Jim Harbaugh is angry (rightly so). The social media mob is too (though as per usual, you question if they really know why). Potential recruits are angry (and they should be the angriest). The SEC and ACC are checking the front door peep hole to make sure no one’s gathering in a mob on their lawn.
And the rest of them that fell in line with the SEC and ACC are sitting back happily willing to let them take the bullets for it. Lest they get to close, there might be flesh wounds from the verbal shrapnel.
The “satellite camp ban” has set off a groundswell of opinion, most of it nuclear rage at the NCAA, even though it was the conferences that voted on it. Had they all decided in favor of it, the NCAA, who is the whipping post for all things that go wrong in college athletics, wasn’t going to say, “you know what? No. Our super delegates over rule your vote.”
That’s only for Democrats.
At any rate, don’t expect it to stand in its current form. As with most large decisions or pieces of legislation, it harbored unintended consequences, ones that bother coaches more than worrying about whether or not income-strapped recruits can attend camps (which should be the main issue).
The one that’s getting the most runaround is the fact that now, no longer can other FBS coaches work at their camps, which means you can’t help out your former assistants at the smaller state school and get players exposure to them. And many of those schools don’t have the ability to put on large camps such as an Ohio State or Texas.
Even the hardest anti-satellite camp coaches don’t like that consequence. Coaches help coaches, and suddenly, that power has been neutered in a way.
What’s crazy about it is you had the Sun Belt and Mountain West voting against it, which was classic, “I’m going to create this policy without actually asking anyone affected by it how it will impact operations.” In doing so, it hamstrung their own coaches from getting much needed exposure to a pool of recruits they otherwise wouldn’t see.
Satellite camps have never been an issue in the past. They’ve been going on for years. Michigan’s Harbaugh got the big idea to start going up to the prettiest girls in the nicest part of town whereas everyone else mostly stayed in the suburbs with the idea, and people got mad because the pretty girls in the sun dresses liked having someone new in the area.
It was a revolutionary way of taking an old idea and putting it on steroids, mostly for the good of everyone other than the people who like the geographic advantage of not having to spend as much or work as hard to see more elite players. There’s no nobility in rewarding those who don’t want to work as hard.
Harbaugh went scorched earth Tuesday regarding the decision, predictably, since he was right.
Jim Harbaugh breaks his silence on satellite camp ban in loud way https://t.co/yAq7t39RLbpic.twitter.com/aqTC22KFDF
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) April 13, 2016
Recruits and families have been all over social media decrying the decision. Odds are, the NCAA and conferences didn’t think of the consequences of their decision until people started finding out what happened.
Which is why it won’t last. Typically, when enough people stand up against or for something, it gets changed. As a general rule, people hate being hated, so they do what they can to at least avoid what part of the hatred that they can. The conferences that voted for it (read: all but the Big Ten) probably didn’t think they’d be getting into this kind of bramble when they voted.
But that’s the point … it wasn’t well thought out at all, and something like this easily could have been researched over the course of a year or two and given hard proof as to why it was or wasn’t a good idea. Instead, a knee-jerk vote based on some folks getting their shorts in a wad ends up hurting everyone, even the guys who supported the stupidity.
What changes are made to it remain to be seen. There could be a limit on how many satellite camps staffs can hold or attend. It could get uglier if coaches point out that it was a direct way of taking money out of their pockets, or in the unlikely (but correct) scenario, it gets scrapped all together.
The winners of the decision are being hated, and the losers of it are being supported. When that happens, things get changed. And change, in this case, cannot come soon enough. Just be positive in thought and know that it should be, and likely will be on the way, albeit not a moment too soon.
