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Texas HS Coaches Convention may move to accommodate new NCAA rule

A new NCAA rule passed this year caused the schedule for the Texas High School Coaches Association Convention to get shuffled at the last minute:

According to the San Antonio Express News, the NCAA denied the waivers that it received for the convention. Due to the waiver denials, lectures that were scheduled to be given by football coaches like Texas’ Charlie Strong, UTSA’s Larry Coker and North Carolina’s Larry Fedora were cancelled. Basketball coaches like Texas Tech’s Tubby Smith and Kansas State’s Bruce Weber also pulled out of the convention’s program.

The THSCA wants the Division I coaches there and would prefer the NCAA change the rule or allow waivers. That seems unlikely though. This is from the rationale to Proposal 2013–32, which created the ban for FBS coaches:

By prohibiting attendance at all-star contests and associated activities (e.g., practice, banquets, coaches clinics, etc.) and contact with participating prospective student-athletes, this proposal minimizes the influence of third parties and helps maintain focus on regular and postseason scholastic competition as appropriate sites for evaluating prospective student-athletes.

If that sounds meaningless, it is. The proposal was developed in conjunction with the AFCA Board of Trustees. As NCAA staff noted at this summer’s Regional Rules Seminars, the goal of this proposal was to keep coaches from having to go to events with minimal recruiting value yet ones they felt they had to go to in order to keep up with the Joneses. “We can’t keep our hand out of the cookie jar, so we need the NCAA to do it” was one way the coaches’ attitude was put.

So the bad news for the THSCA is that it seems unlikely the NCAA will reverse this rule change because the coaches do not want to go to these types of events. They also prefer being able to say the NCAA prevents them rather than having to say no themselves. The best course of action for the THSCA is to separate the all-star games and coaches’ convention and hope college football coaches do not get tired of going to that as well.


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