By Dennis Read

Dennis Read is an Associate Editor at Athletic Management. He can be reached at: dr@MomentumMedia.com.

Of all the NCAA legislation passed in the last year, few items generated as many headlines as the decision to classify seventh and eighth grade boys' basketball players as college prospects. To many, it seems ludicrous that recruiting had gotten to the point where rules are required to limit coaches' abilities to contact middle schoolers. But it has.

"While the previous rules didn't specifically preclude recruiting eighth graders, I think we all agree it's not a practice anybody was proud of," says Bob Bowlsby, Athletic Director at Stanford University. "But at the same time, coaches are under tremendous pressure, and if one of their peers is in on a recruit, they think they ought to be in on the kid as well. It's a difficult balance sometimes."

"If you ask college coaches what they like least about coaching, I'd bet most would tell you recruiting," says Tom Brennan, Athletic Director at La Salle University. "It's so important, but it's so complex and there's so much pressure and so many outside influences. We're dealing with a process that if you could start from scratch and establish the ideal, nobody would want to do it the way we do it now. But we still have to find a way to work within that system."

The "system" has a lot of rules, but it also has a lot of gray areas. And those gray areas--the ethics involved in recruiting--are plentiful. Is it okay to recruit an athlete who has made a verbal commitment elsewhere? Is it okay to befriend club coaches who have shady backgrounds? Is it okay to hire an assistant coach strictly to bring in one prize player?

The only way to answer those questions for your own program is to talk to coaches about them. Ethics in recruiting is a minefield where there's often no clear boundary marking what's safe and unsafe. However, athletic directors can help their coaches maneuver past hazards by opening up dialogue, understanding the issues, and setting up educational programs.

START WITH DIALOGUE
Cynics may question whether there's any room for ethics in recruiting. A February article in The Washington Post speculated that the University of Maryland men's basketball team's fall from the top 10 may be due to Head Coach Gary Williams's reluctance to welcome AAU coaches with checkered backgrounds into his office.

"Nobody has ever accused me of cheating in recruiting in my career," Williams told the Post. "That is a good thing, supposedly. But people turn around and say, 'He won't play the game.' You do it [my] way, and you are criticized for not cheating."

At the other end of the spectrum, no athletic director wants their coaches to break NCAA rules regarding recruiting. As Indiana University, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, and the University of Alabama know all too well, it is not worth the risk. Just one ethical miscue that crosses the line of NCAA regulated conduct can lead to years of damage.

But there are a lot of recruiting strategies that lie somewhere between what the rules allow and pure ethics don't. How do you decide which ones are okay?

Gene DeFilippo, Athletic Director at Boston College, says the solution starts with ongoing dialogue. He talks to coaches not only about the rules, but also the meaning behind them.

"We want to be totally compliant with all rules and regulations, of course, but we also want to go along with the spirit and intent of the rules," DeFilippo says. "We use the terms spirit and intent because I think those are as important as the letter of the rules."

Brennan also brings the mission of his school into the dialogue. "La Salle is a Catholic La Salleian school, with its own set of moral and ethical principles," Brennan explains. "So I constantly tell our coaches that everything they do should fit with the mission of the university."

Bob Ward, Athletic Director at St. John Fisher College, looks to the school's leaders when establishing ethical recruiting guidelines for his coaches. "In my case, a lot of our standards come from the philosophy of the college, and my president and the vice president I report to," he says.

"With our president, I have broader philosophical discussions about what's right from the college's point of view and the importance of honesty and sportsmanship," Ward continues. "With the vice president, I go into extreme detail about all our operations, including recruiting. Some of it is reactive, talking about specific recruits, but much of it is proactive, talking about our style of recruiting."

Pete Boone, Athletic Director at the University of Mississippi, has a background in banking, another profession that faces ethical concerns. He's carried over a rule of thumb he advises his coaches to use when it comes to facing ethical questions. "If you have to ask whether something is right or wrong, then you already have your answer," he says.

At the University of Arkansas, recruiting practices are one of the ethical issues sometimes debated among the athletic administrators who oversee the school's 19 teams and meet on a weekly basis. "Let's say a coach I oversee is doing something that's not an NCAA violation, but still raises some concerns," says Jon Fagg, Senior Associate Athletic Director for Compliance and Student-Athlete Services. "I could take that to our Sport Administrators Group and say, 'Here's what's going on with my sport. What do you all think?'

"For example, we had a coach who was doing a lot of recruiting internationally," he continues. "So we asked ourselves how much international influence we wanted among our student-athletes. Are we expecting our coaches to recruit American kids or does it not matter?"

Ultimately, the school decided to allow coaches to recruit wherever they felt necessary, but required advance approval for any foreign recruiting trips. "We didn't want to limit our coaches and tell them they can't recruit outside the country, but we want to make sure we know when they are doing so," Fagg says.

With all their discussions, Arkansas administrators are careful to consider the impact their decisions will have on the coaches' recruiting efforts. "There are times that we as administrators say 'Hey, you shouldn't do that,' and the coach says, 'I need to. It's not a violation and if you don't let me, you're putting me at a disadvantage,'" Fagg says. "So we need to listen very openly to their concerns. There are very few true advantages to be gained in recruiting, but if you're not careful, you can hamstring yourself and put yourself in a box you didn't mean to."

