On the NCAA hoops changes

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Reactions to the Thursday decisions by the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors that will impact the college basketball scene:

• Conferences will have the option on voting to add $2,000 “spending money” to an athlete’s annual scholarship package.

It’s hard to find fault helping athletes navigate the “true cost of attendance” while attending class and playing sports – assuming a healthy portion of that 2K does not go to, say, iPhones, tattoo parlors or down payments on sweet rides.

But it does serve to create an even wider gap between the “haves” (aka, BCS members) and the (relative) “half-nots” (athletic departments from conferences not wading knee-deep in BCS and mega-media rights contracts cash) that can’t afford the $2,000 bump all male and female scholarship athletes would get.

It’s already tough enough for the programs from the “non-power conferences” to recruit, head-up, against the upper-tier (BCS) membership programs.

This ruling has just given athletes 2,000 more reasons to pick a “have” when it comes time to sign a national letter of intent.

• Conferences will have the option of guaranteeing grant-in-aids (scholarship) to athletes for multiple years, amending the current “one-year, renewable” policy.

I have no problem with that. Some coaches do nudge (or shove) athletes out the door by not renewing scholarships when the athlete doesn’t turn out to be quite as productive or efficient as had been anticipated when he or she was recruited.

• I have no problem with the implementation of tougher academic requirements – for incoming athletes, as well as cumulatively for teams. Failure to meet the latter would result in loss of scholarships and a ban from post-season play. The second part of that has particular bite.
• The “recruiting model” also changed for basketball.

One transformation was in allowing NCAA coaches to have “unlimited” telephone calls, text messages and messages via “social media” websites (most notably Facebook) to a potential recruit after June 15 of his sophomore year in high school.

Again, I’m all for anything that might help coaches and recruits develop more in-depth relationships that could lead to sounder decisions – by both coaches and athletes – when it comes to offering and accepting scholarships.

But didn’t the NCAA once eliminate texting and limit phone calls to one per week to keep athletes from being texted and called at all hours by gosh-only-knows-how-many recruiters?

Other alterations:

Juniors can begin making “official” (paid by the hosting program) visits, along with parents or two “guardians” after Jan. 1. That’s a good one and should eliminate the eyebrow raising that usually accompanies news of current “unofficial” visits.

And, after several springs of April as a “non-evaluation” month (at least in terms of “non-scholastic-sponsored events”), coaches have four days to evaluate players in travel-ball events in the month.

But the 20 days in July (in two 10-day increments) that were available for evaluation at camps and tournaments were lopped to 12 – in three four-day increments.

That’s more than enough time for the upper-tier programs, which narrow their list of potential recruits fairly quickly, since they usually only recruit the top-level prospects and don’t need quite as in-depth of evaluations.

But coaches at the mid- to low-major programs usually are evaluating a larger pools of prospects whose potential aren’t always so clear cut and need the extra time to make sound recruiting decisions. So this could hurt them.