The NCAA moves in mysterious ways, often tardy, often after much damage has been done.
Last week, for example, the NCAA proposed an early recruiting signing period (December) for football. Had the rule applied in 2016, Arizona’s recruiting class would not have been gutted by Oregon and others.
But for Rich Rodriguez, his successors and all mid-level Power 5 schools, it will help eliminate many of those hellish late-January, early-February poaching periods when top-25 programs fill their final two or three recruiting spots with players cultivated for months by schools such as Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
Sometimes you wonder why the NCAA is so late to change rules that make so much sense. It will also serve to help prevent 18-year-old ballplayers from being strung along by coaches waiting to see if they can get someone better.
In addition to the early signing period, the NCAA acted to eliminate unsafe two-a-day football contact practices. That should’ve been implemented 50 years ago. But because football was viewed as a “tough man’s game,” it took decades for those in higher education to understand that it wasn’t smart to subject a football player to hours of contact drills each August.
Of all the memories from my high school days, the least positive were two-a-day football practices. I got the snot knocked out of me for two hours every morning and two hours every afternoon. I stuck with it because of the camaraderie and peer pressure, but even as a 17-year-old it seemed excessive.
In one brutally hot August stretch, two of my best friends and Logan (Utah) High’s leading players, Dan Roskelley and Kirk Jensen, tore their ACLs, ending their football careers. A third, two-way starter Dave Shipp, broke his collarbone. All in a week’s time.
We weren’t allowed to drink water until practice ended. At the conclusion of each two-a-day, our coach would blow his whistle and shout “Two laps, on the track!”
It’s amazing no one died. Now, four decades later, college football will protect its players’ health.
RichRod will be allowed to start fall training camp one week earlier, with 29 practices, meaning there will be no need for two-a-days. If two-a-days are infrequently held, no-contact and no-conditioning drills will be allowed in the second practice.
It’s also makes sense for Arizona to build an indoor practice facility for football and other uses, such as football tailgating and whatever he athletic department desires.
I lived in Oregon when temperatures soared past 100 for a week or two every summer, but the reason the Ducks and Beavers became the first Pac-12 schools to build indoor facilities was to get out of the rain. Both programs flourished thereafter.
With an indoor facility, Arizona players working out in June and July won’t have to do so outside when it’s too hot. It has been a significant recruiting disadvantage for the Wildcats.
Times change. Fortunately, college football has seen the light.
