Good Morning Boardloard

Would you be able to provide some insight into what we we have been told. My daughter has chosen her target colleges. She is in the top 1% of her class and the schools chosen were based solely on her major. She does want to play soccer while attending college also.

We were told that it is very important to look to see if the colleges have recruited players that play her position prior to her committing. For example, if she is a keeper and they will have two to three keepers when she begins, she should look for another college. One college just gave a verbal commitment to a player who will be attending a year prior to my daughter and she is very good, if she chooses that school.

How important of a factor should this play in looking at her targeted colleges? Obviously, she choose them based on her major but she also wants to play and not ride the bench all four years.

Excellent news - so you have the academic listing of your top schools leading the discussion with some of those universities overlapping with your daughter's soccer ability. For any student-athlete, you have taken the right course of action.

Yes, understanding the existing depth chart for returning players as well as new recruits is important, particularly if you are a keeper. As a field player, this is substantially less critical provided you are willing to show tremendous flexibility in the positions you are willing to play. For most freshmen, the goal is to get some minutes in some games as opposed to thinking that you will be able to claim a field position. The key point here is that keepers do need to pay more attention to the depth chart than other position players by default. If you daughter is a striker and will only ever be happy playing striker (as opposed to perhaps changing her style to a midfielder or defender) the same discussion would apply.

Based on our previous commentary, it is extremely important (if playing time is a criteria for your family in choosing a college) that you have a serious discussion with the head coach regarding your daughter's position on the depth chart. Remember that playing time is not allocated based on seniority in class, but rather on ability. The coach should be prepared to have a frank discussion on this subject.

It is very hard to predict what will happen as a sophomore, junior, or senior in college while still in High School for all the obvious reasons. If you are being realistic with your daughter's athletic ability, you can expect that her upperclassman playing time might be similar to her existing club team, but that again is dependent on many other factors.

Our recommendation is to choose your college based on academics first, soccer second. If you have two schools academically tied, you can allow the soccer to creep into the decision making fold more prominently, but remember that not everyone that starts out in Varsity soccer wants to complete the full four years. Appetites for soccer change as collegiate life expands a young person's horizons. Be prepared to ride the bench early, particularly for an NCAA Division I program, and then earn your stripes depending on your progress and performance within the program.

BOTN hopes that some of these ideas will help you in making your final choices.

BOTN Industries has just learned that the modified rules on phone calls was VOTED DOWN on Monday, July 18th. We are collecting the reference material for posting here on BOTN's College Board both from the NCAA itself and various media sources.

NCAA Report : Defeat of Phone Call Proposal (Proposal 2010-30)

Defeat of Phone Call Proposal Makes NCAA Clean Up Harder
July 18, 2011 By John Infante

Proposal 2010-30 was supposed to the start of major deregulation of the recruiting rules. It wasn’t supposed to be about what the actual phone call rules were. Rather, it was about the fact that there are currently seven different regulations for when and how often a coach can call a prospect and their parents. The new rule would have cut that to three. Still not ideal, but a massive improvement over the current system.

After Proposal 2010-30 was passed with overwhelming support, coaches and administrators balked. Many of the comments on the 106 override requests opposed a move toward earlier recruiting and thought the increased workload would give an advantage to schools with larger coaching (and noncoaching) staffs.

Fewer rules slims down the Manual and cuts down on the cost of monitoring since you spend less time training staff on numerous rules. It also sets a baseline rule that could then be tweaked rather than creating a new rule on a sport-by-sport basis. A lot of inertia on basic recruiting rules would have been broken.

Instead we’ll keep the current set of rules. And more importantly, a bigger proposal coming this year that removes limits on the frequency of calls now looks much less likely to pass. That proposal will cut down dramatically on monitoring costs since schools would only need to check that coaches are not calling prospects too early. Proactive monitoring systems would also become much more affordable and accessible for smaller schools.

It’s an issue of priorities. The membership has reiterated that early recruiting and competitive equity are still major priorities. But if extra benefits, agent activity, and pay-for-play are also priorities, that means something has to give, in this case having a smaller, simpler rule book which requires less administrative overhead to maintain and enforce. It also means more resources have to be spent on compliance rather than something else, which is good or bad depending on where you sit.

There’s talk now that just about every rule is becoming untenable. Amateurism, initial eligibility, recruiting regulations, financial aid limits, and staff limitations have come under fire. It’s likely only a matter of time before the concept of eligibility itself is challenged. If we’re going to declare rules failed though, we should start with the little ones that take a lot of time and effort first, rather than jumping straight to core values.

NCAA Division I Legislative Council Rejects Earlier Recruiting Phone Contact

The Division I Legislative Council during its conference call Thursday narrowly defeated a proposal that would have allowed earlier phone contact with recruits in sports other than football and men’s basketball.

The Council’s action averts an override vote on the matter unless the Division I Board of Directors acts differently at its Aug. 11 meeting.

The Legislative Council in April adopted legislation (Proposal No. 2010-30) that would have allowed schools:

•One telephone call per month to a prospect (or the prospect’s relatives or legal guardians) on or after June 15 at the end of the prospect’s sophomore year in high school through July 31 after the prospect’s junior year;
•Two telephone calls per week beginning Aug. 1 before the prospect’s senior year in high school; and
•One telephone call per week to a two-year or four-year college prospect (or the prospect’s relatives or legal guardians).

The legislation is what currently is in place for men’s basketball, and proponents of Proposal No. 2010-30 liked the idea of uniform contact rules for other sports. After it was adopted, though, 106 schools submitted override requests by the June 27 deadline, which not only required the Legislative Council to revisit the proposal (it takes 30 override requests to prompt that action), but that total also exceeded the 100 requests necessary to suspend the legislation.

Of the 29 conferences present and voting on Thursday’s call, 14 retained support and 15 voted to defeat the proposal. Because of the Council’s weighted-vote structure for conferences, the actual tally was 24.0 in support and 24.3 to defeat, meaning the legislation previously adopted is now rescinded.

The Board of Directors will review the action Aug. 11 and does have the authority to resurrect the proposal. If the presidents do so, that would require a membership override vote later this year.

The discussion on Thursday’s conference call reflected the ongoing debate of earlier access and the burdens placed on the compliance community to monitor phone calls and electronic communication. Some conference representatives who voted to support the legislation in April said they had several individual league members subsequently request an override.

Coincidentally, the Division I Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet in July proposed legislation to eliminate limits on the number and frequency of telephone calls to prospects (though it would not change the permissible date on which institutions may begin calling prospects or who makes the calls).

The cabinet also proposed allowing all forms of electronic correspondence (such as email and texts) to be sent to recruits starting at the same time that phone contact is allowed in a given sport.

Both of those proposals – neither of which would affect the time at which contact could begin to be made with recruits, but both of which affect the methods of the contact – will be acted upon during the 2011-12 legislative cycle.

BOTN will now be closing the doors to our 2010/2011 thread. We wish the very best to our recently graduated seniors who will be taking up with their college programs in the next two weeks time. Enjoy the next 44 months of your life as the time will go much faster than you would think!

We are now open for business for latest group of high school freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors on our 2011/2012 thread here on the College Forum's fourth year.