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Elevating the communication strategy game: how communication is key to the NCAA remaining relevant

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Elevating the communication strategy game: how communication is key to the NCAA remaining relevant

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Elevating the Communication Strategy Game
How communication is key to the NCAA remaining relevant

Dale Legaspi
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
Master of Arts
Strategic Public Relations
University of Southern California
August 2016

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Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 1: Brief history and general structure of the NCAA ........................................................ 4
Communicating across committees ............................................................................................ 4
The role of compliance ............................................................................................................... 5
Out-of-date strategy and vision .................................................................................................. 5
Shared governance model problematic ...................................................................................... 6
Rationale for the changes ........................................................................................................... 7
Decentralization becomes lack of cohesion ................................................................................ 8
Chapter 2: Examples of the NCAA’s lack of clarity ...................................................................... 9
Communication-related legislation: past is still present ............................................................. 9
Recruiting goes high-profile, raises new set of communication issues ....................................... 10
The ambiguity of the calendar .................................................................................................... 11
The digital communication dilemma ........................................................................................... 11
Chapter 3: The NCAA’s two-fold communication problem and resulting compliance issues ........ 15
NCAA structure presents a two-fold problem ............................................................................. 15
Social networks branch into recruiting, result in missed opportunity ........................................ 15
Revisiting the athletic department’s role in monitoring stakeholders ....................................... 16
The myth of private communication in the social media age ..................................................... 17
Twitter indicative of the dual problem presented by social media’s evolution.......................... 19
The newest platform and the mobility issue ............................................................................... 20
Combatting the misuse of digital necessitates a refresh of the NCAA’s own communications . 21
Chapter 4: Out with complexity; simplicity will move the NCAA forward ................................... 23
Compliance still at the center, but the NCAA must have a voice ................................................ 23
Addressing the ongoing monitoring problem by addressing communication ............................ 24
De facto best practice: social as a filter ....................................................................................... 24
Conclusion: NCAA must be more strategic about its involvement ............................................... 27
References ................................................................................................................................. 28
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Introduction
In early March, the division one baseball season is only a couple weeks old, but of the discussions filling
coaches’ offices around the country, only about half of them have to do with their own teams or the
young season. The rest have to do with a variety of topics from scouting reports on upcoming
opponents to recapping results from around the conference to…the contents of a 14-year-old high
schooler’s social media accounts. While one of those items may seem way out of place, coaches at
premier division one baseball programs are recruiting high school freshmen and sophomores—juniors
are mostly done, and seniors were done at least a year ago. It’s a complicated issue, considering
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) bylaws prevent coaches from contacting prospects
before September 1 of their junior years, but such is the reality in division one baseball. Coaches can
figure out how to meet those two ends and build programs capable of sustaining long-term success, or
they will be unemployed.
So, every day they pull out their smartphones and see alerts for hundreds of emails from recruiting
services, Twitter feeds full of travel team coaches and recruiting “experts” pushing players and, of
course, the players themselves. Taking this massive amount of information and vetting all of these
prospects is tricky enough, but coaches also must do so according to the intricate but often ambiguous
rules set forth by the governing organization of college sports, the NCAA. The NCAA is tasked with
setting rules that not only protect student-athletes but also give the athletic departments—specifically
the compliance offices—at its member institutions enough flexibility to set policies that suit their own
needs.
Should policies among institutions conflict drastically or create an unfair advantage for one over
another, an institution would then work with its conference to develop a fairer policy and elevate it to
the NCAA, which would then put it out to the entire membership for a vote. Should it be voted in, it
would be added to the operating manual and become an Association-wide bylaw.
The process seems logical in theory, but in actuality it highlights an enormous discrepancy between the
speed of information within the NCAA and in the outside world. When coaches are operating programs
and recruiting in the digital information era, the NCAA’s snail mail-paced process often either leaves
them without immediate access to critical information or ties their hands and prevents them from
making use of all the resources available to them. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than with
respect to digital communication—both the NCAA’s use and regulation of it.
While none of the NCAA’s policies have ever been platform-specific, the rise of digital has presented a
unique challenge. Previously, when push has come to shove, the NCAA’s litmus test for categorizing a
specific type of digital communication has been email, which worked fine in the early days of personal
computers, but as the media environment has gone social, the comparison has become out-of-date.
The evolution of communication has left the NCAA behind, and the issues extend far beyond accounting
for new platforms. Unfortunately, modernizing the Association would require overhauling its very
structure—a drastic step it is unlikely to take due to the complexity involved and the lack of a central
authority to execute it. However, one area the NCAA could address without a complete reorganization is
streamlining its communication practices.
By clearly and concisely stating its rules and developing a system to ensure the proper information gets
to the proper people at its member institutions, the NCAA would begin to address the fact that it is an
almost universally reviled organization defined by opaque decision-making processes and ambiguous
language. Perhaps more importantly, though, it would also force the Association to modernize its
thinking—a crucial step toward maintaining its relevance.
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CHAPTER 1: Brief history and general structure of the NCAA

Chartered as the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States in 1906 before taking its
current name in 1910, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is a membership-driven organization
comprised of more than 1,200 schools across the United States—all of which operate with the mission
of “improving the experiences of [more than 460 thousand] student-athletes—on the field, in the
classroom and in life,” (NCAA.org website – Membership). Division I alone features nearly 350 member
institutions with more than 6,000 athletic teams comprised of more than 170 thousand student-
athletes.
“The complexity of intercollegiate athletics has increased enormously over the past
decade…. As our enterprise continues to evolve, we have a clear responsibility to
maintain focus on our historic values and to ensure that our Association continues
to advance in the right direction…[The] NCAA – the member schools, conferences
and the national office staff – have an absolute obligation to make certain that
intercollegiate athletics is successfully woven into the fabric of higher education. That
key principle is stated clearly in the core purpose of this plan. It is the foundation upon
which our enterprise rests. It is our future.”
(NCAA Executive Committee 2004, republished in Division I Steering Committee on
Governance: Recommended Governance Model, 2014)
Progress, perhaps, that the organization recognizes and acknowledges changes occurring, but it still
contains empty language that doesn’t address any of the proposed changes head-on. Furthermore, it
highlights the fact that 2004 was the last time the NCAA produced a comprehensive strategic plan. The
Association has, however, implemented minor structural tweaks, building committees to address
specific regulatory and operational issues member institutions face on an ongoing basis.

Communicating across committees
From a regulatory standpoint, the NCAA “[administers] the rules adopted by [its] member schools,
[organizes] 89 national championships annually, [provides] educational services to coaches and athletics
administrators, [manages] financial systems for the membership and [conducts] research into the
experiences of those involved in college sports.” (NCAA.org website – About Us)
At the Division I level, it does so through more than 25 separate councils and committees covering
everything from eligibility and academic progress to individual high-profile sports. Under the Board of
Directors and the Division I Council, which are ultimately at the top of every NCAA-related matter,
legislation and enforcement generally fall to some combination of four separate committees:
• The Legislative Committee: review and make recommendations to the Council
regarding the merits of proposals developed through the shared governance process
(conferences and Council committees).
• The Interpretations Committee: interpret Division I legislation consistent with the
intent of the rule and original rationale and approve all interpretations issued by the
national office staff.
• The Committee on Infractions: independent administrative body comprised of
individuals serving as volunteers from NCAA member institutions and conferences and
individuals from the general public who have legal training and charged with deciding
infractions cases involving NCAA member institutions and their employees.
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• The Infractions Appeals Committee: final step in the infractions process; reviews a
written appeal or holds an in-person hearing, it can reverse or modify a Committee on
Infractions ruling.
Predictably, with that many committees comprised of representatives from member institutions
all over the country, both the legislative and enforcement processes can be disjointed and
fraught with communication difficulties.
However, the process always starts the same way: within the compliance offices at individual
member institutions.

The role of compliance
Each member college and university has its own compliance office responsible for enforcing its own
rules to ensure the institution remains compliant with conference- and NCAA-level bylaws. In addition to
setting its own policies, compliance offices are the primary information gatekeepers within athletics,
often tasked with interpreting NCAA and conference-level legislation.
An individual institution’s policies remain its own unless they are implemented in response to a situation
involving another institution or conference. In that case, the individual institution’s compliance
department would work with its conference office to submit its policy to the NCAA’s Legislative
Committee with the ultimate goal of getting it in front of the NCAA’s entire membership for a vote.
If we were doing something wrong because we weren’t aware or were interpreting it
slightly differently, that’s one thing and you can kind of align that. But if the
conference is saying that this is a rule, it’s our job to make sure we’re not doing
something totally different. That’s why we exist, (Scott Simon, director of athletic
compliance, University of Southern California, 2015).
When potential compliance issues do arise, it is a subset of the NCAA Committee on Infractions that
investigates and administers sanctions (and the Infractions Appeals Committee to which institutions can
appeal the COI’s decisions). However, because these committees (and sub-committees and factions of
sub-committees) are assembled in reaction to allegations, processes—and, thus, disciplinary action—
vary on a case-by-case basis. If the NCAA has a clear, comprehensive process, the Association has failed
to articulate it—just as it has failed to articulate its ongoing strategy.

