The High
School Football world suffered a setback courtesy of the NCAA last week.
The NCAA
voted down Satellite Camps which means that teams can have camps but at their
own facilities not at other schools or other facilities. No FBS coach will be
allowed to attend these gatherings.
A lot of
people view this rule as a shot against Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh
whom has developed and endorsed satellite camps in non-Big Ten areas.
SEC, ACC,
Big 12, and Pac. 12 officials supported this new rule while the Big 10, American, and
MAC opposed this.
The rule
means this summer is that schools like Michigan and other schools must abandon plans
to work summer high school camps unless at their facility.
One specific
camp most known is the Sound Mind-Sound Body Academy which is expected to take
place in June at Wayne State in Detroit and is one of six sites around the
Country. The academy is specially well known to get players exposed to Division
One College Football and teach kids important lessons of day to day life.
Last year the
academy was at Macomb Dakota and it produced a lot of success.
Michigan
State recruiting coordinator and co-founder of the academy Curtis Blackwell
talked to the Detroit News on why this new rule hurts the kids and also
colleges whom will not get a chance to look at the kid they want. “The biggest
losses are for the kids, the under the radar recruits. They get exposure at
these camps. You get schools like Youngstown State, Bowling Green, and Kent
State and they find kids they normally wouldn’t get a chance to see. Kent State
doesn’t have a camp. They go to other camps. If you take them away how do they
effectively recruit?”
Blackwell
has talked to kids and parents whom had booked flights just to see their kids
get exposed. He talked to parents about the decision the NCAA handed down and
they were distraught about the decision, “I can relate to their struggles.
Parents are distraught over this. They don’t understand why this is happening.”
Blackwell
plans to ask the NCAA if it will allow FBS coaches to attend the Sound
Mind-Sound Body Academy because of life skill and classroom skills. He is
hopeful the NCAA will let it happen.
The academy
will go on as planned but for now there will be no FBS coaches allowed and it
is unfortunate for Blackwell that those coaches won’t be able to see what the
State or Metro Detroit has to offer. “These camps keep hopes alive for some of
these kids. They promote opportunity for young people. That’s what we’re
supposed to be about. What do you tell a single mom in Detroit? You think about
what we created in Sound Mind-Sound Body, we created this in a bankrupt city
and we brought 300 coaches here to give opportunities to kids they might never
see.”
Thoughts:
When I look
at this rule, there are some that I like and there are some that I don’t like
of this new NCAA rule. What I like about this rule is that this rule forces
high school students to go to the University camp at the University site and
not set at a neutral site where other coaches can evaluate and recruit players.
College teams can still have their camps but at their own university and with
their own coaches. I don’t like what that this an SEC motivated move and that
it is seen as an attempt by the SEC to prevent other universities from
recruiting on their own turf.
Kids and
parents are not happy about this because now they have to travel instead of a
coach going across the Country to have a camp. Blackwell is not happy because
there a few kids who don’t have the funds to travel to their respective
university and they make an effort to have camps that are closer to their
hometowns so they can witness the experience and potentially get recruited.
In the State
of Michigan there are a lot of blue chip players that are underrated and people
use the camps and academies to get their name out there. In today’s world where
you have social media, kids use these sites to promote themselves and writers
tend to go out of their way to promote them.
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