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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Fear And Loathing: The NABC And NCAA
On Summer Recruiting--(Aug. 5, 1998)

Fear and Loathing On the Basketball Trail.

If Hunter S. Thompson hadn't already done such a good job of using titles with "fear and loathing" in them, we'd be writring the treatment for this story right now. It would make a great film. And we'd have Mike Miller as our executive producer, because no one else in Hollywood could possibly understand the madness which grips some people when they start to talk about the summer open evaluation period. It's just basketball.

AhHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!

There is much fear among the camp organizers, players and scouts, and enough loathing among the high school coaches to last the next 20 years. By then, Steve Lavin will be the head of the NBA, Latrell Sprewell will be the senior U.S. Senator from Montana, and Schea Cotton will have just committed to play at Ball State. . . if he passes the SAT.

Oops. Bad joke and we apologize to Schea for that one, but that's what a month of solid basketball and not much else will do to one's mind. Fear and Loathing. With capital F's and L's.

And so we once again consider what the NABC and the NCAA have up their sleeves for the rest of us, for the kids, the shoe companies and the coaches. And if you are Sonny Vaccaro of adidas Sports, it really doesn't matter because he'll keep doing what he's doing, and the NCAA and NABC will like it or lump it.

So there.

Thoughts of this stuff, and the possibility for change and reform once again were impressed upon us as we surfed around, looking for articles, news and rumors on hoops during these first few days of the summer "dead period." And that was why we were especially pleased to come across the following article from Nando at the Basketball Server, by Alex Katz. We've never met him or spoken to him, but his article contains some great stuff on this controversy, and it's a question that, like most of you, we both fear and loath. See for yourselves:

This may be last July for current recruiting rules

By Alex Katz
Special to the SportServer

No one has a solution on how to change summer basketball recruiting, but coaches agree something has to be done. That premise alone has led coaches to proclaim this July as the last summer, but what that means is still open to debate. "Something major has to happen, it has to," said Delaware coach Mike Brey, a former assistant to Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, who is on a committee for changing the summer rules. "The July as we know it won't exist."

THE CONSENSUS AT THE ADIDAS BIG TIME TOURNAMENT in Las Vegas last week is that change is imminent. The extreme viewpoint has the NCAA and National Association of Basketball Coaches blocking coaches from going out in July, leaving the recruits to play to gyms filled with only family and friends.

The more moderate theory has the NABC and NCAA voting in a limited number of evaluation days, probably no more than 14, instead of the 25 consecutive days coaches get in July. That would mean coaches would most likely venture out to the Nike and ABCD elite invitational camps the first week of July, the Big Time Tournament and probably one other, leaving most of the 28 summer camps without coaches in the stands. The competition for players, now at an all-time high between adidas and Nike, would likely escalate as the two camps grow in importance.

But it's the perceived influence that the summer camps, and specifically the shoe companies, have over the recruits that has led the call for change the past few years. Coaches want to return to dealing with the high school and family, instead of the summer league coach who has the recruit from May until September.

"I'd like to see the parents the primary ones to deal with," said San Jose State coach Phil Johnson, an assistant at Arizona before taking over for Stan Morrison. "There are too many people involved in the recruitment of kids."

COACHES RECEIVE 40 EVALUATION DAYS FROM SEPTEMBER TO MARCH. That could rise to 70 if the cutback comes in July. But even that is flawed. Southern Methodist coach Mike Dement doesn't see how a coaching staff could get away that many days during the school year.

There were overtures that USA Basketball or the NCAA would take over the summer camps and regionalize competition. However, USA Basketball hasn't warmed to the idea of taking on the expense, and the NCAA is hardly in a position to add expenditures with the possibility of a $67 million payout from the restricted earnings lawsuit.

"We're too successful, so there has to be some changes," said adidas' Sonny Vaccaro, who runs the adidas Big Time Tournament and the ABCD camp. Vaccaro once worked for Nike and has been on both sides of the competition for players.

"The hypocrisy starts at the top in college athletics," said Vaccaro. "They can do what they want with the summer and recruiting but to blame the ills of this on the shoe companies, then they must take a look at the coaches who are visiting here who are recipients of our money. There's a hypocrisy there. What you're saying is that the high school kids can't benefit from the shoe company but the coaches can. They're way off base."

Vaccaro said the summer will happen with or without the coaches. He admitted that the competition for players will intensify and if the evaluation period is cut down to a two-week period then it will eliminate other tournaments.

"REGARDLESS, I'M GOING TO DO THESE THINGS," said Vaccaro. Coaches, like Cal's Ben Braun, want all of the top 100 players in one place at Nike and ABCD and then the team concept at the Big Time. But even supporters of the concept want change.

"AAU coaches have too much power and I've been a high school and junior college coach, so I know," said San Francisco coach Phil Matthews. "All of the power should be with the high school coach. I don't want to deal with middle people. I want the high school coach and the parents."

The summer coach's influence grew in 1983 when the NCAA went to a fall signing period. The emphasis then turned to the preceding months May to September when the summer league coach had the recruit's ear. Attempts to eliminate the early signing period have been turned down by the NABC and the NCAA.

"We've got to get back to knowing kids so that you know what you're getting," Matthews said. "That's how you see what the kid's like, his family life. We need to evaluate the kid and see who his friends are. Something has to be done, something will be done."