Out-of-date strategy and vision
The NCAA most recently published a strategic plan in 2004. In that 2004 plan, the NCAA recognized the
changing environment surrounding collegiate athletics.
“The complexity of intercollegiate athletics has increased enormously over the past
decade…. As our enterprise continues to evolve, we have a clear responsibility to
maintain focus on our historic values and to ensure that our Association continues
to advance in the right direction…NCAA – the member schools, conferences and the
national office staff – have an absolute obligation to make certain that intercollegiate
athletics is successfully woven into the fabric of higher education. That key principle
is stated clearly in the core purpose of this plan. It is the foundation upon which our
enterprise rests. It is our future.”
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(NCAA Executive Committee 2004, republished in Division I Steering Committee on
Governance: Recommended Governance Model, 2014)
Progress, perhaps, that the organization recognizes and acknowledges changes occurring, but it still
contains empty, flowery language that doesn’t address any of the changes head-on. Furthermore, given
the structure of the Association, at least from the legislative standpoint, it seems unlikely that it ever
will. That job will fall to individual compliance departments at member institutions.
Simon explains:
“The NCAA doesn’t create rules. The schools create rules. It’s usually done through
the conference level. So a school might propose things or some schools might work
together to propose things, and it’s voted on by the conference first. And if it passes,
if the conference is like “Yeah, we like this. We’re going to put this forward,” then the
conference will sponsor a proposal which then goes out to the whole membership,
(Simon 2015).
While the NCAA has a committee comprised of representatives from member institutions dedicated to
legislative matters, responsibility for proposing legislation still falls on individual institutions working
with their conferences to take proposals to the Legislative Committee. Proposals are, then, submitted to
the NCAA and put to a vote. If they pass, they become bylaws and are added to the already disjointed
NCAA operating manual. This process for updating the NCAA Manual is akin to co-writing a paper for a
group project without having anyone smooth transitions or language to ensure clarity. And the group is
comprised of almost 350 people.

Shared governance model problematic
The shared governance model is designed to “empower” and represent compliance practitioners more
strongly in top-level legislative discussions. While this idea makes sense for ensuring compliance officer
involvement, in actuality with respect to permissible contact and recruiting, it’s merely creating another
layer through which information must travel to get from the Council and the Legislative Committee to
the athletic department personnel responsible for actually putting it into practice—the coaches. While
this is true regardless of what type of legislation is being discussed, it’s especially poignant in the case of
communications, which must be done in real time.
In general, though, the rationale behind the shift is distributing power.
Overview of Current Governance

Overview of New Governance and
Steering Committee Recommendations
• Board focused too often on legislative
matters.
• All of Division I uses one legislative
process, but exceptions apply at the
Board of Directors level.
• Practitioners not fully represented
and involved in governance.
• Student-athletes not fully
represented and involved in
governance.
• Complex governance system leads to
minimal engagement.
• Board focused on oversight, policy and
strategic issues.
• Five conferences and their 65 member
institutions granted autonomy in specific
areas.
• Council primary shared-governance
legislative body for matters other than
autonomy legislation.
• Practitioners represented and
empowered within the governance
system

(Division I Steering Committee on Governance: Recommended Governance Model, 2014)
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While the shift from the right column to the left column is a start, a few of the main bullet points are
woefully under-addressed.
First, the Board is supposed to move toward looking at policy from a strategic standpoint, instead of
getting stuck down in the weeds of individual legislative manners. The thought process is logical and the
goal admirable, but it has all come about based upon a strategic plan that is now more than a decade
old. In other words, the NCAA’s most recent strategy comes from a time before newspapers were
viewed on screens and Facebook exploded and triggered the social media revolution.
Secondly, the way people correspond and receive information has shifted drastically since then, and
with the communication function being at the core of developing strategy, the entire plan was
completely out of date a couple years after it was written—let alone by 2014. Without an updated plan,
a new governance system has no way to determine the strategic value of current issues, let alone
position itself to account for the future.
Finally, representation and participation within the governance system are two different issues
highlighted (but not addressed) by the governance model update. The document contends that under
the old system, underrepresented parties (student-athletes and practitioners) were not fully involved. If
these parties felt like the system didn’t represent them, they would simply withdraw from all of its
processes and deal with whatever fallout resulted. The new system aims to represent and “empower”
practitioners by developing even more layers and sub-committees in which they can be involved.

Rationale for the changes
As far as the rationale behind these changes, one of the main reasons cited for change in the
governance system was reducing hierarchy and distributing responsibility for governance, placing
university presidents in a more prominent role. “The new governance system will have effective
oversight by presidents. Primary legislative responsibility will include directors of athletics, faculty
athletics representatives and other practitioners, including student-athletes, either through Board
standing committees or more effective substructures,” (NCAA Steering Committee on Governance,
2014).
The problem with developing more substructures is that creating them is not going to make them any
more effective. They’ll simply increase in number and exacerbate the same strategy problem.
“The new governance system will move from the relatively hierarchical structure that exists today to a
more collaborative structure, process and culture. It will break down hierarchies and silos, and
encourage dialogue, communication and shared understanding across the division and among
constituent groups.” Flattening out the structure of an organization is common practice within business,
but in the case of the NCAA, it’s a regulatory organization that doesn’t run like a business. The NCAA is
supposed to represent student athletes—not the balance sheets of its conferences and member
institutions. Absent from the organizational restructuring is the justification related to how it best
represents the interests of student-athletes.
The document also states that the “decision-making system needs to be streamlined and more
responsive to all membership needs” but then turns around and says “five conferences and their 65
member institutions have specific needs to address unique challenges.” Streamlining decisions makes
sense, though the document offers no concrete metrics on how it proposes to go about doing so. Far
more interesting, though, is the contradiction between these two statements. The new governance
structure is more responsive to all membership needs but turns the power five conferences loose to
regulate themselves.
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Avoiding a monolithic structure in which every decision from every level needs to run through a central
authority makes sense, but going from that concept to one of big schools and conferences regulating
themselves while smaller schools and conferences are beholden to the old and outdated system does
not. The NCAA is eliminating one type of hierarchy but still repackaging the incumbent power structure
in a different manner. The result, as always, is uneven representation for some athletic departments and
their student-athletes.
Finally, the Steering Committee document states “Most legislative issues should be resolved in a
legislative body in which practitioners play a primary role.” Bringing compliance departments from all
NCAA institutions together to work toward a common good makes sense, but it’s also an impossible task
when you have different sets of rules for different schools.

Decentralization becomes lack of cohesion
The second result of the 2014 governance model is furthering the decentralization of power within the
NCAA. The NCAA is a regulatory organization, but the ultimate fate of a school under investigation lands
in the hands of a committee assembled for that specific investigation. Essentially, the NCAA is
responsible for handing out discipline but it does so without even having a central authority.
Consequently, schools under investigation are at the mercy of a committee of their peers—the same
peers against whom they compete on the playing field and in recruiting. Inherently, the system is ripe
for conflicts of interest and schools maliciously reporting one another and recommending overly harsh
sanctions they hope the NCAA will uphold to give them an advantage over their opponents.
Furthermore, while the NCAA’s legislative process inevitably results in a disjointed compilation of
bylaws, each individual bit of legislation should, in theory, be clear since it was written by an individual
compliance department before being submitted to the NCAA membership for a deciding vote. However,
in actuality, most legislation ends up being written vaguely, leaving room for interpretation which would
then come in the form of more documentation from the NCAA uploaded into compliance databases
across the country.
While the NCAA producing documents that admit (at least implicitly) that its legislative system
may be flawed is a start, Association leadership still fails to address the primary issue behind its
disjointed nature: the structure and content of its communications.

