Package deals in college hoops: are they back in style?

Back in 2010, the NCAA enacted some new legislation in an effort to do away with the phenomenon known as 'package deals'.

Essentially, a package deal is when a coach hires a person that is close to a recruit in order to get that recruit to go to their school. Larry Brown hired Danny Manning's father to convince the younger Manning to go to Kansas. The Jayhawks also hired Mario Chalmers' father in an effort to land Chalmers. Tyreke Evans had his personal strength coach get hired at Memphis. Scott Drew hired Dwon Clifton to try and land John Wall. And that isn't even scratching the surface.

Here is the exact text of the rule, known as Bylaw 13.8.3.2:

Individual Associated with a Prospective Student-Athlete -- Men's Basketball. In men's basketball, during a two-year period before a prospective student-athlete's anticipated enrollment and a two-year period after the prospective student-athlete's actual enrollment, an institution shall not employ (or enter into a contract for future employment with) an individual associated with the prospective student-athlete in any athletics department noncoaching staff position.

The reasons for having this rule make sense, but that doesn't mean the rule is foolproof.

Take Kevin Young, the former LMU star and SDSU commit. Around the same time -- early June -- that he started to show some serious interest in Kansas, the Jayhawks started recruiting Mervyn Lindsay. Lindsay is a good player -- he averaged 15 and 10 in high school -- but he had no scholarship offers as of November's early signing period and was not ranked by Scout.com. The catch? Lindsay and Young both played AAU hoops for a man named Elvert 'Kool-Aid' Perry.

Then look at J-Mychal Reese, a top 50 recruit in the class of 2012. J-Mychal isn't the only member of the Reese family receiving offers from high-major programs, however. His father is a longtime high school coach in Texas and currently has job offers from LSU, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M, three schools recruiting J-Mychal. If a school did hire John Reese, they would be able to sign J-Mychal so long as John was given one of the three assistant coaching positions at the school.

Jordans Adams, a top 75 player in the class of 2012, committed to UCLA just 12 days after Korey McCray signed on as an assistant with the Bruins. McCray ran the Atlanta Celtics AAU program and had a great relationship with McCray. Missouri is still in the mix for Rodney Purvis because they hired former Louisville assistant Tim Fuller back in April.

Here's my question -- are package deals really all that terrible?

Look, I understand the ethical dilemmas involved. Paying an adult to get a commitment from a kid he is associated with is sleazy and has no part in our game.

But in this day and age, college basketball is all about recruiting. And recruiting is all about who you know and how big your network is. Take Dalonte Hill, for example. He may have been signed to Kansas State because of his relationship with Michael Beasley -- who was going to attend Charlotte with Hill until Bobby Huggins hired him -- but Hill also established a pipeline to the K-State campus from the DC Assault AAU program with which he was affiliated. That connection is a major reason why Hill got a job with Mark Turgeon at Maryland.

Isaac Chew got a job on Frank Haith's staff at Missouri not because of his ability to coach, but because he was once associated with the Kansas City Pump'n'Run elite AAU team.

Its a bad precedent to set, I know. But its also a necessary one.

No coach is going to win with a steady and constant flow of talent into his program.
Continue reading...

NCAA putting a stop to package deals?

News came out yesterday that the NCAA had finally taken steps to end a practice known throughout the college hoops world as "package deals". Now teams cannot hire the coach or a family member of a recruit within two year prior too or after that player enrolls at the university.

If you're unfamiliar with what a package deal is, its simple really. A coach recruiting a player offers a job to a family member, a coach, a trainer, or any member of that player's inner circle in an attempt to get that player to come to his school.

Its been far from an uncommon occurance. Michael Beasley decommitted from Charlotte once Bobby Huggins hired former Charlotte assistant Dalonte Hill to his staff at Kansas State. Mario Chalmers' father was hired at Kansas, leaving the school once the younger Chalmers left for the NBA. Milt Wagner got a job at Memphis riding the coattails of his son DaJuan. And most recently, Scott Drew hired John Wall's AAU coach in a thinly veiled attempt to bring the point guard to Baylor while Rick Pitino hired one of Marquise Teague's coaches, a stud recruit in the class of '11 and the younger brother of former Wake Forest standout Jeff Teague.

While I applaud the NCAA for taking a step in the right direction, one thing that must be kept in mind is that every rule has a loophole, and you can rest assured that soon enough, college coaches are going find it. This rule is, in itself, a response to a loophole that was being exploited.

The other issue is when a program is looking to hire someone specifically for their recruiting connections, and not necessarily in an attempt to land one specific player.

So much of a coaches success is involved in how well they can recruit, and a huge part of recruiting is networking; knowing the people that can get you close to the best recruits in a certain area. Many times, those people are the best coaches in the area - be it high school, AAU, someone running a gym. And if you are the best coach in an area, there's a high likelihood you've coached some of the best players in that area.

If a school like, let's say, Maryland wants to shore up how well they recruit the fertile I-95 corridor and DC Metro area, and they hire a high school coach from PG County that has been around the game in that area for 20 years, will the Terps commit a violation if they land a kid from that coaches former team? Former hometown? Former conference?

The situation will be much more dicey for smaller schools that can't recruit nationally like Maryland can.

Hopefully the NCAA will be able to recognize a real package deal and a real hire who happens to have the right connections.

Continue reading...