Earlier this month -- less than two weeks ago, to be more exact -- the NCAA’s Rules Working Group recommended that two recruiting deregulation rules be suspended. Those rules were Prop. No. RWG-11-2, which deregulated who could perform recruiting tasks, and Prop. No. RWG-13-5-A, which lifted restrictions on what printed materials could be sent to prospects.
In a release from its website on Monday, the NCAA’s Board of Directors announced the suspension of those rules. A third rule, which would deregulate the modes and numerical limitations of recruiting contacts (i.e. the text message rule), was not suspended and will continue through an override process that ends in two days.
The two suspensions mean the rules will not become active until “appropriate modifications are made” and Division 1 members will have until May 17 to request an override of today’s move. The BOD must review a rule in question if it receives at least 75 override requests. The other 22 rules that were adopted by the NCAA in January will go into effect at the beginning of August.
What those “appropriate modifications” are remains to be seen. The RWG is currently sifting through those options.
In February, Big Ten athletic directors and coaches created an organized effort to get the three aforementioned rules under further consideration. The general concern was that deregulating certain recruiting rules combined with the number of recruits in football would create a frenzy (clearly without realizing nobody gravitates toward someone who texts/calls/IMs them 100 times a day).