- Sep 8, 2014
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Interesting read:
New era of satellite camps about to begin: How we got here, and what it means
http://coachingsearch.com/article?a...about-to-begin-How-we-got-here-and-whats-next
A lot of people forget how Satellite Camp Madness really began.
It wasn’t Jim Harbaugh who started the national headlines by upsetting SEC coaches. It was actually James Franklin in 2014, who quickly set up to take part in camps with smaller schools in SEC territory after he left Vanderbilt for Penn State, because the SEC didn’t allow them.
Then Harbaugh arrived in 2015, toured the country, more schools followed, the SEC fought it and eventually relented. Such a quick boom was bound to get a tighter regulation. After a brief ban was overturned a year ago, tighter regulations are here.
In June and July, schools will get 10 days for camps, as opposed to the previous setup of two 15-day periods, and camps must now be held on facilities owned and operated by NCAA institutions. (There is a dead period from June 26 to July 9)
It’s a rule that’s been welcomed by many college coaches, but not all. A separate rule on high school coaches has upset most college coaches, but the majority opinion of the new camp setup is positive.
“I think it’s a good thing. I really do,” Cincinnati head coach Luke Fickell told CoachingSearch. “Abuse leads to restriction, and that’s kind of what happened in some senses.”
--
Satellite camps had been around for a long time, but they were mostly used by smaller schools or schools in remote areas that needed to get out to players — Mike Gundy had done them for a decade. But when Franklin started doing it at Penn State, it shined a national spotlight, in part because of the reaction. Then Harbaugh followed. The SEC and ACC had conference rules against them and hoped for a national ban.
"I would not be serving Penn State the right way if I wasn’t doing everything within the NCAA and Big Ten rules to give us a chance to be successful,” Franklin told SB Nation in 2015.
In April 2016, the Division I Council instituted an FBS ban. Following an uproar, that was quickly rescinded. Then the SEC and ACC dropped their own rules, opening everything.
Under the old setup, there was concern from coaches on who was organizing the camps, who was paying for what, and who was pulling in the money from them. One recruiting director told CoachingSearch he went to several camps that turned out to lack quality players. The new setup is designed to take out the third-party by keeping them tied to colleges.
“What happened with the satellite camps was really hard for the NCAA to enforce, who as paying, who wasn’t paying,” Western Kentucky head coach Mike Sanford told CoachingSearch. “It’s a lot cleaner on a campus, and it’s a better model going forward.”
But the collateral damage included the properly-run third-party camps. Those have needed to find colleges to partner with this time around.
One result of fewer camps is more of the camps work as “megacamps,” where many coaching staffs work at a single camp. Last year, Samford held a camp that included at least one coach from around 40 schools. Old Dominion has hosted several camps with bigger schools involved, and head coach Bobby Wilder approves of the new rules.
“I am 100 percent behind this proposal for two reasons,” Wilder told CoachingSearch. “No. 1, we can all run well-monitored and well-administered camps when we actually coach the kids. Every time we do one of these camps, our compliance staff is here. We run it by the book.
“If everybody runs the camps these ways, we coach these camps. These aren’t just about height, weight, speed. I’m on the field last year, Jim Harbaugh and I are running around and having a blast last year. If we show this model, and everybody around the country sees it, and we stop getting the conversation about the few that haven’t run it the right way, we’re going to get the perception changed.”
Which teams partner together for which camps can also ruffle some feathers. A year ago, Les Miles invited coaches from every Louisiana college to LSU’s camp except Tulane, because the Green Wave were hosting Texas A&M at a camp.
This year, Tulane canceled a camp with Michigan, and Southeastern Louisiana canceled camps with several other schools outside the state. Was this LSU politics at work? Ed Orgeron said they didn’t push anyone to disinvite schools.
“No. No. This was us keeping Louisiana together,” Orgeron told Sports Illustrated, adding, “Protecting the state of Louisiana is always going to be my job as the coach of LSU.”
