I light of the OM news this morning, and how they "possibly", but unlikely could land the #1 recruiting class in the country, I got to thinking about how the NCAA could/should create an objective measure for calling in the troops for doing a full scale investigation if a schools recruiting class ranking jumps to much in one year.
There is actually precedence for this sort of action when it comes to the NCAA. When a high school student's SAT score jumps 400 points or more, from the last time they took the test, their score is flagged and the student must retake the test. I also think the same rule applies to an ACT score that jumps 4 to 6 points. In any event, for college entrance exams, there are objective, black and white rules that flag tests that are suspicious.
What this system, ultimately, does is it discourages cheating on the tests because people don't want to face the humiliation of having to take the test again and doing poorly.
In the case of NCAA football recruiting, I believe a similar system could exist, and in the process discourage schools from wide spread cheating. Here is my proposal:
Currently, we have 4 major recruiting networks: Scout, 247, Rivals, and ESPN. Each network ranks players, and while they do differ in many ways, for the most part they are more similar than they are different. As much as we complain about these sites ranking, they do come pretty close to representing the industry's opinion on who the best players are and which teams have recruited the best.
1. NCAA uses these 4 networks to follow football recruiting
2. Once the rankings are final, after signing day, the NCAA throws out each school's LOWEST ranking and averages the other 3.
3. The NCAA would then "Flag" schools who finished in the top 15 of the composite recruiting ranking, and who jumped 10 or more spots in the composite recruiting ranking from the year before.
4. Once schools are "Flagged", the NCAA would have the power to do a full scale investigation without having overwhelming evidence to do so.
This is just an idea, but just trying to find a way for the NCAA to have to objective teeth, and to discourage schools from cheating rampantly. Basically, in order for a team to jump in the recruiting rankings, without getting investigated, they would have to gradually get better over a a few year. The NCAA should just have a rule that flags massive jumps, and allows them to do an investigation without having to have overwhelming evidence.
I think it would discourage teams from cheating rampantly in one year.
This sort of things would have not been plausible 10 or 5 years ago, but the better these recruiting sites get, the more info the NCAA has. They would be dumb not to use it.
Al Capone was caught for tax evasion.
There is actually precedence for this sort of action when it comes to the NCAA. When a high school student's SAT score jumps 400 points or more, from the last time they took the test, their score is flagged and the student must retake the test. I also think the same rule applies to an ACT score that jumps 4 to 6 points. In any event, for college entrance exams, there are objective, black and white rules that flag tests that are suspicious.
What this system, ultimately, does is it discourages cheating on the tests because people don't want to face the humiliation of having to take the test again and doing poorly.
In the case of NCAA football recruiting, I believe a similar system could exist, and in the process discourage schools from wide spread cheating. Here is my proposal:
Currently, we have 4 major recruiting networks: Scout, 247, Rivals, and ESPN. Each network ranks players, and while they do differ in many ways, for the most part they are more similar than they are different. As much as we complain about these sites ranking, they do come pretty close to representing the industry's opinion on who the best players are and which teams have recruited the best.
1. NCAA uses these 4 networks to follow football recruiting
2. Once the rankings are final, after signing day, the NCAA throws out each school's LOWEST ranking and averages the other 3.
3. The NCAA would then "Flag" schools who finished in the top 15 of the composite recruiting ranking, and who jumped 10 or more spots in the composite recruiting ranking from the year before.
4. Once schools are "Flagged", the NCAA would have the power to do a full scale investigation without having overwhelming evidence to do so.
This is just an idea, but just trying to find a way for the NCAA to have to objective teeth, and to discourage schools from cheating rampantly. Basically, in order for a team to jump in the recruiting rankings, without getting investigated, they would have to gradually get better over a a few year. The NCAA should just have a rule that flags massive jumps, and allows them to do an investigation without having to have overwhelming evidence.
I think it would discourage teams from cheating rampantly in one year.
This sort of things would have not been plausible 10 or 5 years ago, but the better these recruiting sites get, the more info the NCAA has. They would be dumb not to use it.
Al Capone was caught for tax evasion.
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