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CHAPTER 2: Examples of the NCAA’s lack of clarity

Communication-related legislation: past is still present
As with all compliance-related matters, the NCAA relies on individual institutions to police themselves
and will only step in amid credible accusations of significant violations. The result has been the
development of a number of individual rules formed as reactions to specific situations at specific
institutions. These new regulations were then cobbled together into a “comprehensive” set of bylaws
and applied widely across the NCAA’s entire membership. The structure makes little sense in any
context, but it is especially problematic as it pertains to contacting prospective student-athletes in the
current digital and socially-driven media environment.
Per its 2004 strategic plan, the NCAA aspires to have intercollegiate athletics be “perceived by
Association members and the public as complementary to higher education.” Furthermore, it
should better prepare student-athletes “to achieve their potential because they have
participated in college athletics” and to keep their sport in the context of the value it adds to
their overall educational experience. For many students, a major part of that experience is
finding their voices and defining themselves. Right, wrong or indifferent, in 2016, that frequently
involves use of new and emerging communications technologies—something about which the
NCAA has repeatedly demonstrated its own inability or unwillingness to legislate clearly.
The communication landscape in 2016 is drastically different from what it was even a decade ago, let
alone what it was when most of the regulations in the NCAA operating manual were originally written.
The news cycle is now 24-7, every segment and specialized interest has its own blog and social media
has revolutionized fan and recruit access. While it’s rare that the NCAA would be at all impacted by
interactions between fans and athletic department personnel, (much more of an internal issue for
individual institutions), communication with prospective student-athletes is a different complicated
issue.
Perhaps nowhere is the NCAA’s vagueness more apparent than in the bylaws discussing permissible
contact and promotion surrounding the recruiting process. The baseline legislation for recruiting contact
comes from the “Recruiting Materials and Electronic Correspondence” section in the NCAA Operating
Manual:
“An institution shall not provide recruiting materials, including general
correspondence related to athletics, or send electronic correspondence to an
individual (or his or her parents or legal guardians) until September 1 at the beginning
of his or her junior year in high school. If an individual attends an educational
institution that uses a nontraditional academic calendar (e.g., Southern Hemisphere),
an institution shall not provide recruiting materials, including general correspondence
related to athletics, or send electronic correspondence to the individual (or his or her
parents or legal guardians) until the opening day of classes of his or her junior year in
high school,” (NCAA Operating Manual, 13.4.1).
With the initial example of the college baseball coach you immediately see one of the main problems
with recruiting: it’s occurring long before the first permissible date of contact. Players are routinely
giving verbal commitments in their freshman and sophomore years of high school, before coaches are
allowed to send them recruiting materials.
A contact is any face-to-face encounter between a prospective student-athlete or the
prospective student-athlete’s parents, relatives or legal guardians and an institutional
staff member or athletics representative during which any dialogue occurs in excess
of an exchange of a greeting. Any such face-to-face encounter that is prearranged
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(e.g., staff member positions himself or herself in a location where contact is possible)
or that takes place on the grounds of the prospective student-athlete’s educational
institution or at the site of organized competition or practice involving the
prospective student-athlete or the prospective student-athlete’s high school,
preparatory school, two-year college or all-star team shall be considered a contact,
regardless of whether any conversation occurs. However, an institutional staff
member or athletics representative who is approached by a prospective student-
athlete or the prospective student-athlete’s parents, relatives or legal guardians at
any location shall not use a contact, provided the encounter was not prearranged and
the staff member or athletics representative does not engage in any dialogue in
excess of a greeting and takes appropriate steps to immediately terminate the
encounter. (NCAA Operating Manual, 13.02.4 – Revised: 1/11/94 effective 8/1/94)
Specifically given the media environment today, though, questions remain as to what exactly constitutes
recruiting material.

Recruiting goes high-profile, raises new set of communication issues
Recruiting has become a high-profile endeavor in and of itself. For athletic departments, it’s no
longer as simple as keeping “representatives of athletics interests” (boosters and alumni) from
calling or visiting prospects and trying to steer them away from other schools, which would be
blatant NCAA violations. As NCAA bylaws are currently written (NCAA Operating Manual
13.1.3.5), even in today’s wide open communication environment, institutions are put in a
position of having to police their own fan bases on social media to ensure they’re not tampering
with recruits—an obviously impossible task. This issue surfaces primarily in high profile sports
like football and basketball, but from a regulatory standpoint, other minor or non-revenue
sports are treated the same way.
On the flip side, prospective student-athletes and their families are pouring unprecedented
amounts of money into showcase teams, specialty camps and third-party recruiting services.
While it’s a prospect and his or her family’s business how they spend their money in chasing the
dream, athletic departments are beholden to NCAA contact bylaws. The NCAA defines a
prospective student-athlete as “a student who has started classes for the ninth grade,” but
athletic department personnel (primarily coaches) are not allowed to contact recruits until June
15
th
during/following their sophomore year in high school. They are, however, allowed to
respond directly (albeit on a minimal basis) to incoming inquiries from a prospect or family and
correspond extensively with youth or prep coaches (NCAA Operating Manual 13.1).
The result has been the development of an entire recruiting structure that includes -showcases,
tournaments and underground communication in which NCAA coaches correspond with
prospects through their prep and youth coaches—all of which has developed in reaction to the
same regulatory organization that won’t let its institutions speak directly to prospects until
they’re juniors in high school.
Furthermore, as the profile of college recruiting has risen over the years, entrepreneurs have
formed entire businesses looking to capitalize on the new opportunities it presents. All types of
businesses from showcase teams and instructional camps to websites ranking prospects and
contacting schools have emerged into a convoluted mess. Predictably, the legitimacy of many of
these entities varies. While the NCAA cannot (and should not) curb free enterprise, it could quit
pretending that it doesn’t exist when it comes to recruiting and adjust its contact legislation
accordingly.
11

The ambiguity of the calendar
There are certain periods of time when institutions can contact prospects, and they cannot publicize
that prospect’s recruitment until it’s complete and the prospect has signed something that makes him
or her a student-athlete. Additionally, different sports have their age parameters for contacting
prospects set, but even something as seemingly cut and dried as recruiting communication contains a
few gray areas.
The first is general announcements of recruiting-related information. Coaches cannot announce specific
prospects they are recruiting, but they can announce where they will be. For most team sports other
than football, this practice is most common around offseason tournaments—basketball with Amateur
Athletic Union (AAU) tournaments and baseball with summer and fall showcases. It’s generally a non-
issue as most coaches attend these events which are held annually, but announcing that they’ll be there,
sends the subtle message that they are open to prospects coming to speak to them, which is the second
gray area—first contact.
First contact comes into play with student-athletes who are too young to be formally recruited but are
already seen as future prospects. Coaches are not permitted to seek them out and talk to them, but
should a prospect come to a coach, he or she can respond directly on a limited basis.
The third gray area is that there are no such restrictions on discussions between NCAA coaches and prep
coaches, provided the NCAA coach isn’t trying to leverage the prep coach to pre-recruit the prospect.
“That’s where it gets gray. Coaches are allowed to talk to club coaches or high
school coaches, but you can’t call them to solicit their recruiting. Because that’s like
well you can’t call the kid, so you’re just going to call the coach and say, this kid should
really come here because this school would be great for that player. We don’t tap
every phone call, so I guess we don’t really know that that’s not going on, but what
can happen is that you can call to gather information like ‘Tell me, what are this kid’s
strengths? What are his grades like? Is he a team player or not? Does his family need
a lot of scholarship money?’
“Kind of like info gathering. You can’t put the hard sell on them and tell the coach to
pass that along. I’m sure lines get crossed a little, but usually that’s all done through
a coach up until they’re contactable, which for most sports is beginning of junior
year. And at that point, it still often times does go through a coach because that’s a
little more efficient, but now you’ll see them reaching out to the kids directly,
(Simon 2015).
For now, none of these rules vary by conference, but with the trend toward being more open, it will be
interesting to see if the NCAA encourages conferences to be a little more active in monitoring. With
respect to these three gray areas—specifically first contact—social media presents a number of
interesting questions.