Harbaugh didn’t buy it. He also wanted U-M to attend a North Texas camp, but was turned down. Oklahoma will be there.
“It’s definitely a strategy by several football factories to prevent competitors on their turf, the kids be darned,” Harbaugh told SI.
With only 10 days available, schools have to balance how much work is done on their own campus, and how much is done off-campus. Michigan coaches will participate in camps in Georgia, Texas, Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Connecticut and California. On the other end, Fickell is planning eight camps on Cincinnati’s campus.
“It’s really important for us to get kids on our campus,” Fickell said. “We put a huge emphasis on our 300-mile radius. Within that, there’s no reason for us to go to them. We’ll have eight camps on our campus, and we still have two float days to give us some freedom to pick and choose the things we want to do.”
--
Are the camp restrictions better for the kids? It depends who you ask. More camps means more opportunities for kids to be seen, especially the ones whose families can’t afford to pay or travel to each school’s individual camp. When the ban came down, several players spoke up about how a satellite camp gave them a big-school offer they were looking for. Another change with new rules is that recruiting conversations are allowed at camps.
Other coaches have said the satellite camp craze pressures the kids to do more camps.
But there’s one change just about every college coach is against. As part of limiting the hiring of individuals associated with prospects, high school coaches can no longer work at camps if colleges hope to recruit their players.
The IAWP rule was mostly aimed at support staff positions — you can still hire them to on-field jobs with no limitations — but camps are a big effect. As a result, college coaches have had to look elsewhere to staff camps.
“We’ve been in touch with a lot of lower-level college staff,” Swinney told TigerNet.com in May. “We have an enormous amount of prospects that come through our camps. … We’ll use as many of our current players as possible. The problem with that is most of them are in school, so you’ve got class conflicts, and it’s just a lot to manage with the amount of numbers we get for camp.”
On this issue, Nick Saban has not held back his thoughts, going on multiple rants about the limits on high school coaches.
“You can’t have a high school coach do camp. So do we do anything to develop coaching in high school?” Saban said. “Pretty soon they’re going to make it so they can’t speak at clinics, because we pay them for that, so we can’t do that, either.”
There are tons of camps in Texas. Tom Herman has suggested putting a small cap on the amount you can pay a high school coach to work a camp.
“We’ll have upwards of 500 kids for our one-day camp,” Herman said. “In previous years, we’ve paid high school coaches whatever it is, 200 bucks, to come help us coach and manage these kids, and for these kids to get quality instruction, and now we can’t do that if there are any recruits at that coach’s school. … The rule is well-intended, but the NCAA has seem some of these extreme things going on, and instead of attacking the extreme and deal with the other ones that are perfectly OK separately, we’ve attacked the entire system and thrown a blanket over it that affects a lot of high school coaches in a negative way.”
The satellite camp drama a few years ago came down to a simple point Harbaugh often brought up: If you don’t like them, you don’t have to do them.
"You've got a guy sitting in a big house, making $5 million a year, saying he does not want to sacrifice his time," Harbaugh said in 2016. "That is not a kindred spirit to me. What most of these coaches are saying is they don't want to work harder."
That was in response to Hugh Freeze saying it took away from vacation time. But the nature of competition, if someone is trying to get an edge, everyone else will try to follow.
No, coaches don’t have to take part in them. But when Harbaugh went across the entire country and even to other countries, the gauge went from 0 to 60 so quickly that there was naturally going to be a backlash. It’s not a ban, but it’s more restriction. Harbaugh always describes the camps as fun for him and kids. He'll still have his fun next month.
"We did close to 50 last year, and that was a lot of fun,” Harbaugh said in October. “Heck, if every school is doing 10, that would probably be more than what was done last year, so there's a possibility that it's a really good thing. Everybody carries the water. The main thing is that football's being spread, youngsters are getting opportunities to show what they can do.
"Potentially, it's got a chance to be really good, so I can't say that's a negative. The only negative is we'll have less fun."
