ESPN article on the obvious: Tampering had come to major college football
Per the article at ESPN.com https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/31477534/tampering-arr…
It was late December, not yet the end of the season, and already the wolves were circling. An assistant at a high-level Power 5 program knew two of his school's best young players -- one on offense and one on defense -- were being actively recruited by other programs. In fact, he said, it was "unbelievable" how many coaches were reaching out to players on his team's roster.
"The cheaters," the frustrated assistant said, "just keep cheating."
...the article then goes on to basically say that the ncaa knows about the issue but does zip enforcement because it would be "too grueling" or something lame. Basically the smaller schools (Mac, etc) at a major disadvantage. Colleges potentially hiring "internal directors of college scouting"...
Really is another pathetic example of why the ncaa is useless... feckless... corrupt...utter failure on even basic enforcement issues, so cheaters keep cheating.
Well since kids are getting one free transfer without sitting out, well this will be the norm.
I'll drop the clickable link right here:
The NCAA gave in to the one-time transfer rule which I never thought I'd see. Of course multi-million dollar and six-figure head coaches would take advantage of this. After reading the article, I don't know what else they can do.
If people can figure out how to get around the federal government with their taxes, of course coaches and boosters can figure out how to game the NCAA system.
IRS is notoriously under resourced. The NCAA is not, they just don’t care
ROLL TIDE
I’m sure coaches have never used back channels to express interest in better jobs.
My general feeling is that this is clearly going to keep happening so either the NCAA needs to enforce the rules or they need to just throw them out. I know the refrain is schools should stop following rules like this if they aren't enforced, but that puts the onus on schools to pick-and-choose which rules seems "real" and which are for show, and that's remarkably inefficient on all counts. If a player can be recruited for the 4+ years he's on campus, so be it, but then at least drop this tampering rule that does nothing but put kids in jeopardy of random enforcement.
Exactly, and to this point it creates a dynamic of further corruption because the NCAA can then decide which programs the rule applies to and which do not. The cash cows, Alabama, OSU, Georgia, etc., can effectively acquire talent however they want (Michigan holds themselves to some semblance of NCAA rules, so it's hard to interpret how the NCAA would respond).
For the remaining 95% of college football, it's follow the rules or deal with the full weight of NCAA punishment. The NCAA is a completely absurd governing body that no longer even cares to create the illusion of equitable governance in college sports, it's more or less insulting to the vast majority of college programs. I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been a coalition of universities banded together to oust them in favor of another or new association to govern college sports. They are truly a worthless organization that creates more inequity in college sports rather than combats it.. which is literally their mission statement.
So what? The kid isn't a slave. A student under academic scholarship at a university is free to transfer to another school at will. The term "tampering" applies to professional athletes under contract. College coaches use agents and their network to search for better jobs while under contract. A kid at a MAC school that is a star that wants to go to a Power 5 school to better himself isn't morally wrong; it only upsets NCAA rule worshippers.
Agree to an extent, particularly in an off season, but tampering should be against the rules. Particularly in-season tampering. There is a reason for this... there is a reason tampering is defined and prohibited in pretty much every major pro league. Can players still talk and joke and 'recruit' their buddies? Sure but this article is talking about an onslaught by coaches and other peripherals during a season...even before a season is complete. Left unchecked it leads to a potentially corrupted sport...
Tampering, or as we liked to call it, poaching, exists in all forms of the business world. Why wouldn’t it exist in the multi-billion CFB racket? Other than potential violations of (nearly unenforceable) non-disclosure agreements, it’s entirely legal in normal employment situations.
Apples and oranges. The business world doesn't mind if there are a couple competitors in much stronger position, while sports leagues depend on a greater level of competitive balance. Even still, the business world does have rules to protect reasonable competition in the form of antitrust law. That this particular form of competitive protection isn't generally necessary in the business world is meaningless to the need in sports.
If one day the coaches were suddenly forced to follow the same rules as the players, those rules would cease to exist the very next day.
Laughing pretty hard at people who don't want college sports "professionalized" but who are upset about "contract tampering" of "amateur" athletes.
Sign them to employment contracts if you don't want them looking else ware.