The digital communication dilemma
The primary document outlining the NCAA’s stance on digital communication (which, in and of itself is
much too broad of a term to be particularly useful) is outlined in one particular document, but even the
briefest analysis reveals numerous instances of language that is vague or otherwise problematic.
12

NCAA Division I member institutions are reminded that an athletics department staff
member's personal website or presence on any social media platform (e.g., Twitter,
tumblr, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn) may include information
related to the institution's athletics program, subject to the same restrictions
applicable to an institution's athletics website. Accordingly, a personal website may
contain information not created for a recruiting purpose (e.g., game scores, season
updates, facility updates, information regarding the coaching staff or current or
former student-athletes). However, it is not permissible to include information
about or directed toward a specific prospective student-athlete or to post video or
audio materials directed toward prospective student-athletes generally, unless such
content is produced by the institution's official admissions or student-services office
and available to all students or is not created for a recruiting purpose (e.g., interviews
with current student-athletes or game highlights targeted to a general audience).
(NCAA Electronics, Social Media and Recruiting, 2015)
While this paragraph calls out a few examples of social media platforms, it also leaves room to account
for the emergence of new ones. Furthermore, it clarifies two things. First, athletic department staff
members’ personal accounts are beholden to the same restrictions as those that are institutionally-
owned. Secondly, the emphasis of all this legislation is not about any individual platforms but about
banning use of their inherent targeting capabilities to contact prospects.
Institutions should note that the legislation governing publicity, general
correspondence and electronic correspondence is applicable to an athletics
department staff member's personal website, social media profile or "handle." For
example, a member institution or athletics department staff member may not
comment publicly about a prospective student-athlete, other than to confirm
recruitment, before the prospective student-athlete has signed a National Letter of
Intent (NLI) or an institution's written offer of admission and/or financial aid, or prior
to receipt of the student-athlete's financial deposit in response to the institution's
offer of admission. The institution is also precluded from commenting in any manner
as to the likelihood that a prospective student-athlete committing to or signing with
that institution. An athletics department staff member may not publicize (or
arrange for the publicity of) a prospective student-athlete's visit to campus,
including any camp or clinic held on the institution's campus, before the prospective
student-athlete has signed a NLI, the institution's written offer of admission and/or
financial aid or prior to receipt of his or her financial deposit in response to the
institution's offer of admission. Further, an athletics department staff member may
not promote or endorse a prospective student-athlete's team or coach, or an athletics
facility that is primarily used by prospective student-athletes.
(NCAA Electronics, Social Media and Recruiting, 2015)
This paragraph is somewhat similar to the previous one, but it focuses on the promotional side of the
recruiting process. Again, athletic department staff members are not allowed to substitute their own
social accounts for those of the institution, but the focus here is on the proper sequence of events.
Prospects may not be promoted in any fashion. Once they have signed some sort of documentation
tying them to the institution, they become student-athletes and are then able to be promoted (and held
subject to NCAA legislation).
Question No 1: Is it permissible to send correspondence to a prospective student-athlete
using email equivalent functions that are available on social media platforms?
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Answer: Yes. Email is not limited to traditional email services provided by an institution,
website or Internet service provider. Permissible email communication extends to
communication through electronic services and applications comparable to traditional
email in which a message is sent directly to another individual. Accordingly, it is
permissible for an athletics department staff member to send electronically transmitted
correspondence to a prospective student-athlete using a service that permits a private
message to be sent between only the sender and recipient in a manner comparable to
traditional email (e.g., Twitter Direct Message," Instagram Direct). Any audio/video clips
included in such messaging cannot be created for recruiting purposes or must fit within a
specific category of institutionally produced audio/video materials expressly permitted
under the recruiting materials legislation that may be provided via e-mail attachment or
hyperlink. Electronically transmitted correspondence through other services or
applications that may be directed to a specific individual but are publicly viewable to
other users of the service or application (e.g., Twitter "@replies" or "mentions,"
Facebook wall-to-wall feature) are not considered an email equivalent. Finally,
institutions should note that whether a permissible form of electronic communication
occurred is based on the mode of communication used, not on how a service stores or
catalogs the communication after the communication occurs.
(Electronics, Social Media and Recruiting – NCAA July 2015)
This excerpt is from the Q&A within that same NCAA document and, paradoxically, introduces ambiguity
when the previous text was mostly clear. The major problem here is the idea of email equivalency.
While they do have direct message functionality for private one-to-one communication, these platforms
are identified as “social” for a reason. They are built for sharing information, which (theoretically)
includes the masses and generates broader discussion. However, despite the platforms not being the
focus of the legislation, they are still indicative of a fundamental issue with email equivalency.

The Internet’s desktop computer-driven ascent to prominence was just the beginning. Soon after,
laptops and the ubiquity of WiFi touched off the first stages of taking the Internet mobile, but the trend
really exploded with the rise of smartphones and has continued with tablets. The speed with which
written digital communication takes place now that users aren’t tied to computers has increased
considerably—so much so that it no longer equates to e-mail. Furthermore, the current generation’s
mobile consumption and communication preferences favor short correspondences much more akin to
text messages. Especially for a social medium like Twitter, which has historically limited posts and direct
messages to 140 characters, drawing a parallel with email simply does not make sense.
May an institution utilize a social media platform's marketing tool to send
institutional recruiting advertisements to a specific group of individually selected
prospective student-athletes after the first permissible date to provide recruiting
materials?
No. It is not permissible for an institution to publish advertising or promotional
material designed to solicit the enrollment of a prospective student-athlete.
(Electronics, Social Media and Recruiting – NCAA 2015)
This particular question and answer are indicative of more overarching problems with the NCAA’s
communication practices and policies. It’s unclear and contains multiple references that are not specific
enough to be useful. A “social media platform’s marketing tool” could be one specific social media
feature or community functionality within a social network, or it could be the medium or network, itself.
Furthermore, an institution may not target a “specific group of individually selected prospective
14

student-athletes,” or publish any advertising or promotional material designed to “solicit the enrollment
of a prospective student-athlete.” Does attempting to generate interest in the athletic department
constitute soliciting enrollment? What about an athletic department using a social network or media
outlet to educate the public about the university? What, exactly, constitutes targeting a specific
prospect or group of prospects? The NCAA frequently uses terms without specifically defining them,
leaving loopholes that coaches and athletic departments can exploit—a problem exacerbated by a
constant stream of new platforms.
Since the NCAA does not define social media, networks or platforms in any specific terms, athletic
departments are left to make distinctions for themselves. The social platforms with which departments
are struggling are all considered mature in the growth cycle of tech, but as previously noted, the last
strategic plan the NCAA produced came out the same year Facebook came into existence, 2004. The
Association has been playing catch-up ever since.

15

CHAPTER 3: The NCAA’s two-fold communication problem and resulting compliance
issues

NCAA structure presents two-fold problem
The NCAA has created a scenario in which it must battle two major problems—one being predicate of
the other. First, it must restructure in a way that meets the ends of its member institutions, which all
have distinctly different needs. Enabling the five largest conferences to self-regulate (which the NCAA
adopted before the 2014-2015 school year) makes sense if the Association also safeguards smaller
schools from being put in a competitive disadvantage. However, meeting these two ends while
maintaining its self-regulatory structure remains a primary issue for the NCAA, and the resulting lack of
understanding among all of its stakeholders exacerbates the problem.
The NCAA has its own difficulty communicating both internally and externally, but despite its own
ineptitude, it is still tasked with regulating many of the communication practices of its member
institutions.
As the media environment has become increasingly complex and specialized in the last decade, the
profile of college sports has raised exponentially. Fans and prospective student-athletes have
unprecedented access to coaches and other athletics department personnel, which opens up a verifiable
Pandora’s Box of scrutiny and potential violations of NCAA contact and publicity bylaws. While no
perfect fix exists, the NCAA could greatly reduce the number of recruiting issues it faces simply by
clarifying its regulations and streamlining its communications to distribute the information to its
member institutions, ensuring accurate and timely information gets all the way to the coaches who
need it on a day-to-day basis. As the NCAA knows, recruiting has become a year-round process that
starts earlier and earlier.
The NCAA Operating Manual is distributed to all individual teams within all athletics departments across
the country ignores what has become a primary communication vehicle for athletic department
personnel to correspond with prospective student-athletes. The manual repeats legacy legislation
discussing written and verbal communication based upon original bylaws written for letters, phone calls
and in-person contact, but it lumps digital communication into broad categories like email and text
messages, leaving all sorts of ambiguity surrounding individual platforms.
The NCAA does address social and emerging digital media platforms in varying capacities within
adjunctive documents but the absence of such verbiage in the operating manual—which is the set of
bylaws on which all NCAA coaches are tested annually—demonstrates the organization’s lack of
cohesion on the issues presented by social media. As a result, coaches and other recruiting-focused
athletic department personnel are beholden to rules they may or may not have ever seen but have
definitely not been tested on.

