The NCAA is one of the largest sporting organizations in the world and their rulebook reflects that.
The rulebook is so large that most times colleges cannot figure out to properly implement and follow the guidelines, leaving some athletes and schools caught in the middle.
This past Saturday, the Division I Board of Directors took steps to finally simplify those rules, setting some new guidelines to correct some unnecessarily complex and unenforceable rules.
According to ESPN.com, NCAA president Mark Emmert called it a singular accomplishment to make changes that "set a completely new tone" for the rules. He said they will give schools more responsibility and flexibility and "focus the rules on those things that are real threats to integrity of sport rather than things that are mostly annoying."
The rules will take effect on Aug. 1 and some of the most notable changes include the elimination of the amount of phone calls and other private communication, such as text messages and through social media, that coaches can have with recruits. One of the main reasons for this rule had to do with the rise of those technologies as well as the issues related of enforcing the rules.
"There was virtually no debate on it. Everyone agreed that those rules need to be changed," Emmert said. "That was probably the least controversial issue in this whole process."
According to ESPN.com, some of the other rule changes include no limit on the number of coaches who can recruit off campus at the same time. Another change will be the restrictions on sending printed recruiting material to prospects and that athletes can accept up to $300 per year beyond normal expenses to attend non-scholastic events, and receive money to help offset expenses associated with practices and competition with national teams, including tryouts.
"These new rules take a significant step toward changing the regulatory culture in Division I," said board chairman Nathan Hatch, president at Wake Forest. "These changes make sense not only for our administrators and coaches but also for our student-athletes. ... Most important, we now have guideposts, in the form of the Division I commitments, to shape all our future rules."
Emmert said that 25 of the 500 pages in the NCAA manual will be eliminated. According to ESPN.com, "the only proposal that got tabled by the 18-member board, pending further discussion, was one to allow coaches to start contacting recruits beginning July 1 between their sophomore and junior years."
The NCAA has come under criticism in the media and around the sports world in recent years for rules that have been enforced unfairly as well as other guidelines that appear contradictory, including with sponsorships and athletes receiving benefits
In an article by Taylor Branch for The Atlantic, the writer shows numerous examples of NCAA hypocrisy, including one athlete who lost his scholarship due to a technicality.
He also wrote about how the school's make money off their players, while the players themselves cannot.
"The publicized cases have become convoluted soap operas. At the start of the 2010 football season, A. J. Green, a wide receiver at Georgia, confessed that he'd sold his own jersey from the Independence Bowl the year before, to raise cash for a spring-break vacation. The NCAA sentenced Green to a four-game suspension for violating his amateur status with the illicit profit generated by selling the shirt off his own back. While he served the suspension, the Georgia Bulldogs store continued legally selling replicas of Green's No. 8 jersey for $39.95 and up."
For a detailed description of all the new rule changes, click HERE.