Not sure what else needs to be said. Cats been out of the bag for a while now regarding tampering, paying, cheating, and its getting more blatant by the day. Just like coaches, sign the kids to a contract, PAY THEM, give them incentives, and if they want to cut ship they suffer some type of contractual consequence.
Free agency in college sports is here, so freakin adapt or college sports (at least the main revenue driving ones) will eventually die as the fans will leave. Its already happening with fans...unless you are those top 5-6 schools that are the same every year since at least the CFP was started. (Bama, OSU, Clemson, Georgia, Notre Dame)
Either enforce the rules or don’t have them. Otherwise the cheaters win and honest programs play the fool.
Michigan recruiting is the car in the passing lane of the freeway going EXACTLY the speedlimit and is yelling at every car that passes on the right "you're speeding, slow down!!!!!"
It’s funny but I was thinking that same analogy. Doesn’t the law account for traveling the speed of traffic?
There is almost invariably one person on I-696 in Oakland County that is doing this, going a mere 100 MPH when clearly the speed limit is Warp 6. I have seen it numerous times with my own eyes and it never ceases to be remarkable.
I-696 is the SEC?
After reading the article the Arkansas coach is absolutely tampering. His billshit relationship comment is him trying to justify it.
Bill Clark, who coaches Group of 5 power UAB, said his team played a game last season in which he knew for a fact that the opponent was actively recruiting one of his offensive skill players by reaching out to his former high school coach to signal their interest.
UAB's schedule last year was: Central Arkansas, Miami (YTM), S. Alabama, UTSA, W. Kentucky, Louisiana-Lafayette, LA Tech, Rice, and Marshall.
Anyone care to guess which team this coach was hinting at?
Western Arkansas?
That was my first thought as well.
I’m guessing our neighbors to the south showed everyone how to do it when they recruited Justin Fields away from Georgia.
Yes, they even went so far as to plant a racist kid on Georgia's baseball team. When OSU goes all in, they go ALL IN.
/S, maybe...?
If it benefits the teams the NCAA cares about ~ read SEC/Clemson/OSU/Oklahoma ~ they lose their enforcement balls.
If it benefits teams outside that group - e.g. satellite recruiting camps that actually allowed players to meet coaches/teams from out of the area without the big travel costs - holy shitballs, they can immediately address the completely unfair, unlevel and completely immoral action immediately and implement rules to ban its unfair practices.
The NCAA is staffed by a giant bag of ulcerated dicks.
#fuckdaNCAA
You'd think Michigan would figure out a way to leverage this new environment to its advantage.
The moment it did, the NCAA would start enforcing the rules.
ESPN: the ncaa farts out of their butts
Story all day on ESPN news
And on 5 hours of get up.
And 13 hours of various other talking heads shows
"What kind of ferociousness is behind the enforcement if you have people on tape admitting to violations and they're still actively coaching?" Drinkwitz asked.
This is a current SEC coach saying this. Granted, it's the Missouri head coach but still. I'm not sure what the analogy is here to a regular job. Is that like calling out the board of directors of the company you work for to a national publication?
Makes you wonder why anyone bothers following the rules.
I can honestly say that I have become disinterested in college football. Was my favorite sport just three years ago but now it lost the allure… I’ll just watch pro… more competitive balance and a better product
If I weren’t a Bengals fan, I would join you.
As much as it truly pains me to say it, I think I may be with you on this. CFB is just flat-out boring now. The same 6 teams are successful all the time and the same 2-3 teams are the only ones who can actually win championships. It would be akin to watching the Lakers or Celtics win a championship every single year for 7 years, with no sign of other teams even challenging to take a Finals spot from them, let alone a championship. Is a large part of my waning interest based on Michigan's downward trajectory? Sure. But even when they are good (2016 comes to mind), it is never enough and the playoffs still look the same each year.
I am not a particular fan of any specific NFL team, so watching for individual player performances is far easier and less heartbreaking. Weighing the two, it is starting to feel like the NFL is more worthy of my time.
I had two thought patterns while reading through this thread.
1) If a person is for "athletes rights" then I have no issue supporting the free one-time transfer. However, you cannot argue this is just another tool that is going to keep top end talent funneling to same the teams over and over again. I don't really feel like writing a novel on all of the reasons why but this is just another point on the list of why there is very little competitive balance amongst even the good P5 programs.
