NCAA Bans Strippers, Adopts Tougher Recruiting Rules

Among them are a requirement that I-A schools adopt policies banning, presumably as recruiting tools, underage drinking, drug use and sex. Which raises the question, of course, as to whether by adopting this policy the NCAA believes that such activities were legal to begin with, either in the context of their relatively small universe or within the larger context of U.S., state and local law. Imagine if the NCAA really believed that to be the case, and imagine the schools that are kicking themselves for not offering an enhanced "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll" recruiting weekend to previously sheltered farm country football stars. Talk about a lost opportunity!

You can read all about the NCAA's behavioral legislation in today's USA Today.

The NCAA also has placed restrictions on how schools may ferry a recruit to campus and the type of accommodations they can provide. In addition, they've banned customized jerseys and scoreboard presentations welcoming a recruit to a school. Perhaps now they'll go so far as to make their football heroes and basketball stars stand in line for meal tickets and course selection, just like the 4-H and Key Club members, the trombonists, math whizzes and student evangelists.

Hard to tell right now if there are any loopholes. Presumably if boosters are banned from embarking upon similar conduct, the shoe companies are too. Presumably, a shoe company can't offer improper inducements to a HS star to get that kid to go to a school it outfits. Somehow, some way, though, the Sonny Vaccaros of the world will still have their sway, will still find their edge.

Still, it's amazing that the NCAA found it necessary to require its member schools to adopt policies on the topics I mentioned above. Underage drinking? Drug use? Strippers? For eighteen year-olds? What will be next? Policies against assault, breaking and entering and taking things from the school store that you normally should pay for? Hasn't there always been a policy in every school's handbook that all members of the university community should abide by all laws, or did members of the U.S. House of Representatives from states with schools in the SEC tack on a rider to a budget or tax bill years ago making major college revenue sports exempt from laws that would be antithetical to serving up a successful football or basketball team?

These new recruiting policies, believe it or not, should help level the playing field for the schools that go about things the right way. And they should challenge the schools who always have pushed the envelope on this sort of thing to sell their own schools on their merits and not because of illicit fluff that has no bearing on whether the school is right for the kid in the first place. Any coach or school that complains about the new policies should examine whether he or it's in the right business - educating our children. Schools who can't support these policies should become casinos, and coaches who can't honor these policies should become, well, the people at the casinos who handle the high rollers and make sure they're comfortable.

Because if schools or coaches say they can't get kids without those types of recruiting "extras", then they're saying a lot about themselves, their programs and their people.

And none of it is good.

And the kids should stop holding their hands out too and look at why they're going to college in the first place. Sure, the elite kids are going for football first because they need to get their tickets punched, they need to put in their 3 years, in order to get to the NFL (the elite hoopsters, all seven of them, can skip HS to go pro, and that's a luxury that the elite HS football players do not have). But most kids don't go to the NFL, so instead they should look at the merits of a school and how the school can help them get as good an education as is possible. This is not to say that all scholarship athletes hold their hands out; that's hardly the case. But those who do should grow up just a bit and realize that the school they enroll at may prove to be far different from the one that showed them a good time. Once you're there, they really mean business, and, for many, business is all about winning football games and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you.

It should be interesting to see how this sorts out, whether behavior will really change, and how the NCAA will go about enforcing these new rules.

And it's heartening, at any rate, to know that when a college football program now uses the word "strip", they really mean to take the ball away from a running back.

Glad that got cleared up.