NCAA Issues Interps on Student Hosts, Camp Recruiting, and Tryouts
Today the NCAA issued three staff interpretations of rules in the Division I Manual. Two were not exactly noteworthy, but one could have a bit of an impact although not in the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball.
The first dealt with part-time students serving as official visit hosts, and the NCAA (quite logically) ruled that hosts must be full-time students unless they meet an exception to the full-time enrollment requirement. That ensures hosting stays in line with other athletics activities.
Another reiterated that recruiting during camps and clinics is limited to recruiting conversations. Some school must have tried a relatively creative argument to try and expand the types of recruiting activities that can take place during a camp or clinic. But the NCAA ruled that a camp is considered a practice or competition, so all recruiting is prohibited during a camp, unless specifically authorized by the NCAA.
The one that might have an impact covers medical examinations by professional teams:
The academic and membership affairs staff confirmed that medical examinations (e.g., psychological examinations, eye examinations, hearing examinations) conducted by a professional athletics team constitute a tryout designed, in part, to measure the athletics ability of a student-athlete. The staff noted that a member institution is permitted to conduct these examinations in accordance with permissible medical expenses and may provide the results to a professional sports organization at its discretion.
That means that a medical exam by a professional team would constitute an athlete’s one tryout with a professional team and would need to meet the tryout legislation to be permissible. The athlete would not be permitted to miss class and the entire process would need to take less than 48 hours if the professional team is paying for the exam. Luckily, the NCAA offers an out by allowing schools to conduct the exam and provide the results to pro teams.
This will have bigger impacts on some of the sports where there is a closer relationships between college and the pros, like soccer or baseball. In football or basketball players will likely be declared for the draft and past the withdrawal date before any medical exams are conducted.