If you didn’t think the SEC coaches would bring up satellite camps at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Fl., you were wrong and you were also wrong if you didn’t think that Nick Saban wouldn’t start the week off by reeling in a big fish. No, this is not recruiting related.
The voice of reason for college football, the one everyone looks to for guidance in all things college football, got his week in Florida off to a big start by reeling in a six foot, 180 pound tarpon off the coast on Monday.
On Tuesday, it was back to business when Saban spoke out once again against the satellite camps that are being set up in the south from schools that are desperately trying to keep up without doing the necessary work in recruiting. Later in the afternoon after Saban spoke, it was current SEC commissioner Mike Slive and incoming commissioner Greg Sankey’s turn to address it and it sounds like “game on”.
“We have a lot of crazy rules,” Saban said per BamaOnline. “A head coach is not allowed to go out during an evaluation period in the spring, but you can go have a satellite camp anywhere in the country, bring your staff and bring players to it? Does that make any sense to anybody? So I think we should have recruiting periods and evaluation periods, and the only time that you should be able to have a camp is on your campus. And the players interested enough to come to your camp on your campus, then that should be the way it is.”
He went on to add, “Now, it’s not that way (in other conferences), and I think it’s that way in our league. But let me say this, in general about rules, whether it’s transfer rules, whether it’s camp rules, whether it’s any rules, we need to have the same rules in the Big 5 in all the leagues, all five leagues. If we’re going to compete for the championship and everybody’s going to play in the playoff system and everybody’s going to compete for that, then we need to get our rules in alignment so we’re all on a level playing field, whether they’re transfer rules, whether they’re satellite camps.”
Sankey later said that the conference would introduce a national proposal to ban satellite camps. More than likely, that won’t pass but Sankey has a solution. According to him, the SEC will revisit their policy on satellite camps if it doesn’t. That’s exactly what the other schools in other conferences don’t want. You already have the best conference for college football and now you are going to allow them to set up shop all over the country and improve their recruiting footprint across the nation? That works for me.
I’m willing to bet that if that happens, a rule will be put into place so fast that it will make your head spin. Hang on, y’all. The next thing for the SEC is global takeover.