New era of satellite camps about to begin: How we got here, and what it means
http://coachingsearch.com/article?a...about-to-begin-How-we-got-here-and-whats-next
A lot of people forget how Satellite Camp Madness really began.
It wasn’t Jim Harbaugh who started the national headlines by upsetting SEC coaches. It was actually James Franklin in 2014, who quickly set up to take part in camps with smaller schools in SEC territory after he left Vanderbilt for Penn State, because the SEC didn’t allow them.
Then Harbaugh arrived in 2015, toured the country, more schools followed, the SEC fought it and eventually relented. Such a quick boom was bound to get a tighter regulation. After a brief ban was overturned a year ago, tighter regulations are here.
In June and July, schools will get 10 days for camps, as opposed to the previous setup of two 15-day periods, and camps must now be held on facilities owned and operated by NCAA institutions. (There is a dead period from June 26 to July 9)
It’s a rule that’s been welcomed by many college coaches, but not all. A separate rule on high school coaches has upset most college coaches, but the majority opinion of the new camp setup is positive.
“I think it’s a good thing. I really do,” Cincinnati head coach Luke Fickell told CoachingSearch. “Abuse leads to restriction, and that’s kind of what happened in some senses.”
--
Satellite camps had been around for a long time, but they were mostly used by smaller schools or schools in remote areas that needed to get out to players — Mike Gundy had done them for a decade. But when Franklin started doing it at Penn State, it shined a national spotlight, in part because of the reaction. Then Harbaugh followed. The SEC and ACC had conference rules against them and hoped for a national ban.
"I would not be serving Penn State the right way if I wasn’t doing everything within the NCAA and Big Ten rules to give us a chance to be successful,” Franklin told SB Nation in 2015.
In April 2016, the Division I Council instituted an FBS ban. Following an uproar, that was quickly rescinded. Then the SEC and ACC dropped their own rules, opening everything.
Under the old setup, there was concern from coaches on who was organizing the camps, who was paying for what, and who was pulling in the money from them. One recruiting director told CoachingSearch he went to several camps that turned out to lack quality players. The new setup is designed to take out the third-party by keeping them tied to colleges.
“What happened with the satellite camps was really hard for the NCAA to enforce, who as paying, who wasn’t paying,” Western Kentucky head coach Mike Sanford told CoachingSearch. “It’s a lot cleaner on a campus, and it’s a better model going forward.”
But the collateral damage included the properly-run third-party camps. Those have needed to find colleges to partner with this time around.
One result of fewer camps is more of the camps work as “megacamps,” where many coaching staffs work at a single camp. Last year, Samford held a camp that included at least one coach from around 40 schools. Old Dominion has hosted several camps with bigger schools involved, and head coach Bobby Wilder approves of the new rules.
“I am 100 percent behind this proposal for two reasons,” Wilder told CoachingSearch. “No. 1, we can all run well-monitored and well-administered camps when we actually coach the kids. Every time we do one of these camps, our compliance staff is here. We run it by the book.
“If everybody runs the camps these ways, we coach these camps. These aren’t just about height, weight, speed. I’m on the field last year, Jim Harbaugh and I are running around and having a blast last year. If we show this model, and everybody around the country sees it, and we stop getting the conversation about the few that haven’t run it the right way, we’re going to get the perception changed.”
Which teams partner together for which camps can also ruffle some feathers. A year ago, Les Miles invited coaches from every Louisiana college to LSU’s camp except Tulane, because the Green Wave were hosting Texas A&M at a camp.
This year, Tulane canceled a camp with Michigan, and Southeastern Louisiana canceled camps with several other schools outside the state. Was this LSU politics at work? Ed Orgeron said they didn’t push anyone to disinvite schools.
“No. No. This was us keeping Louisiana together,” Orgeron told Sports Illustrated, adding, “Protecting the state of Louisiana is always going to be my job as the coach of LSU.”
