Compliance Corner

Back in the 1990s, a time of cost containment, the NCAA Division I membership adopted a series of proposals over a multi-year period designed to limit coaches salaries (uh-oh) and stop the "proliferation of personnel". 

Limits were placed on the numbers of coaches per team and the number of coaches who could recruit off campus at any one time. And when institutions started sneaking coaches into administrative positions (can you say, "recruiting coordinator"?), more rules were adopted to try to put a stop to that, including a 1994 ban on recruiting coordinators in football, which eventually spread to all other sports in 2006. 

Many of these rules have since been watered down or repealed. We've seen the expansion of coaching staffs in some sports. And the restrictions related to the number of coaches who recruit off-campus at any one time have been eased.

Yet the ban on recruiting coordination lives on. And, yes, I know our conference was responsible for the latest tweak to this rule, stirring volunteer coaches into the mix.

But now, the Pac-10 is sponsoring Proposal 2007-016-A--which would lift the recruiting coordinator ban in all sports--and we think it deserves a look by the membership.

Now what, you may ask, does William Shakespeare know about recruiting coordinators? Well, since he lived about 400 years before the recruiting coordinator ban went into effect, probably nothing directly.

But here's what the quote above means in layman's terms:

"A thing is what it is, not what it is called."

--phrases.uk.org, 2006

So if recruiting coordinators were roses, here are a few other possible names for them:

• Administrative Assistant

• Recruiting Assistant

• Director of Operations

• Asst. Dir. of External Football Operations

• Coordinator of Support Services

• Director of Personnel and Research

• Director of High School Relations 

Take a look around the websites of various college football teams. You'll find all these titles and more (including my personal favorite, "recruiting coordinator").

Okay, so let's give everyone the benefit of the doubt and say none of these people are actually doing recruiting coordination functions. If we believe that names are not the key to all this, what about that "proliferation of personnel" aspect that has been curbed by all this legislation?

We did a little very, very, very unscientific research into the size of the staffs associated with our football teams. We looked at media guides from 1995 and 2006, breaking down the numbers between coaches (CH) and others (O). Here's what we found:

The results:

• 5 teams have the same number of coaches; four teams have more.

• Our 10 teams had 8 "other" personnel in 1995; now they combine for 28.

(Increases shown in red.)

We admit this is very, very, very unscientific. Not everybody gets listed in every media guide. But think about it and look around your campus. Are there more people working with your football program now than there were ten, five, or even two years ago?

Our guess is that there are. And there's a word for that: proliferation.

So our position boils down to this: Is it worth it to have all the legislative minutiae, the interp-fests, the suspicion ("I know they have a recruiting coordinator. I just know they do!"), and the difficulty in complying with the recruiting coordination rules all in the name of non-proliferation--especially since there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that non-proliferation has not occurred?

We don't think so.

Proposal 2007-016-A is headed to the Management Council in January unsupported by the Legislative Review Committee. We think it deserves a look, and at a minimum it (and perhaps all the other related proposals, including 2007-016-B, 2007-017, 2007-018) should go out together for membership comment.

Think about it. Look around.