The unofficial rules of recruiting are officially dumb.
Dean Smith had a habit of finding methods that were in the gray area, use them to his advantage and wait for enough rival coaches to complain the NCAA made whatever he did against the rules.
Mack Brown and Carolina football are blowing all the other state schools out of the water for good reason. They are locking down the borders in a recruiting epidemic that is making their rivals sick.
Sure, UNC’s spring game was on TV, which had to chap the butts of other coaches practicing for the season in virtual and media anonymity. And, sure, Brown was with ESPN for five years before coming back, so the spring game wound up on the ACC Network.
But residual effects were even more maddening to opponents. Reports were that dozens of Carolina future prospects came to the game during a recruiting dead period that will last until June. Certainly, there was no rule against that; how can the NCAA police a public scrimmage?
But, judging from all the selfies on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter showing those “unofficial” visitors with Ken Stadium blue in the background and hashtags galore of “#GoHeels,” it was an official win for the Tar Heels. Coaches will complain, but how can they control who’s on TV and who comes to scrimmage games?
There is another apparent rule about unofficial visits that Brown mentioned in his last spring practice press conference, while he and his wife Sally were moving into their completely renovated home in the historic district of downtown Chapel Hill.
Just before signing off ZOOM, Brown mentioned that they would live .98 of a mile from the UNC football complex. Dabo Swinney is among other coaches who build or buy less than a mile away.
What’s the big deal with that? Well, there is an imbecilic rule that coaches who live closer than a mile from their office can have recruits over to their homes when they make unofficial visits to schools.
Unscheduled, uninvited or on-their own recruits shouldn’t be unofficially entertained by coaches, since that sort of makes it official. What about coaches who live more than a mile away? Is that fair?
Little wonder that the ABC crowd is up in arms!
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As dead as the newspaper industry is, I wish you were too. You are so bad at writing I don’t understand how your name makes it work Chapelboro’s time to pay you. You provide zero value in your columns and I’m honestly just thankful you didn’t ruin another coaching search. Although maybe that meant you would’ve stopped writing here. I just absolutely don’t understand how one person has failed upward like you have in life.