Social networks branch into recruiting, result in missed opportunity
With the amount of difficulty the NCAA has had in joining the digital era with basic one-on-one
communication between athletic department personnel and prospects, the contact issues raised
by an emerging set of recruiting-focused social networks only exacerbate an existing problem.
When correspondence with prospects was limited to letters, phone calls or even early digital
platforms like e-mail, athletic departments were able to monitor what their own people were
saying to prospects. However, the simplicity of that type of one-to-one communication is long
gone, and in its place is the social media era, where everyone has a voice and an opportunity to
connect directly to anyone else. Yet, athletic departments are still beholden to the actions of
16

their supporters (e.g. alumni and boosters), regardless of whether or not they have any realistic
chance of controlling them.
The NCAA can do nothing as far as altering the way Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram design their
platforms, and it certainly cannot control the emergence of plugins and add-ons or completely new
platforms. However, a number of recruiting-specific social networks have emerged in recent years, and
the NCAA would likely be able to influence their product roadmaps if it simply acknowledged the fact
that they exist. The Association is, after all, the body responsible for governing the entire recruiting
process, and as such, it must retain control, even when the process has evolved to go digital.
Building in control of communication functionality or visible contact information based upon NCAA rules
would be fairly easy for a developer or software engineer, but without any influence from the NCAA,
these sites respond only to their users. None of them have to answer to compliance departments.
Instead of concerning itself with attempting to monitor communication taking place on these third-party
recruiting platforms, the NCAA would be wise to open dialog with them and establish some sort of
sanctioned test to ensure they remain compliant with contact and publicity rules, thereby using them as
a sort of filtering mechanism. This proposed practice would likely help its member institutions as well, as
all these new third-party platforms are constantly assaulting athletic departments and coaches with
unsolicited information—most of which ends up simply being ignored because it takes too much time to
vet. If coaches were at least assured that the incoming information was all fair game54 per the NCAA, it
would free them up to make faster decisions on prospects, assuring that the social platforms remained
more targeted than the information firehose options offered by general social media outlets and
networks.
Furthermore, these types of recruiting services—and social media platforms in general—can help level
the playing field. Schools that are smaller, in less fertile recruiting geographies or simply don’t have the
same resources allocated to recruiting as their competitors can still reach a wide number of prospects
through these internet-based channels. Not having to manually keep track of information like each
incoming prospect’s age or which outlets can be used to contact him or her would be a huge boon for a
coach—especially one who doesn’t have the backing of a high-powered athletic department and all its
inherent advantages.
However, it’s not all advantageous for those high-profile athletic departments either. With the visibility
comes a whole different level of scrutiny than their smaller counterparts.

Revisiting the athletic department’s role in monitoring stakeholders
Large athletic departments and their student-athletes have always evoked a great deal of
passion from fans and opponents alike, and unfortunately, this passion frequently boils over into
compliance violations. Ironically, some of the most frequent among them come from fans and
not foes. With the proliferation social media, anyone can gain the access to communicate with
student-athletes and prospects, and frequently, these ardent fan bases cross lines. Per NCAA
bylaws (NCAA Operating Manual 13.1), athletic departments are responsible for their own
“representatives,” but it is completely unrealistic to think that major collegiate athletic
departments can control the actions of all their supporters and fans outside of their own walls.
A more viable approach would be to make a distinction between those within an athletic
department who are actual representatives of a school and those who are associated in a less
formal manner. It is perfectly reasonable to expect athletic departments to prevent all illicit
contact from within a department and to expect institutions to keep prospects’ private contact
information like home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses away from external
17

supporters. Holding schools responsible for impermissible contact through those means should
continue to be policy, but attempting to lump a fundamentally different set of platforms like
social networks and media into those broad categories is drastically different.

The myth of private communication in the social media age
The NCAA categorizes athletic department communications as either public or private. Letters,
emails and phone calls would be private while published press releases or blog posts would be
considered public—self-explanatory in these cases. However, this dichotomy doesn’t account
for emerging social platforms like Twitter, which combines elements of public and private
communication. One of the most basic features of Twitter is the ability it gives users to open
their profiles to the public or to keep them private. Content on private accounts is visible only to
followers accepted by the owner of the account, so the same correspondence can be public and
private at the same time, which is one area where athletic departments can run into compliance
issues.
Coaches and student-athletes take tests that cover sports they aren’t even involved in and sit through
compliance meetings ever year, only to be told by their compliance officers of the existence of an entire
database of other rules they’ve never seen but are responsible for knowing. Unfortunately, the
parameters for communication and usage of digital platforms for both marketing and recruiting are
among the rules hidden in databases. Ironically, the NCAA fails to adequately communicate to member
institutions, its own rules governing communication. The fact that rules are complicated to begin with
and vary by sport doesn’t help, either.
“Where it gets a little trickier is private communication. For most social media
platforms, private communication is akin to an e-mail. So whatever the rules are for
e-mail, those are going to be the rules for private communication. The rules vary a
little bit by sport, but they’re becoming more uniform. Generally, when a prospect is
entering his junior year of HS is when you can start contacting him.
“Once you can email them, then you can send private messages on social media.
Direct messages on Twitter are probably the most common and popular. Or Facebook
messages. That’s probably the most efficient way, and most sports now are allowed
to text. But football cant. At the moment swimming can’t and track can’t, but that
speaks more to their individual sport. The NCAA is trying to unify it all, and the
coaching association said “No, we don’t want this.” That’s why it didn’t get passed,
(Simon 2015).
Outdated as it may be in the era of social media, the email equivalence is still alive and well in the NCAA
manual. In fact, private messages on Facebook and Twitter are still considered email—an assessment
with which Simon wholly disagrees.
“When you look at what a direct message conversation looks like on Facebook or
Twitter, it looks like texting. So it’s kind of like who cares anymore? If you’re sending
an electronic message, as long as it’s private, it doesn’t really matter if it’s an email
or a direct message on a social media network or a text. It shouldn’t make a
difference.
He also recognizes that the current legislative process lags far behind the realities of contact in the social
media era. Even when the NCAA does succeed in updating some of its regulations, the latency inherent
in the process prevents the update from making into the operating manual. Consequently, coaches are
among the last to know the latest as it pertains to the contact rules governing their recruiting process.
18

“Here’s what gets really tricky with social media, though. Obviously, the legislative
process is very slow and kind of cumbersome and very political. So if something
missed one year, you’ve got to wait a whole year to attack it again. Meanwhile, how
many social media platforms come and go in that time? A lot. See like Facebook’s not
even a thing. Kids aren’t really even on Facebook anymore.
“But that’s where the NCAA has really, really struggled. I say the NCAA, but really
it’s everyone. All the schools. Social media changes so fast that something pops up,
and no one knows what to do about it. And then there’s all this talk, and by the time
they figure it out, it’s already existed for six months, (Simon 2015).
Boswell took a slightly more measured tone when addressing the same question, citing the
adjunctive documents on the compliance database.
“If you look through the manual, you’re not going to find the words social media.
You’re not going to find some rules specific to Facebook or Twitter, but in addition
to the manual, what compliance officers have are official interpretations of the rules
that are released by the NCAA in our own online database that we access every single
day as well as educational columns that they publish, (Boswell 2015).
While loading up the compliance database with extra documents outlining legislation and interpreting
rules is helpful for departments as a whole, coaches who are recruiting all year and need to follow the
rules, don’t have access to some of them. Compliance officers do the best they can to keep coaches
informed of rules changes or new interpretations pertinent to them and their sport, but forwarding
every document the NCAA uploads is not a realistic solution. In that case, compliance departments
would essentially be emptying their own junk drawers and dropping the results on their programs.
Neither coaches nor student-athletes have the time or the inclination to read through all of it—not that
it would be helpful if they did.
“One pretty baseline rule is that you can’t publicize your recruitment of an athlete,
so you can’t use social media to communicate with or to comment on recruits
publicly. Facebook walls, Twitter, Instagram…whatever that might be. Anything that
is in the public view is always going to be off limits. That changes once the
prospect actually signs, whether that be an NLI, a financial aid agreement or just
gets accepted and signs their housing contract. Once any of those things happen,
that publicity rule goes away, and now you can comment publicly.
“You can get a little cute and push it in some ways and say, “checking out
whatever baseball tournament in Arizona this week” because you’re not
commenting on a school or a recruit. You’re just saying where you are. Some
coaches do that, but honestly they don’t need to do that. [That’s] kind of sport-
specific.
Simon notes that private communication is fundamentally different, but contact rules also
vary by sport.
“For most social media platforms, private communication is akin to an e-mail, so
whatever the rules are for e-mail, those are going to be the rules for private
communication. [They] vary a little bit by sport, but they’re becoming more
uniform. Generally, when a prospect is entering his junior year of HS is when you
can start contacting him.
“Basketball is different. Basketball is the summer right after sophomore year—a
few months earlier. Once you can email them, then you can send private messages
19

on social media. Direct messages on Twitter [or Facebook] are probably the most
common and popular, and that’s probably the most efficient way.
Compliance issues aside, the NCAA’s lack of a firm stance on digital communications has also led to a
reoccurrence of its biggest PR problem—more damage to its reputation. Coaches are not allowed to
comment on recruits, but in the case of college football, bloggers and journalists cover the recruiting
process extensively to the point at which everyone knows what is going on with high profile programs—
especially their rivals. The results are sometimes petty at best and borderline unethical at worst. Either
way, they have a negative effect on the NCAA’s reputation.

