Recruiting Part I: Sifting through the new regulations

With the Carleton Ravens having hoisted the W.P. McGee Trophy for the 12th time in 14 years and Saskatchewan Huskies having lifted the Bronze Baby for the first time, the thoughts of all university hoops coaches are turning to what they need to do to get their hands on the hardware the next time it’s available.

The short answer, in their minds, is recruiting.

Not that they haven’t been thinking about replenishing their rosters all season. In fact, it seems that recruiting has become a 365-day, 24-hour activitythese days (Part II – A growing obsession, coming next week).

But all that texting, phoning, twittering, tweeting, facebooking –or whatever other social media mechanism is hot these days– that is now burning up data plans must be undertaken in the coming year within the confines of a new set of recruiting regulations that have left most coaches muttering some variation of: “Huh?”

Do the new regulations, for example, mean that teams can’t run club programs, a la the Carleton men’s feeder system, the Guardsmen? Or that a university can’t run a summer basketball camp if a prospective recruit is in attendance, unless that camp has maximum duration of 72 hours, or three days? Or that a university coach can’t lend his talents to something like the Canadian under-17 team because that might be viewed as impermissible contact with a potential member of his university team, or give him or her a leg-up on attracting a particular player to their campus?

No one knows for certain, several coaches say.

“There’s a lot of confusion,” says Queen’s women’s coach Dave Wilson. “A lot of this is still open to interpretation.”

It’s unclear how the new Recruiting Regulations, which were unveiled last December primarily as a part of an endeavour to level the playing field and contain untoward practices in Canadian Interuniversity Sport football, apply to other sports such as basketball, says uOttawa men’s coach James Derouin. “If anything these regulations have raised more questions than answers. … For example, how do you navigate the grey areas, like tickets to an off-campus event like the National Capital Hoops Classic between Carleton and uOttawa?”

The answers to such questions, along with more detail in the form of sport-specific regulations, are in the offing, says CIS President and CEO Graham Brown.CIS’ various sport committeesare now determining the “situational” regulations that are appropriate and necessary for each sport.

A good thing, because as the regulations now stand, “they have the potential to kill us,” anotherbasketball coach says privately. “Some of this stuff is so open-ended that they could create a situation in which nobody could have any contact with a recruit except during an official visit. It’s like there was a problem with football, so let’s make basketball and volleyball and everybody else pay the price, even though there isn’t any evidence of abuse in those sports.”

In general terms, the new regulations are seeking to set limits on what coaches can do with recruits, with recruiting defined as “financially assisting a prospective student-athlete with an official on or off campusvisit”; having an “arranged” meeting with the student, his parents, legal guardian, relatives or coaches; or issuing a letter of intent or offering an athletic final award.Contact is defined as “communication” with any of that group “beyond ‘hello’ regardless of where or how the communication occurs.” Communication can include “and is not limited to, in-person, telephone, mail, email, text, social media or other correspondence.”

Does all that mean, as one coach asks, that verbal and written contact (all that texting and phoning)will be limited in the future, except for a periodic nod in a hallway?

That’s not the intent but the final verdict on that, and other issues, won’t be known until the CIS eligibility committee circulates a sort of “frequently-asked questions” document within the next few months, says CIS manager of compliance, eligibility and discipline Tara Hahto. “Right now, we’re still kind of making sure we get all our interpretations correct.”

Among the trickier and thornier issues that the committee will have to resolve are ones raised by coaches with regard to official and unofficial visits, particularly, the extent to which an unsigned recruitcan “practice” with a team, with practice defined as “any form of physical or mental training led by an Institution’s representative that aims to maintain or improve athletic performance.”

The regulations state that someone who hasn’t yet inked a letter-of-intent will be allowed to practice with a team during an official on-campus visit but that such visits can only occur “once every 365 days to a maximum of two visits in the prospectivestudent-athlete’s lifetime” and cannot exceed 72 hours from arrival to departure. Schools can pay for transportation and accommodation costs associated with the visit but not those for a parent, guardian, etc. “unless shared with the student athlete.” They can also provide six meals for the student, parents or guardians over the three-day period, and offer up to three complimentary tickets to a university game or other campus-sponsored event such as a music department concert. Gifts, such as tickets to a professional game, or some manner of apparel, cannot exceed $100. Nor can a potential recruit be given such things as “free membership/access to the institution’s athletic/fitness facilities.” And even once they’ve inked a letter-of-intent, they can’t be provided with “assistance with travel, accommodation, housing, meals, equipment, apparel or school supplies over and above normal team expenses.” During an unofficial visit, an unsigned recruit cannot receive “any assistance, financial or otherwise (except interuniversity game tickets),” or practice with the team.