2) My 18 year old self would laugh if I told him that I would basically give College Football the NHL/MLB treatment where I'll tune in to watch my favorite team but don't have much, if any interest, in other games going on. Now, I must confess I will watch Michigan Football more faithfully than a bad Tigers / Red Wings team, but right now the product the NFL has is far more interesting / competitive than college football and honestly it just makes me sad - and that's even with the NFL doing everything they can to prop up certain teams/players.
Can’t blame the kids or the coaches. There is no such thing anymore as an amateur athlete in P5 major sports. It’s all about money for the team, the team, the team. Only question is how to divide the swag between the team members, players, coaches, schools, conferences, and the NCAA. Except for the many alums and other fans there is no loyalty left in the system. The “teams” members lack of caring, except for a share of the loot, is neither good or bad it just is. So guess what. I no longer care about the players, coaches, the major sports at colleges, conferences, and I never cared about the NCAA.
If they aren’t there to take on cases of corruption and uphold the rules, literally what good is the NCAA? Isn’t that at or near the top of their list of included jobs?
Ah, yes, it's 'unbelievable' that other firms want to recruit your best talent. Heaven forbid! Maybe you need to take long look at what you really hold as core values when your first reaction to such a thing happening is to be horrified and make sure someone enforces rules to restrict labor movement and reduce a free market.
I want a job with the NCAA - make a shit ton of money without much effort.
If in fact everyone is cheating as much as the article is suggesting, two questions emerge? Is UM also tampering? And, if they are not, why not? It seems pretty clear that the schools most implicated in cheating in the past and present have the most talented rosters...the old USC teams, Saban and his coaching tree HCs (Fisher, Smart, etc.), Ole Miss' rise, Miles, many of OSU's old guards in Tressel & Meyer (not sure about Day but the culture as OSU would suggest it's likely), Dabo, etc.
All this does is change the recruiting landscape, which happens every 10-15 years anyway.
A coach mentioned that a MAC school shouldn't even bother to recruit high school kids anymore. If they are good, they will get poached by the Power 5. If they aren't good, they are most likely worse than a Power 5 washout in the portal.
Coaches likening it to free agency aren't exactly on point. It's a ONE-time transfer. Once they make that decision, it's the same as signing an LOI--a player loses all of his bargaining power.
Without doing a huge analysis, game theory would suggest you put an enormous focus on high school players you believe would start by their RS freshmen year and pick up everyone else through the portal. At a school like Michigan, picking up guys who are good players but probably don't project go play professionally (too short, small, not quite fast enough, etc.) is a good way to round out the roster--the academic component should play to this group.
One thing that isn't being said is whether the former high school coaches, AAU coaches, etc, are being compensated as "go-betweens". If that is happening then you're essentially dealing with the Dawkins/Adidas crap all over again but for already enrolled college students. And we all can see how much the NCAA has done with the Bill Selfs and Will Wades. But, short of a smoking gun there's essentially no way to enforce anything and there certainly isn't an appetite to enforce anything on the part of the NCAA
I'll believe it when I see it. I just don't see them forgoing the large paychecks from these games.
The rule of tampering needs to be done away with altogether. If coaches can interview for other jobs while under legal contract and getting paid a lot more than a scholarship then holding students accountable for an offense that no one takes issue with in the coaching ranks of the sport should be obsolete. These students should be free to pursue the best opportunity afforded to them at any time in their life just as a non-student athlete that is on a full scholarship is allowed to pursue their best interests. No is telling the science major kid that if he transfers up to MIT that he has to put off his science pursuits for a year. We can’t have MIT hoarding all the science kids, it’s not fair. Nothing in this country is about fairness. To the victors the spoils.
I find the article pretty funny. The sport of football as well as all other sports encourages cheating during the game. Every offensive lineman holds a defensive lineman in a majority of the snaps. How many times a game in the last couple of years has holding been called when Michigan had above average and NFL caliber players on the d-line? Not as much as they were be held, I guarantee you that. How many games did Michigan corners get away with holding receivers? There’s only one game I recall where the refs made an issue of it and it cost Michigan the game. If penalties were called for every infraction during a game, the game would last 6 hours. Coaches tell their players to cheat because they won’t call every penalty. Now these same coaches are acting like they don’t break the rules, and people believe that garbage.