Twitter indicative of the dual problem presented by social media’s evolution
Twitter has both broadcast and direct messaging functionality but is also accessible from mobile devices
as well as desktop computers, making it inherently difficult for the NCAA to categorize using its email
equivalency litmus test. Consequently massive ambiguity still surrounds what athletic department
personnel are and are not allowed to do with the medium. However, the platform has become such a
way of life for many young athletes that it often becomes the default method of communication
through which they correspond with coaches—especially in football where, prior to April 2016, coaches
could not contact prospects via text message. Often times, Twitter DMs served as a handy substitute,
but they also created the danger of athletic department personnel mistaking a private message for a
public Tweet, which happened on a few occasions.
At best, some schools are simply more adept at using Twitter than others, but at worst, its immediacy
and omnipresence comprise a situation ripe for all levels of transgressions—from NCAA bylaws and
ethical standards all the way down to simple common sense.
University of Texas assistant coach Shawn Watson (or whoever handles his Twitter account)
inadvertently tweeted “I will let you know a time when my schedule is finalized.” (Papke, 2015) While
the actual content of the tweet is innocuous, the context made it a much bigger story than it should
have been. The user immediately deleted the tweet without explanation, which seems like he/she is
hiding something. Because it was in late November when most teams were in the final stretches of their
seasons, numerous coaching vacancies were open at the time of the tweet. One such vacancy was at the
University of Miami, and one of the leading candidates at the time was Watson’s boss, Texas Head
Coach Charlie Strong. While Watson is no longer at Texas, it is unlikely that this particular incident had
any impact on his employment, as it was not an NCAA violation of any kind.
The tweet that came from UCLA head coach Jim Mora’s account in late January, however, had
altogether different ramifications, as it featured a Photoshopped image of a recruit, (DelVecchio, 2015).
While personalizing recruiting using graphic manipulation is common practice, the issue with Mora’s
tweet was that it was directed at a student-athlete who had already committed to another school and
is, thereby, off limits by NCAA rules (NCAA Operating Manual 13.1) and professional courtesy among
coaches. Recruits flip fairly frequently, but theoretically, that is a decision that each recruit must make
on his or her own—not influenced by schools to which they aren’t committed. UCLA claims that Mora
does not run his own Twitter account, which may very well be true, but it doesn’t matter. Whoever
errantly posted the tweet was clearly working for the athletic department and inadvertently exposed
impermissible contact. Yet, the NCAA did nothing, simply continuing the game of chicken it plays with
major athletics programs across the country.
The UCLA incident should be particularly troubling for the NCAA for a couple reasons. First of all, there
is little-to-no chance that UCLA is the only school tampering with recruits committed to other schools.
With the number of “committed” student-athletes who flip to other schools between the times of their
20

(meaningless) verbal commitments and national signing day, it’s impossible that they would all be doing
so without receiving any external pressure from anyone associated with another college athletics
program—which also points back to the issue of who is considered a representative of an athletic
department and who can legally contact them. Secondly, those who are in marketing or recruiting
producing graphics or populating Twitter feeds are in the same athletics department as the compliance
offices responsible for proposing NCAA legislation. Consequently, the questionable recruiting practices
are, either implicitly or explicitly, allowed by the exact people who are tasked with ensuring the athletic
department remains in compliance with NCAA rules. Furthermore, these athletic department employees
know that a vast majority of the time, any “minor” violation they do commit is usually excused as long as
they report it.
Social media also touches the hybrid issue of initial contact with prospects and contact with prep or high
school coaches. In person at a tournament or event, first contact is easy to identify. Same with letters,
emails and phone calls, but in the digital era, marked by favorites and follows, first contact is ambiguous.
On Twitter, for example, users have multiple touchpoints. They follow each other, like each other’s
content and can interact accordingly. Recruiting is a major part of any coach’s job, and vetting prospects
is part of the responsibility. With so much of their lives being housed online, coaches are constantly
looking at their accounts. The most efficient way for coaches to do this is to follow these prospects, so
their posts appear in feeds automatically, but first contact legislation prevents that from being an
option. Coaches are relegated to pulling up individual profiles manually every time they want to check
on a future prospect.
NCAA coaches are not the only ones who have taken to social media, as prep and high school coaches
frequent the platforms as well. It’s an easy way for them to broadcast information to a number of
people in real time. It’s also a vehicle for them to establish or continue discussions with NCAA coaches.
As far as the NCAA is concerned, digital platforms are held to the same standard as face-to-face
communication (i.e. NCAA coaches are not permitted to use prep or high school coaches to recruit
players). However, general information about the school—all of which is pertinent to recruiting—is
permissible on social media, and if a prep coach is following the NCAA coach, there is nothing to prevent
the NCAA coach from pontificating on social about how great his school is and how a prospect would be
making a mistake not to consider it. Clearly, this verbiage would not be permissible through any other
type of communication, but it’s general information broadcast to everyone across a digital platform. The
fact that NCAA coaches know prep coaches and prospective student-athletes are reading it doesn’t
make a difference.

The newest platform and the mobility issue
With the NCAA already as far behind digital and social media as it is, the idea of future-proofing
legislation to account for the next wave of social media platforms seems impossible, but the Association
must continue to refine its bylaws. The emergence of Snapchat as the next big social media platform
wildly popular with athletes and prospects, adds another layer of complexity.
“Snapchat, believe it or not, is considered by the NCAA a text message—not an e-
mail. Well, football can’t send text messages. Swimming can’t send text messages.
Most sports can use Snapchat now because they can text, but that was only about
a year ago that started. Now, they can use the story on Snapchat as long as they’re
not commenting publicly on a recruit. They want to put a story about their road trip
to the bowl game, and it’s them getting on the plane and the team doing this, that’s
fine. It doesn’t matter. But you can’t do anything with recruits because it’s public,
(Simon 2015).
21

As an exclusively mobile platform, Snapchat is considered a text message by the NCAA. Never mind the
fact that a majority of snaps contain little-to-no actual text. The problem will only compound as
smartphones and other mobile devices become more powerful and ingrained in the everyday lives of
athletic administrators, student-athletes and prospects.
Aside from drastically upping the potential for impermissible contact since there is no easy way to
backtrack and find out what was exchanged between an institution and a prospect, Snapchat is classified
as a social network but built on one-on-one communication (aside from the story functionality). With
the entire allure of the medium being the fact that pictures and messages disappear after a certain,
preset amount of time, Snapchat will prove to be a particularly interesting case—especially when it
comes to ongoing monitoring issues. It’s the digital media equivalent of being on step five (disappearing,
mobile, picture-based messaging) when the NCAA is still trying to figure out how to regulate step two
(basic text messages).

Combatting the misuse of digital necessitates a refresh of the NCAA’s own communications
The NCAA needs to find a way to balance streamlining its communication to maintain its audience with
remaining dynamic so it doesn’t fall further behind the evolution of technology. Communicating changes
to member institutions is the first issue the NCAA should address. Only then can the Association begin to
address the actual reporting process for ongoing monitoring. As it stands, schools that are competing on
the field and on the recruiting trail, are working to find any sort of competitive advantage that can help
them land prospects while preventing competing schools from doing the same. Often times, the result
has been student-athletes and athletic departments seeking out questionable correspondence and
reporting it to their compliance departments, who would then report to the NCAA. While this bottom-
up structure makes more sense in ongoing monitoring than it does in legislation development, it exists
largely without a clear process for reporting at the ground level. Most of the time, it takes a student-
athlete at a competing institution or a third party (like a journalist or blogger) to expose questionable
recruiting practices, turning the entire process into little more than a witch hunt built on hearsay from
sources with ulterior motives and credibility questions.
And then there’s the issue that member institutions are expected to self-report. USC Director of Athletic
Compliance Brad Boswell explains:
“The NCAA is an organization of, what, like 500-600 people in Indianapolis, and there
are over a thousand member institutions with all the divisions and everything like
that. So that’s kind of why we have jobs. It’s a self-regulating industry. So it’s our
obligation to report violations, but to answer your question more specifically, the
NCAA does have an enforcement staff, and they’re always busy and typically, they
come onto campus when campus already has self-reported something that could be
considered a major violation.
“But most likely there is not anyone at the NCAA going through every student-
athlete’s, every team’s social media and looking for stuff to ding them on. Where we
fit in enforcing social media stuff is that each member institution’s office probably
has some stance on self-regulating. For example, we check every public social media
account of anyone we deem a ‘high profile’ student-athlete. But typically where we
see issues is that some other coach at a rival school for recruiting, sees something
one of our kids posts, calls the conference and says ‘how are they doing that?’ Then
the conference calls us and says, “We think we’ve caught something and you need to
report it.” (Boswell 2015)
22

