In win for SEC and ACC, NCAA bans satellite football camps

The NCAA announced Friday that it was barring football coaches from holding camps or clinics on other campuses, siding with the Southeastern Conference in its high-profile dispute with Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh.

In banning the so-called satellite camps, the NCAA said the Division I Council had approved a proposal requiring Bowl Subdivision schools “to conduct camps and clinics at their school’s facilities or at facilities regularly used for practice or competition.”

“Additionally, FBS coaches and non-coaching staff members with responsibilities specific to football may be employed only at their school’s camps or clinics,” the NCAA said. The change was effective immediately.

The Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference already ban their coaches from holding or working at camps away from their campuses. The Big Ten and other conferences do not. Some coaches, most notably Harbaugh, have been branching out by holding camps elsewhere — mostly in the South — in a move many said helped attract attention from local prospects.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey was strongly against what he called “recruiting camps” and said the league was prepared to lift its restrictions unless the NCAA stepped in. The SEC is in the most fertile football recruiting territory in the country, so its coaches do necessarily need to venture outside their region for talent. If anything, permitting satellite camps might have led to SEC coaches encroaching on each other’s turf.

The bickering over satellite camps started in 2014, when Penn State coach James Franklin and his staff worked at camps held in Florida and Georgia. Ohio State jumped on board, sending coaches to Florida Atlantic.

Harbaugh took it to another level, going on a satellite camp tour last year that passed through Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Texas.

Missouri coach Barry Odom told The Star earlier this week that his staff and the rest of his colleagues in the SEC and the Atlantic Coast Conference was preparing to join the satellite camp free-for-all if the NCAA had not banned them.

“The SEC has a rule — I’m trying not to smile too much here — but you’ve got to abide by it,” Odom said. “But also, from a planning standpoint, you’d better have things lined up if it passes or if it doesn’t. We’ve worked hard over the last couple months, working on where we’re going to go for our recruiting base, how we’re going to get that set, when we’re going to do it.”

In other NCAA, the Division I Council approved a proposal to clarify academic integrity rules and make clearer when the NCAA should be involved in a case of academic misconduct involving athletes. The council tabled a proposal that would allow NCAA championship events to be held in states that permit gambling on college sports.

This story was originally published April 8, 2016 at 12:30 PM with the headline "In win for SEC and ACC, NCAA bans satellite football camps."