Boone says the Southeastern Conference has its own set of rules that are stricter than the NCAA's, and coaches occasionally complain their hands are tied as they try to recruit against schools outside the conference. "Our presidents or the athletic directors will then say, 'That may be, but this is still the right way to do it,'" he explains. "If we feel strongly enough about an issue, we're willing to enact rules about it even if it means potentially putting our coaches at a disadvantage.

"But most of the time, the issue at hand is somewhat small in the big picture," Boone adds. "You can get into heated debates about who's right and who's wrong, but it usually comes down to whether it makes a difference in winning and losing. And I can't remember a time when it did."

When deciding exactly where to draw the line at Arkansas, the department uses a combination of consensus and branding to guide the way. "We talk a lot about our brand and what we want University of Arkansas athletics to represent," Fagg says. "So any action, in recruiting or otherwise, needs to positively impact our brand.

"In addition to the Sport Administrators Group, we also have our Executive Staff and Senior Staff that meet regularly, so we have the structure in place to address these kinds of issues case by case," he continues. "If we all agree something is okay, then we can pretty safely say that it won't cause a problem. But if we can't all agree, that's a pretty strong sign it's something we want to stay away from."

Brennan also takes proactive steps to try to keep any surprises from popping up. "Ultimately, I'm the one responsible," he says. "So I require that coaches consult with me regarding important decisions, including who they sign to a scholarship. I also require that coaches do checks on the kids and they have to sign a form that says they've done the proper research and investigation.

"If a coach finds any kind of issue--disciplinary, criminal, or so on--with a kid that they're recruiting, they have to tell me right away," Brennan continues. "That's not to say if a kid was suspended from school we would necessarily exclude recruiting him or her, but it's certainly something that I want to know about in advance."

Dialogue is also at the forefront when a coach does make an ethical mistake. "As a general rule, we bring the coach in, hear his or her side of the story and, if need be, ask why they thought the action was appropriate," Fagg says. "Then we decide if the coach needs more education, a reprimand, or other sanction."

Whatever your specific course of action, Ward believes it's important to have one planned in advance. "The worst thing to do is wait for three or four different problems to arise before you say, 'That's not how we do things,'" he says. "It's vital to have processes in place that show how important this issue is, and make sure the coaches know what those processes are from the beginning."

Brennan tells his coaches that if they do make a mistake, they should never try to hide it. Instead, he wants them to notify him right away so it can be taken care of and self-reported to the appropriate parties, if necessary. "Violating a rule does not always mean someone is unethical," he says. "Sometimes coaches don't understand the rules. I tell them, 'We're in this together and if you hold things back, that's when we'll really end up with a problem.'"

EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS
Along with ongoing dialogue, some schools are implementing more formal discussions on recruiting ethics. While regular meetings to discuss NCAA rules compliance are part of any athletic department schedule, they are only one step in a comprehensive strategy.

At La Salle, Brennan has put together special workshops for his coaches on ethics. They are led by two faculty members--a philosophy professor and ethicist and another professor from the business school who teaches business ethics--and are held at least once per semester.

"These meetings aren't directly connected to NCAA rules--our coaches have heard all that before," Brennan says. "This is a much more broad-based philosophical and intellectual approach aimed at making ethical decisions and judgments. We're trying to get them to think about doing the right thing and understanding what the right thing is. We want to really establish the values and culture of our organization and not just tell them, 'Here are the rules. Don't break them.'"

Brennan talks with the professors beforehand about the topics he'd like to see covered, but otherwise leaves the particulars up to them. "It's pretty basic 'Introduction to Ethics' kind of stuff," he says. "The ethicist will bring up the philosophical questions while the business professor uses examples related to what is going on in corporate America. But the general idea from both is to take the whole notion of why you do the right things beyond 'because the book says so.'"

The benefits are multiple. "For one, it puts a different face up there, and philosophers are usually more interesting than compliance directors anyway," Brennan says. "It also provides me an opportunity to show the coaches that this is so important we're having people from the university who are experts in their field take the time to talk to them."

Brennan believes a similar approach could work on most campuses. "I would advise athletic directors to become familiar with some faculty at their university who have this area of expertise or interest," he says. "Your faculty athletics representative is a good person to start with and can help broaden your points of influence with faculty members."

At St. John Fisher, Ward says the Empire 8 Conference has been a strong ally in his efforts to provide ethics education to his coaches. The league regularly holds conference-wide training sessions for coaches on sportsmanship and ethical conduct, which has put everyone on the same page when it comes to recruiting.

"When we first started these meetings, we had a few examples of people who were maybe talking trash about another school," Ward says. "But I think we've cleaned that up a lot. Every coach and every athletic director knows that all they have to do is call the commissioner or that school's athletic director. In some cases, it's been really quick and you get an apology letter the next day.

"All those kinds of experiences can be very educational for a coach," Ward continues. "You don't always need to fire people. Sometimes you just need some education to move forward."