In many ways, the entire monitoring process boils down to whether or not you trust member
institutions to do the right thing, which is dangerous for a couple reasons. Aside from the obvious
competition for wins and recruits potentially becoming a breeding ground for violations, a vast majority
of academic institutions are (theoretically) non-profit. The resource discrepancies among member
institutions apply to compliance departments as well. In short, when the burden for reporting falls on
compliance, often times things get missed because departments are understaffed or underfunded.
Often times coaches and student-athletes are committing violations without realizing it.
Something as simple as monthly or quarterly updates from the Division I Council that outline the status
of legislation and discuss changes, putting the updated bylaws next to the old ones, so coaches and
athletic personnel can see immediately what is new would be a huge improvement. Releasing this
information as a series not only simplifies the distribution, but it also conditions athletic departments to
look for the updates and enables compliance officers to isolate the changes relevant to their sports and
form their own internal distributions. It’s the most effective way to ensure that relevant information
gets to the people who need it most in a timely manner and gives the NCAA an effective communication
system—and a chance to account for new and emerging platforms.

23

CHAPTER 4: Out with complexity; simplicity will move the NCAA forward

Compliance still the center, but the NCAA must have a voice
Since a complete restructuring of the NCAA’s legislative process is unlikely, responsibility for amending
and streamlining the legislation to which they are beholden will fall to member institutions and their
conferences. However, as the governing body over all of collegiate athletics, the NCAA must set
expectations and clearly articulate them to member institutions. Otherwise, the entire compliance
process will remain mired in the current reactionary status quo.
“A lot of the rules that were proposed, were done as a knee-jerk reaction to one
person who was doing something extreme. So one person exploited one weird thing,
and schools are like ‘Oh, we can never have that.’ So then they brought the rule all
the way over here to make sure that one thing never happened instead of coming
up with a more reasonable policy and saying, ‘You can’t do that, but there’s other
ways to make it happen,’ (Simon 2015).
While it seems obvious that the “more reasonable policy” Simon references would certainly
makes the most sense, bringing it to fruition would require the NCAA to establish a sort of central
authority specifically for legislation and policy development—the editor tasked with making sure
the group paper reads in a single, clear voice.
The committee would also be responsible for bringing much-needed common sense to legislative
discussions.
“For example, there used to be a ton of rules about what type of content can be on a
sheet of paper that you send to a recruit. Stuff can be on the front but not on the
back. If it’s a certain type of communication, it can be in color—otherwise, it needs
to be in black and white. And that all stems from way back in the day when guys
like Bear Bryant were sending posters and some other school saying “I can’t afford
to send a poster.” Then we’ve got to regulate it to 8 ½ x 11, and then Bear Bryant
wanted like gold trim, and some other school says “We can’t do that,” so it’s got to
be black and white. And that’s how they were shaping rules, (Brad Boswell, USC
Director of Athletic Compliance 2015)

“Whatever you’re sending [prospects], when you open it up to its biggest size, it can’t be more than 8 ½
x 11,” Simon said. “All that ends up carrying over until now. It’s crazy.”
While it seems impossible that legislation from the 1950’s could still exist in 2016, given the NCAA’s
current structure, there is no individual or committee whose job it is to go back through rules and apply
the common sense afforded by a current point of view.
Unfortunately, as Simon notes when citing the greatest frustration compliance departments have,
common sense doesn’t factor in frequently enough.
“Honestly, rules are kind of the worst part. The rules are silly. There are several rules
that make sense and we’re fine with, but there are a lot that are antiquated and
just don’t make any sense. So that’s probably the most frustrating part of the job. I
care about this because my job is to make sure everyone stays eligible and follows
the rules, but I completely recognize when it’s a ridiculous rule, and I’m the one who
has to go and say, ‘Hey, you can’t do this,’ (Simon 2015).
24

Boswell echoed his sentiment, stating flatly, “Enforcing rules that you disagree with is the worst part [of
working in compliance].”
The unfortunate result for compliance professionals is that they often end up being seen as pariahs by
their own athletes and coaches, simply because they are frequently forced to be the bearer of bad news.
At the core of this dynamic, though, is a communication problem.

Addressing the ongoing monitoring problem by addressing communication
With the NCAA leaving it to individual institutions to determine how they regulate communication
between athletic department members and prospects, a wide number of usage patterns has emerged,
and compliance offices around the country are handling things in a number of ways.

De facto best practice: social as a filter
For all the problems digital media can give the NCAA and its member institutions, a number of athletic
departments have found positive uses for social platforms. It has emerged as a popular method for
vetting prospects.
“The number of coaches and teams who don't allow players to use social media has decreased in recent
years as coaches realize that many players will use them anyway,” Kevin DeShazo, founder of social
media consulting firm Fieldhouse Media said to ESPN. But when it comes to recruiting, “Every school
we've been to, there's been at least one coach who has said they've dropped a [prospect] based off of
what they put online,” (Markazi 2015).
“We have a social media background screening that you've got to go through,” said Bret Bielma at SEC
media days 2015. “If you have a social media nickname or something on your Twitter account that
makes me sick, I'm not going to recruit you. I've turned down players based on their Twitter handles. I've
turned down players based on Twitter pictures,” (Markazi, 2015).
Or take the 2012 case of Yuri Wright, discussed in the same ESPN article.
“Three years ago, Yuri Wright was a four-star recruit and one of the top 100 prospects in the
country. He was being recruited by Notre Dame, Georgia and Michigan, and many signs
pointed to his committing to Michigan. One day before national signing day, however, Wright
was expelled by his high school, Don Bosco Prep in Ramsey, New Jersey, after several of his
sexually graphic and racially charged tweets came to light. After the incident, Michigan and
Notre Dame stopped recruiting Wright, who eventually signed with Colorado.
“Wright's case is a high-profile example of a recruit facing consequences for bad decisions
on social media, but it's not a unique situation. Rather, most players with similar issues don't
have a large enough following for inappropriate comments or pictures to make waves
outside of the coaches who are monitoring them.”
(“Social media is a double-edged sword in sports world” – Markazi, 2015)
In recruiting terms, a four-star prospect in football, is likely in the top 150-200 players in the country—all
but guaranteed a division one scholarship and probably from a power five school. Nothing Wright
posted cost him his NCAA eligibility (as evidenced by him landing at Colorado), but it cost him multiple
offers. The coaching staffs at Notre Dame and Michigan didn’t have to conduct any sort of investigation
to determine why one of their recruits was expelled from school. All they had to do was look at his
Twitter account.
25

“What I say when I talk to athletes—student and professional—is if you think it’s temporary, it’s
permanent; and if you think it’s private, it’s public,” Karen North, communication professor and director
of digital social media at the University of Southern California said to ESPN. “It doesn’t matter if you
delete it,” (Markazi, 2015).
Markazi goes on to note that the NCAA regulates phone calls and text messages between coaches and
recruits, but there's no such limit on tweets. In today's sports world, avoiding social media can put
coaches at risk of losing recruits—especially as most schools go out of their way to promote relaxed
social media policies. These institutions ensure prospects know they would be entering a social media-
friendly environment that would enable them to begin to establish their own personal brand—vitally
important for a high profile student-athlete with designs on going pro.
North continued:
“There's no better way to reach your fans than social media. If you want to think about what
is the greatest strength of social media as far as a communication medium, it's that we can all
have what feels like a personal relationship with people that have some sort of celebrity. It's
the most amazing thing for audience-building and building a fan base. So the idea of coaches
saying you can't use social media is a little ridiculous in this day and age. The transition from
rules against social media to social media training is a really important transition most
organizations and schools are beginning to realize.
(“Social media is a double-edged sword in sports world” – Markazi, 2015)
Clearly the social media-related issues athletic departments face are not appreciably different from
those many other types of organizations are encountering, but the difference when it comes to enacting
and enforcing legislation to mitigate them is that other organizations are arranged in a more hierarchical
manner, containing a central authority responsible for the process. The result is a more innate ability to
future-proof legislation as much as possible—something that cannot be done when the legislative
process is ad hoc and reactionary to specific situations involving specific institutions. The unfortunate
result is an operating manual comprised of bylaws that are either overly specific to a certain situation or
leave too much room for interpretation. Either way, the compilation of bylaws on which coaches and
athletic department personnel are tested is largely ineffective.
Sometimes the reason for this ineffectiveness is coaches taking advantage of a known legislative gray
area, but per Simon, most of the time it’s either accidental or unknown to both sides that a violation has
occurred. In the event of a transgression that warrants an investigation, though, the NCAA assembles
one of its committees to try and figure out not only what happened but what the athletic department’s
motivations were (i.e. systemic corruption within the department vs. as simple mistake). Former NCAA
Infractions Committee Chair Gene Marsh of the University of Alabama maintains that a vast majority of
cases fell into the second category.
“Much of the rule-breaking in the last decade has involved ‘some pretty humdrum stuff’ that has been
deemed major because of the number of violations, more than because of their seriousness, like
excessive text messages or phone calls sent to athletes,” Marsh said. “Certainly I wouldn't be here to
defend those sorts of violations by any means — schools are obliged to follow all the rules, and a major
violation is a major violation,” (Lederman, 2011).
With the number of accidental or unknown violations, though, gaps in the NCAA’s communication
processes are largely at fault. The system for keeping compliance departments up-to-date on legislative
changes, hinges on a database that is continuously updated with documents that outline new bylaws
and addendums to the operating manual. The problem, of course, is that coaches are only tested on the
manual but are beholden to every NCAA bylaw that exists. Unless some sort of compliance issue arises,
26

