It's interesting that Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity has thrown himself right into the forefront of the growing battle to deregulate recruiting in college athletics. He's not alone. The Big Ten has already come out and asked for a timeout to the new NCAA proposals established by the Division I Board of Directors, parts of which McGarity is hoping to convince his fellow SEC athletic directors of when he travels to Birmingham later today. It's going to be curious to see what - if anything - gets agreed upon. Basically, McGarity takes issue with three specific proposals: They include: ● Proposal 11-2, which does away with the rule that states only coaches can recruit. ● Proposal 11-4, which places no limit on the amount of fulltime staffers that can be hired to devote to recruiting. ● Proposal (13 5-A), which would do away with any limit a school could spend on both printed and visual material for recruits. You can throw in Proposal 13-3 as well. Proposal 13-3 does away with any sort of limits - time or otherwise - coaches would have as far as contacting recruits, making it a year-long free for all. Personally, this is the one that bothers me the most, and if the conference votes to override any of the proposals put on the table by the Board of Directors, this is the one that needs to go. If you're going to let coaches contact recruits every hour or every day, then you need to have an Early Signing Period, better yet, let kids sign their scholarships as soon as they are ready. Do away with National Signing Day altogether. This will end this business of kids changing their minds at the last minute, plus encourage your higher-ranked recruits, that if they truly want to sign with a school, they'd better jump on board or risk missing out altogether. No, it won't happen, but it's food for thought. Guarantee you'll see high school players start to make quicker decisions. At least Georgia football staffers appear ready for the onslaught to begin when the new proposals are set to go into effect on Aug. 1. All of Georgia's assistant coaches are now on both Facebook and Twitter, which no doubt will be the most-used method of staying in touch with would-be recruits. Back to McGarity. As an athletic director, I can see where there would be concerns on the financial aspect regarding these new proposals could ultimately cost. The NCAA is supposed to be all about "fair play" and "equal footing" but by allowing a number of these proposals to go through, it's going to great an even bigger chasm than what already exists between many in the college football world. Personally, I understand why McGarity would like to see all BCS programs on equal footing when it comes to how much money a program can spend toward recruiting. In his mind, there should be a limit as to how much each school should spend. The question is, how much should that be? It's going to be curious to see what the conference's athletic directors decide. The guess here is, they'll agree to disagree. Alabama has already taking advantage of the new proposals, which are supposed to go into effect Aug. 1 by hiring former defensive coordinator Kevin Steele as its new director of player personnel and no doubt you'll start to see other individuals brought in to assistant the Crimson Tide recruiting effort. They won't alone. In the ultra-competitive SEC, look for other schools to employ similar tactics. If schools do not over-ride any of the afore mentioned proposals, it's going to be up to each school to up the recruiting ante - literally. You won't be able to blame school A if it wants to spend a certain amount of money. It will be up to you - i.e. Georgia - to step up and do the same.
It's not an ideal scenario. But if - as some have suggested - the inmates are allowed to run the asylum - it's going to be up to McGarity and the rest of the UGA Athletic Association to pull out all the stops.
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