DIFFICULT ISSUES
With dialogue and education in place, an athletic department has a good foundation for keeping recruiting ethics at the forefront of everyone's mind. But another big piece of the puzzle is figuring out where your department stands on some key issues.

One area that's come under scrutiny recently is the NCAA Division I football practice known as over-signing. The number of new recruits a school can award a scholarship to in any one year is limited to 25. However, some schools accept more than 25 letters of intent, expecting some athletes will not end up joining the team that fall. And if they do, these players may defer their admission until the winter term when they will count against the following year's recruiting limit, a practice known as gray-shirting.

"I think it's a problem," Bowlsby says. "Generally speaking, having kids come in mid-year is not the right thing to do. If you over-sign, then you're probably either going to gray-shirt kids or run some players off the current team to get down to your scholarship limit, and I don't think either scenario is appropriate."

Ole Miss is one of the schools that has over-signed, and Boone says his concern is making sure that the student-athletes know about it in advance. "As an athletic director, I want to know that written documentation has gone from the coach to the student-athletes and their parents that says what we're planning on doing and everything is clearly presented up front," he says. "I let the coach decide whether gray-shirting is a good or bad thing and how he wants to develop his program. I just want to make sure no one is surprised."

Another area of contention is negative recruiting. "We tell our coaches, 'Make the case for our school, and help the young person understand what's good about going to our school. But if they make a different decision, that's their business,'" Fagg says. "'You're not going to get every recruit. That's why you recruit a lot of kids.'"

What about when a competing coach uses the tactic? "If we're recruiting someone and another school says something bad about us, the knee-jerk reaction is to say something bad about them," Ward says. "But we expect our coaches to stay on the higher ground. We've even had recruits tell us that as soon as another school started to dog us, they turned right off that school. I think parents especially are looking for this kind of ethical behavior."

The rise of outside influences on prospective student-athletes has also garnered a lot of attention in recent years. The question is whether it's ethical to work with people who may not be ethical themselves. Brennan believes the most important part of the equation is how the college coaches act.

"It's not always practical to not deal with people you know are points of influence, whether it's a high school coach, summer coach, or parent," Brennan says. "But as long as your coach has the best interest of the student they're recruiting at heart, I think it's okay. They have to deal with whoever they have to deal with. At the same time, they still have to conduct themselves in an ethical way."

Early commitment is yet another hot topic. Although most of the attention has been placed on basketball, Fagg says it's become common in other sports as well. Women's soccer players, for example, often commit as high school freshmen and sophomores, in part because it's become a status symbol.

"Even if it's subconscious, there is a great pressure on prospects to make a commitment if others are doing it," he says. "But how can a 15- or 16-year-old possibly make a sound decision about where they will want to go to school in two years? Then they feel pressured to stick with their commitment.

"To me, it makes sense to say you can't offer a kid a scholarship until they're a junior, but that's impossible to really enforce because someone with what I would call lower ethical standards is still going to do it," Fagg continues. "So I'm not going to handicap a coach by telling them they can't do this, even though I don't like it."

BIG PICTURE
Ultimately, many of the ethical flare-ups in recruiting revolve around the issue of competitive equity. If an athletic director doesn't allow his or her coaches to do something and a competing school does, they have an edge.

But focusing on the competitive aspects of recruiting leaves out its central figures, the student-athletes, Fagg says. At the bottom of his e-mails, he offers a one-line reality check for those involved in college sports: "We are here for the student-athletes, they are not here for us!" Despite all the pressure that surrounds the recruiting process, he believes this applies to all student-athletes, even potential ones.

"I've always thought that recruiting is not merely about finding the best player at a given position," Fagg says. "Recruiting is about finding the best player at a given position who also fits in your institution. If you try to put a square peg into a round hole, then both sides end up being unhappy and it usually ends up affecting wins and losses, or your transfer rate. As the resources and finances involved in college sports have increased, it's easy to lose sight of why we're really here."

Sidebar: HIGH SCHOOL ROLES
While college athletic directors set the expectations their coaches operate under in keeping recruiting ethical, high school administrators and coaches can also play a role. "The more involved coaches and administrators on the high school level are in the recruiting process, the better," says Gene DeFilippo, Athletic Director at Boston College.

"One specific thing they can do is help players understand the rules involved and be there for them if they have questions," he continues. "And if a high school player feels something is nearing a gray area, they should tell the high school coach or administrator and let them handle it. Then that adult should call the head coach or an administrator at the institution involved and ask him or her about it."

Jon Fagg, Senior Associate Athletic Director for Compliance and Student-Athlete Services at the University of Arkansas, feels high school athletic directors can help set the right tone with the way they treat visiting college coaches. "High schools are usually thrilled to have the college coaches there and they tend to be extremely accommodating to them," he says. "But that may inadvertently send the wrong message to their athletes.

"It's really better to follow all your normal procedures when coaches visit," Fagg continues. "Don't give them free rein, even if it's an extremely high-profile coach. If you have a visitor policy, the college coaches should adhere to it. That makes it clear to the kids that the rules still have to be followed."