NJSIAA cracks down on illegal recruitment practices for basketball and football

In an effort to curb illegal, off-season practices that are aimed at recruiting, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s Executive Committee adopted new rules Wednesday that must be followed during the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball and football evaluation periods in the fall and spring, respectively.

NJSIAA executive director Colleen Maguire said these sessions have recently taken on the air of being glorified spring football or fall basketball practices and that coaches have tried to take “more and more leniencies to circumvent the rules a little bit more.”

“These periods of time are not spring football practices or fall ball for basketball. They are in place to help our student-athletes,” Maguire said. “There are some that give the impression that these are just practices — they are not.”

Under the new NJSIAA guidelines, the head coach can only be present at these evaluations if a college coach is there. In addition, coaches and schools may only use social media to encourage a college coach to reach out to a head coach and schedule an evaluation.

However, schools can not post a predetermined schedule that says something like a school is practicing twice a week for 10 weeks, nor can they post about these workouts to promote their program and entice other students to attend workouts.

“The guidelines specifically state when a college coach is in attendance, you may host an evaluation workout and the head coach may be there. Interest or no interest, the college coach has to be there,” Maguire said. “So let’s say a college coach cancels an hour before, then the event is canceled. They are scheduled on request only by the college. It’s not for the school to pre-schedule and promote and entice interest from other students.”

Maguire also emphasized that these evaluations are for a single high school only and that schools may not host joint sessions with other schools or athletes and that these evaluations must occur on school premises.

Coaches that violate these new rules will receive an automatic suspension (four games for basketball, two games for football) that must be served to start the following season.