coaching staffs (and most athletic department personnel outside of compliance) will never see the
updates. Even if compliance officers were to forward every notification, most coaches would be loath to
even attempt to navigate through that information firehose to pick out the useful bits of information. To
really generate the type of changes necessary for more effective enforcement of its policies, the NCAA
needs to not only reconfigure its system for developing them but also its mechanisms for distributing
information to member institutions.

27

CONCLUSION: NCAA must be more strategic about its involvement

In business, it is generally accepted as truth that best practices include at least some level of being
proactive—it’s simply a product of being prepared to face adversity. The conventional wisdom rings
especially true in high-visibility organizations that frequently face public scrutiny. On the flip side,
policies cannot be enforced until an organization has a reason to enforce them. As a self-regulated
organization, the NCAA is a poster child for the struggle to meet these two ends. While it’s impossible
for the Association to meet these two ends without overhauling its structure, a logical first step would
be to evaluate its own communication practices. From there, the NCAA would become more familiar
with the communications vehicles—especially digital and social media platforms—and put itself in a
better position to legislate their member institutions’ usage of them.
The current digital media environment constantly spawns new platforms, and an organization struggling
to handle them all and communicate clearly is hardly unique. However, the issue is particularly poignant
for the NCAA because of its size, structure, decentralized nature and inconsistent vigilance. All of these
factors combined with the high visibility of collegiate athletics and the wide open digital landscape
comprise a minefield for both the Association itself and its member institutions.
Since the advent of social media about a decade ago, the NCAA (as it frequently does) has played catch-
up with its policy. Every time a new social platform emerges, it presents a different set of opportunities
to interact with student-athletes and prospects—and a different set of opportunities to violate the
NCAA’s fragmented and ambiguous bylaws. Social media serves two main purposes within most athletic
departments: marketing and recruiting. Marketing has a broader appeal, using social media as a
touchpoint to interact with a wide group of constituents, including student-athletes, donors, alumni,
fans, etc. For the most part, the NCAA stays away from these interactions, allowing schools to do with
social what they see fit unless it has to do with the more frequently contentious issue: recruiting.
Paradoxically, what institutions say to their own constituents is largely fair game, but what they say to
prospects (who do not fall under NCAA jurisdiction) is highly regulated. Bylaws and rules from the days
of snail mail and rotary phones are still enforced today. Furthermore, those regulations are the ones
that are being applied to the myriad digital platforms available to athletic departments and frequented
by prospective student-athletes—all of which are not only fundamentally different from each other but
considerably more advanced than the one-to-one contact for which NCAA legislation was designed.
Until the NCAA takes a hard look at its legislative process and considers digital communication part of its
overarching strategy as opposed to simply another thing it needs to legislate, coaches will always find
loopholes and push boundaries. Consequently the Association will always be scrambling to close those
loopholes or push back on those boundaries.
Completely future-proofing policy against the evolution of technology is impossible for any type of
organization, but the NCAA needs to better demonstrate at least the inclination to think in a forward-
looking manner instead of leaning on outdated practices. Usage of mobile and digital technology have
exploded as college recruiting has skewed younger and bylaws continue growing older.
Reversing the trend of the NCAA chasing its own institutions on policy matters begins with adjusting its
approach to be slightly more top-down, articulating legislative parameters and streamlining its own
communications practices to get the appropriate information to the athletic department personnel who
need it in as clear a manner as possible. While the NCAA is designed to enable schools to legislate
themselves, constantly chasing athletic departments who exploit its structure to operate in gray areas
erodes the credibility of all involved and, ultimately, jeopardizes the mission of collegiate athletics.

28

References
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Edosomwan, Simeon. Prakasan, Sitalaskshmi. Kouame, Doriane. Watson, Jonelle. Seymour, Tom. (2011)
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Guide To Avoiding NCAA Sanctions and Related Litigation,” Mississippi Sports Law Review, Vol 1:1.
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DelVecchio, Steve. (2015, Jan. 30) “Jim Mora tweets photo to LSU recruit Maea Teuhema, claims he was
hacked,” Larry Brown Sports. http://larrybrownsports.com/college-football/jim-mora-tweets-photo-to-
lsu-recruit-maea-teuhema/253861.
Hopkins, Jamie Patrick. Hopkins, Katie. Whelton, Bijan. (2013, May 31) “Being Social: Why the NCAA Has
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Technology Law and Policy, Vol. 13, 1, Spring 2013.
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Mobile Media and Communication. http://mmc.sagepub.com/content/1/1/20.full
Lederman, Doug. (2011, Feb. 7) “Half of big-time NCAA programs had major violations,” USA Today,
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infractions_N.htm.
Luckie, David. (2011, Oct. 7) “Social Media May Become A Threat To College Recruiting,” Business
Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-is-a-threat-to-college-recruiting-2011-10
Markazi, Arash. (2015, July 21) “Social media is a double-edged sword in sports world,” ESPN.com.
http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/13294924/larry-nance-jr-jj-watt-bret-bielema-illustrate-
importance-social-media-how-athletes-portray
Martin, John. (2014, Nov. 7) “10 Things You Need to Know about College Basketball Recruiting,” Athlon
Sports. http://athlonsports.com/college-basketball/10-things-you-need-know-about-college-basketball-
recruiting
National Collegiate Athletic Association. (2015-2016) “Division One Manual,” NCAA.
29

National Collegiate Athletic Association. (2012-2013) “Division One Manual,” NCAA.
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Camps and Clinics,” Official Interpretation.
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Papke, Grey. (2015, Nov. 27) “Texas assistant tweets, deletes note about finalizing schedule,” Larry
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Trotter, Jake. (2012, Jan. 30) “Facebook, Twitter taking over,” ESPN.com. http://espn.go.com/college-
sports/recruiting/football/story/_/id/7510010/social-media-makes-mark-recruiting
WebArchive. (2010, Nov. 8) “History,” NCAA.org.
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a/about+the+ncaa/who+we+are/about+the+ncaa+history

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The NCAA’s processes are massively out-of-date, and as a result, the organization is unable to address many of the issues faced by its member institutions’ athletic departments. Unfortunately, modernizing the Association would require overhauling its very structure—a drastic step it is unlikely to take due to the complexity involved and the lack of a central authority to execute it. However, one area the NCAA could address without a complete reorganization is streamlining its communication practices. ❧ By clearly and concisely stating its rules and developing a system to ensure the proper information gets to the proper people at its member institutions, the NCAA could begin to address the fact that it is an almost universally reviled organization defined by opaque decision-making processes and ambiguous language. Perhaps more importantly, though, it also force the NCAA to modernize its thinking—a crucial step toward maintaining its relevance.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Legaspi, Eugene Dale, Jr. (author)

Core Title Elevating the communication strategy game: how communication is key to the NCAA remaining relevant

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 07/22/2016

Defense Date 06/23/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag college athletics,Communication,communication strategy,NCAA,OAI-PMH Harvest,Public Relations,strategy

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Thorson, Kjerstin (committee chair), Kahn, Gabriel (committee member), Tenderich, Burghardt (committee member)

Creator Email dale.legaspi@gmail.com,legaspi@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-272801

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