NCAA football panel wants coaches to keep clinics close to home

A panel overseeing college football is questioning: What hath Rutgers coach Greg Schiano wrought?
The
NCAA' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> NCAA's Football Issues Committee wants to prohibit exposure-seeking coaches from conducting camps outside their state or surrounding area - as Schiano has done the last three years in heavily recruited Florida.
The committee, headed by former Georgia coach Vince Dooley, is shopping the proposed rules change to conferences and other NCAA boards, seeking a sponsor. The measure, which ultimately would need approval from the association's top policymaking boards, could take effect as early as next year.
If no sponsor is found by the NCAA's July 15 deadline for legislation, the effort would be delayed a year.
Dooley's committee has drawn up a second measure, also recruiting-related, that would bar NCAA football coaches from attending the growing number of high school combines. The concern is the same: If one coach does it, many or all will be compelled to follow for fear of losing recruiting ground.
"Where does it stop?" Dooley says. "There's no limit once you get into the competition of doing that."
Coaches themselves suggested the action, according to American Football Coaches Association executive director Grant Teaff. "What our coaches have said is, 'Let's don't let the tail wag the dog.' There'd be camps for every school all over the United States. Is that what's best for recruiting?
"There's a pretty strong consensus among the coaches that it's not."
Schiano, whose Rutgers roster includes 27 players from South Florida, has one-day camps in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties and in Tampa. That's up from three Florida camps the last two years.
"Our camps have two purposes," says Schiano, who spent two years as Miami's defensive coordinator before going to Rutgers in 2001. "One, it's to say thank you ... to the communities down there and to the coaches. We invite the coaches to get right up in the drills and listen to the way our coaches are coaching the kids. It's kind of both a coaching clinic and a camp for the kids.
"I'd be disappointed," he says, if the camps were outlawed. "When you have that concentration of your scholarship kids from, actually, three counties in the state of Florida, it's important to us to be able to give back to those places."
Miami's Larry Coker, for one, has taken note of Rutgers' presence in Florida. Miami's offensive coordinator while Schiano was with the Hurricanes, Coker suggested he could conduct similar camps in Texas, according to the NCAA's Dennis Poppe.

By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY