---

The NCAA has officially banned satellite camps. It’s time for the SEC to rejoice as it wins, and the players lose.

---

Sorry if this article sucks, it’s not my fault …

The NCAA is making it harder for me to acquire more talented writers from SEC country to help make it better.

”Now, I’ve noticed a tendency for this program to get rather silly. Now I do my best to keep things moving along, but I’m not having things getting silly. Those last two sketches I did got very silly indeed. And that last one about the beds was even sillier. Now, nobody likes a good laugh more than I do, except perhaps my wife and some of her friends. Oh yes, and Captain Johnson. Come to think of it, most people like a good laugh more than I do, but that’s beside the point.”

And we have a winner. The SEC got its big victory.

And who loses? Seventeen-year-old college football prospects.

Because the world is a silly place and we’re just renting space, for some weird reason the NCAA has decided that satellite camps are evil and they must be destroyed.

So now, football programs can only hold camps on their own campuses and within a 50-mile radius of the school. Coaches like Jim Harbaugh and Urban Meyer can no longer take their talents to South Beach, or Texas, or California, or anywhere outside of the greater Ann Arbor and Columbus metropolitan areas, respectively.

And who loses out on this? Harbaugh, Meyer, and Big Ten coaches to be sure, but more than that, the prospects get screwed – as always.

If you’re a good prospect living in Los Angeles and you have dreams of playing for Ohio State, it’s next to impossible in most cases to scrape together the money and the ability to make the trip out to the campus to be a part of the camp. If Meyer could come out to Southern California, then the prospect gets his shot to show what he can do and, in effect, audition for the coaching staff he’d love to play for.

Now that gets a lot harder, and it means coaches and recruiting coordinators will have to work that much harder – and invites a lot murkier contact – than there would’ve been with the above-board camps that become like mini-combines, at times.

But for SEC coaches – and ACC, too, since the league banned satellite camps as well – this is a huge day because it means it’ll be harder for other schools and other leagues to dance with their dates.

The SEC likes the current system because it’s easy. It’s not that hard for a kid from Florida to get to Tuscaloosa for a camp he really wants to attend, or for a guy from Georgia to go to Tennessee. All the talent that everyone is after in SEC and ACC country will now have an easier time of being captured and contained. It’ll now take a lot more work for the Michigans and Ohio States and Utah States and Central Michigans of the world – if they wanted – to set up shop in Atlanta, Miami, or Birmingham to showcase their respective coaching staffs.

So why did the NCAA do this? Lobbying efforts from the SEC certainly played a role, but more than that, it’s a way to try to maintain control in an uncontrollable recruiting world. Ironically, this ruling does just the opposite. Satellite camps are easy to police. Recruiting visits aren’t, and that’s the next step for all this to go.

You think Mr. Harbaugh is going to take this all lying down? Not bloody likely.

It’s an easy fix. Fine, NCAA. You don’t want Michigan to run a camp in Orlando, or Dallas, or anywhere outside of Michigan? What about setting up recruiting coordinators in each city and other areas of influence for prospects to be evaluated? Maybe a school can’t run a practice, but it can set up an office. Or an “alumni home” where prospects can come to visit. This isn’t going to stop as long as there are forward-thinking minds out there trying to get a better handle on how to get talented football players to come to their schools.

So next year, when you see all the recruiting rankings and the SEC rules the world again, now you know part of the reason why.

And the NCAA will soon be getting a balloon bouquet and a basket of mini-muffins from SEC coaches.