Players who’ve inked a letter of intent can begin practicing with a team on April 2, which preserves one of the main advantages that CIS institutions have over NCAA schools, i.e., that Canadian programs can essentially offer year-round training to student-athletes, as compared to American ones, which severely limit off-season activity.

Things get tricky when viewed in the context of club programs or informal training sessions that coaches, or their assistants, often have with young, developing players, oft-times spending hour upon hour, over the course of years, helping them to hone their skills.

The new regulationsstate that “institutionally-funded attendance at formal ID camps, evaluation camps and/or individual evaluation sessions” constitute an official on-campus visit. Does that include informal training sessions, unless and until a player has reached “recruitable” age, i.e., grade 12? And if contact is limited to two official visits over a lifetime, does it mean that coaches, or their assistants, can’t become involved in club, community or one-on-one coaching?Will club programs affiliated with a university coach have to be dismantled?

Then there’s the question of summer camps. If a grade 11 player attends a school’s summer camp, does that constitute an official visit? Does a player who attends such a camp after both his grade 10 and grade 11 yearsuse up official visits? And given the 72-hour restriction on official visits, do summer camps have to be restricted to three days?

Many of the issues are still being resolved, says Hahto. “Since these polices are relatively new, you always have to take some time to figure out the working application of them.”

But it’s unlikely that coaches will be prohibited from involvement in club programs, Hahto notes. “We’re not trying to cut people out of good coaching opportunities. We’re just trying to make recruiting fair and effective.”

Similarly, involvement with national teams, such as the under-17 cadets, or provincial juvenile or midget teams, has long been viewed within the basketball community as a form of “community” service as it helps to promote the development of players and the game.But such participation could involve multiple contacts, and practices, with a player that a coach is recruiting, and coaches have long grumbled that rivals offer spots on a national team as inducement to those who enroll at their institution. Does that constitute an unfair advantageand does it mean that coaches will have to discontinue such involvement?

Brown says that isn’t the intent of the regulations and the CIS’ aim isn’t to prevent coaches from contributing to national or provincial programs. “It’s just to create a fair and equal playing field.”

“Our goal is never to limit a coach from doing something really, really cool, like a high-performance opportunity or coaching a select team,” Hahto notes. “All we’re looking for in those situations is that they’re actually there for coaching; they’re not using it as a recruiting opportunity.”

As for summer camps, Hahto says that it wouldn’t count. They’re attending a camp. They’re paying.”

Several coaches say there are also a number of employment issues that the eligibility committee must resolve. The regulations state that unsigned or signed recruits can get a job with the university, or be offered a job “off-campus by institutional representatives,”as long as the job “is secured through the institution’s normal application processes” and the pay doesn’t “exceed the standard compensation established by the institution for similar positions.” Nor can a summer job be offered as an inducement to ink a letter of intent. But, as one coach asks, does that mean no recruit, unsigned or signed, can work a summer camp being run by a university to raise funds for its basketball program, until such point that they’ve actually suited-up for a team?

Beyond that lies the most problematic issue of all: enforcement, which has traditionally been the domain of member institutions. Critics have long argued that the existing self-policing system has contributed to the tiering of programs, particularly within football, and skeptics say that until CIS marries more detailed regulations to a more rigorous model of enforcement, there will always be programs that find enough loopholes to do as they please.

On that front, Hahto says CIS will first be looking to establish some form of monitoring mechanism, such as a “recruiting portal,” on which institutions will have to record things like official visits. “It’ll put a baseline on things. If you’re required to report things, it just gives us the chance to monitor.”

But a baseline is just a start and CIS will ultimately have to create an enforcement arm, Brown says. Enforcement must eventually move beyond just collecting data: “The minute you have rules and regulations … you’re going to have to have some policing.”

“What happens if a school goes outside of the rules? Right now, we have no sanctioning process. It’s all sanctioning on an independent basis,” he adds. But ultimately, “you’re going to have to have a structure to manage” the process and oversee compliance.

“The good thing about it isthat our system isn’t necessarily broken. This isn’t like we’re trying to put out a fire. We have an opportunity to implement it on a staged basis. Everybody is getting a little more sophisticated in terms of how they’re running their athletic programs and departments and I think, along with that sophistication is going to have to come some structure around it. And that’s not a bad thing.”