Division I council introduces changes to basketball recruiting process

The Division I Council introduced several proposals on Wednesday that could potentially affect college basketball recruiting and affect it in a big way. If passed, these measures are sure to change plans for many college basketball coaches and college basketball prospects across the country.

The NCAA’s press release on Wednesday laid out the proposals for the 2021-2022 cycle:

1. Reduce the number of recruiting person days in men’s basketball from 130 to 100.
2. Allow men’s basketball coaching staffs to prerecord messages for banquets attended by prospective student-athletes, with some restrictions.
3. Reduce the number of official visits a future men’s basketball student-athlete can take from five to three during each of the three periods; junior year of high school, senior year of high school, and postgraduate. The length of the official visits also would be reduced to 36 hours from 48 hours. The Council introduced similar proposals for women’s basketball earlier this year. Committee members believe many student athletes are taking official visits because they can and not because they intend to attend a school.

In the press release, its noted that the earliest the NCAA will vote on these proposals is January 2022.

Definition of recruiting person days

Recruiting person days: “a recruiting-person day is defined as one coach engaged in an off-campus recruiting activity of a prospective student-athlete, including a prospective student-athlete who has signed a National Letter of Intent (or the institution’s written offer of admission and/or financial aid), on one day (12:01 a.m. to midnight); two coaches engaged in recruiting activities on the same day shall use two recruiting-person days. Each day of a tournament or tier of a tournament in which a coach engages in off-campus evaluation activity shall count as a separate recruiting-person day.”

Reducing the number of visits would be bad for college basketball

A number of the rules above the NCAA has proposed above will just be bad for college basketball. The reduction of the number of the visits and the time spent on visits is bound to anger many college basketball coaches and players around the country. How is a coach supposed to figure out if a player is the right fit for their program with the amount of time they can spend together getting chopped down from 48 to 36 hours?

Furthermore, college basketball prospects won’t like these rules either, because it makes it more difficult for them to decide which program is the best fit for them. Reducing the hours and visits doesn’t make a lot of sense, from a coach and student athlete perspective.

Reducing the number of recruiting person days is not good for college basketball, either

The NCAA reducing the amount of time college coaches can evaluate players is another bad idea for college basketball. There are already such limitations placed on coaches in terms of when they can and cannot evaluate prospects. College coaches need to get a feel for prospects in the evaluation process and see how they handle different settings in different games. If they don’t want to spend the extra time, evaluating, fine.

But reducing the amount of time, once again, reduces the amount of time a coach can spend watching players to make sure they are proper fits for their program. It also offers less opportunities for players to perform in front of coaches to land scholarships.