AU FOOTBALL: New NCAA rule limits spring recruiting
Auburn wrapped up its second edition of Tiger Prowl on Thursday — just in time to start obeying the NCAA’s new twist on spring evaluations that will effectively prevent it from ever happening again.
The NCAA passed legislation Thursday that appears as if it were written directly in response to the Tigers’ collaborative limousine treks across the state.
The new amendment to NCAA Bylaw 13.5.1 prevents schools from sending their coaches in “limousines and extravagant buses” to visit schools during the six-week window for spring evaluations, a time where contact between university coaches and student-athletes are banned.
Schools are now also prevented from sending more than two coaches to evaluate talent at one high school. The previous rule only prevented universities from sending more than seven coaches on the road at once, but did not prevent them from traveling all together.
The NCAA appears to have stepped in right before the “en masse” recruiting strategy took off. For example, Auburn showed up with six coaches to Carver High School in Columbus, Ga., on Tuesday. Georgia brought six Monday and Florida State sent four Wednesday.
Auburn unveiled Tiger Prowl last year and it made an immediate splash. Tigers’ coaches donned matching, flashy Auburn apparel and traveled to high schools across the state in a limousine to conduct spring evaluations. Feedback was positive from both high school coaches and players — even though players could not talk to the coaches — and the national spotlight was centered on Auburn during a typically dead time for football coverage.
“I didn’t think it would go that good,” wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor said last year. “We had a pretty good idea that it would be good press for it.”
Auburn used the same strategies this year, but expanded the Tiger Prowl enterprise, which included a massive Tiger Prowl tour bus and four charitable engagements at four different locations with fans and Auburn coaches. Unlike last year, though, Auburn coaches distanced themselves from the term “Tiger Prowl” when discussing the recruiting aspect of the week, perhaps an indication that they knew NCAA legislation was looming.
The amendment was proposed April 13. Coaches did not take the bus to the schools.
“Tiger Prowl has nothing to do with recruiting,” coach Gene Chizik said on Thursday’s spring SEC coaches’ teleconference. “Tiger Prowl is basically a fundraising event that we do in the evenings.”
Chizik then downplayed the effect last year’s Tiger Prowl had on the 2010 signing class, which was considered a consensus top-five class by most scouting services.
“I don’t know whether that’s something that played a huge part in our success with our signing class or not … It’s all about how hard you work and it’s all about relationships.”
The Tigers are expected to host the second edition of Big Cat Weekend in late May. Last year’s event, which brought a number of the country’s top prospects to Auburn for a weekend that was about everything but football, was considered a major success, as a number of eventual signees first visited campus then. After an impromptu rolling of Toomer’s Corner, though, Auburn was forced to self-report several secondary violations to the NCAA.
“We were surprised by the success and the quality of it and the response from players that were there, players that weren’t there, players this year that want to be there,” recruiting coordinator Curtis Luper said in March. “We were and are continue to be surprised by the effectiveness of it all.”
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