The SEC and ACC got what they wanted. The NCAA announced Friday the ban on satellite camps across the FBS level of college football, which drastically changes all summer plans for college football programs and recruits.
Satellite camps allow for schools to travel off its own campus to host or help in summer football camps. Schools like Eastern Michigan and every other mid-major are actively involved in these camps, as it allows for these schools to evaluate some of the talent that attend these events at much larger schools.
“We have had to make some changes,” EMU head coach Chris Creighton said. “We like every other mid-major in America would spend time at other schools camps. It’s really going to change for the student athletes. Guys are going to have to make really, really intelligent decisions about where they’re going to spend their time.”
The NCAA didn’t seem to take into consideration what affect the ban would have on the student athletes trying to gain exposure. These high school recruits would attend camps at larger schools gaining exposure from mid-major schools in attendance. With that no longer being the case, athletes must specifically attend a schools camp if they want recognition.
The schools are the ones with the money, and it makes more logical sense that they are the ones able to travel to different places to see recruits. It changes things when the NCAA is essentially making the recruits spend their own money to travel to many different camps in a summer, and not getting exposure to a school that finds interest in them.
Many current college athletes spoke out about this on Twitter, stating satellite camps were how they gained exposure from the school they would later choose to attend.
The timing of the ruling was also a disaster, as summer is just around the corner and programs are making plans for what they want to do.
“One of the things we requested at the head coaches meeting at the American Football Coaches Association convention, was that you don’t make a decision in April that’s effective immediately, so that all the planning people have done would just potentially get thrown out the window, and that seemingly is what happened,” Creighton said.
Satellite camps have been around for many years, but have just recently made national headlines because of schools entering SEC and ACC territory to host its own camps.
The ban doesn’t just negatively impact mid-major schools and mid-major caliber recruits, but also a lot of Power-Five schools that were able to go to talent rich states like Florida and Texas to see many student athletes.
“But we got a lot of smart people, we sit around the table, figure out what the rules are, and just strategize what is the best for us to recruit, and provide instruction through our camps,” Creighton said.
