Amended recruiting proposal includes expanded access for early official visits
NASHVILLE -- An extensive spring and summer window for early official visits may receive a green light toward passage Wednesday from the NCAA Division I Council, said Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who chairs the Football Oversight Committee, tasked to draft legislation that will bring
sweeping change to recruiting.
Bowlsby’s committee met for seven hours Tuesday here at the NCAA convention, forging a compromise with coaches, who last week at the American Football Coaches Association convention
unified against a proposed early signing period in June.
Support for the June period is dying, even among administrators. A 72-hour December signing period, to supplement the current February date, remains on the agenda. It will continue to receive consideration from the Collegiate Commissioners Association, which is not set to meet this week in Nashville.
More pressing are the other aspects of NCAA Proposal 2016-16, originally drafted in October to include an opportunity for recruits to take official visits -- paid by the schools -- in parts of June and July before their senior years.
Prospects currently are prevented from taking official visits until September of their senior years.
As part of the compromise negotiated Tuesday by the oversight committee, Bowlsby said, the proposal will be amended to include access to prospects for official visits in April, May, June and July.
The Division I Council, a 40-member group chaired by Northwestern Athletic Director Jim Phillips, is meeting Wednesday to hear of such changes made to the original proposal. Bowlsby is also a member of the council.
Under a mandate from the NCAA Division I Board of Directors, the council is expected to approve details at this convention of an amended proposal. The council would then take a vote on the proposal in April, potentially opening four months in the spring and summer for official visits as early as 2018 -- with or without an early signing period.
“I think there is an appetite for some change,” said Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen, the lone coach who is a voting member of the Football Oversight Committee. “Everybody came to some compromises. I think what we’re trying to do is get to a great starting point -- and what everybody on the committee understands now is the decision we’re making now is not the end point.
“It’s going to be a gradual but specific plan moving forward.”