Harbaugh didn’t buy it. He also wanted U-M to attend a North Texas camp, but was turned down. Oklahoma will be there.
“It’s definitely a strategy by several football factories to prevent competitors on their turf, the kids be darned,” Harbaugh told SI.
With only 10 days available, schools have to balance how much work is done on their own campus, and how much is done off-campus. Michigan coaches will participate in camps in Georgia, Texas, Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Connecticut and California. On the other end, Fickell is planning eight camps on Cincinnati’s campus.
“It’s really important for us to get kids on our campus,” Fickell said. “We put a huge emphasis on our 300-mile radius. Within that, there’s no reason for us to go to them. We’ll have eight camps on our campus, and we still have two float days to give us some freedom to pick and choose the things we want to do.”
--
Are the camp restrictions better for the kids? It depends who you ask. More camps means more opportunities for kids to be seen, especially the ones whose families can’t afford to pay or travel to each school’s individual camp. When the ban came down, several players spoke up about how a satellite camp gave them a big-school offer they were looking for. Another change with new rules is that recruiting conversations are allowed at camps.
Other coaches have said the satellite camp craze pressures the kids to do more camps.
But there’s one change just about every college coach is against. As part of limiting the hiring of individuals associated with prospects, high school coaches can no longer work at camps if colleges hope to recruit their players.
The IAWP rule was mostly aimed at support staff positions — you can still hire them to on-field jobs with no limitations — but camps are a big effect. As a result, college coaches have had to look elsewhere to staff camps.
“We’ve been in touch with a lot of lower-level college staff,” Swinney told TigerNet.com in May. “We have an enormous amount of prospects that come through our camps. … We’ll use as many of our current players as possible. The problem with that is most of them are in school, so you’ve got class conflicts, and it’s just a lot to manage with the amount of numbers we get for camp.”
On this issue, Nick Saban has not held back his thoughts, going on multiple rants about the limits on high school coaches.
“You can’t have a high school coach do camp. So do we do anything to develop coaching in high school?” Saban said. “Pretty soon they’re going to make it so they can’t speak at clinics, because we pay them for that, so we can’t do that, either.”
There are tons of camps in Texas. Tom Herman has suggested putting a small cap on the amount you can pay a high school coach to work a camp.
“We’ll have upwards of 500 kids for our one-day camp,” Herman said. “In previous years, we’ve paid high school coaches whatever it is, 200 bucks, to come help us coach and manage these kids, and for these kids to get quality instruction, and now we can’t do that if there are any recruits at that coach’s school. … The rule is well-intended, but the NCAA has seem some of these extreme things going on, and instead of attacking the extreme and deal with the other ones that are perfectly OK separately, we’ve attacked the entire system and thrown a blanket over it that affects a lot of high school coaches in a negative way.”
The satellite camp drama a few years ago came down to a simple point Harbaugh often brought up: If you don’t like them, you don’t have to do them.
"You've got a guy sitting in a big house, making $5 million a year, saying he does not want to sacrifice his time," Harbaugh said in 2016. "That is not a kindred spirit to me. What most of these coaches are saying is they don't want to work harder."
That was in response to Hugh Freeze saying it took away from vacation time. But the nature of competition, if someone is trying to get an edge, everyone else will try to follow.
No, coaches don’t have to take part in them. But when Harbaugh went across the entire country and even to other countries, the gauge went from 0 to 60 so quickly that there was naturally going to be a backlash. It’s not a ban, but it’s more restriction. Harbaugh always describes the camps as fun for him and kids. He'll still have his fun next month.
"We did close to 50 last year, and that was a lot of fun,” Harbaugh said in October. “Heck, if every school is doing 10, that would probably be more than what was done last year, so there's a possibility that it's a really good thing. Everybody carries the water. The main thing is that football's being spread, youngsters are getting opportunities to show what they can do.
"Potentially, it's got a chance to be really good, so I can't say that's a negative. The only negative is we'll have less fun."
