athens, Ala., last week. NCAA rules permit a coaching staff to make one phone call to a prospect during the spring, and all electronically transmitted exchanges — like Saban’s Web cam — are considered phone calls by the NCAA.