Here it is, the beginning of the collegiate football season when coaches are finally allowed to interact with their players at athletic situations.
NCAA rules don’t allow that to happen from the time spring practice ends until the date the governing organization mandates fall practice is allowed to open.
Enough already.
Why is it that the coaching staffs at schools that are supposed to care so much about the welfare of their student-athletes, and actually are expected to also monitor their social behavior 24 hours a day are not allowed to monitor their offseason progress by supervising and analyzing drills?
A school’s weight coach can do that and that’s fine. I don’t want athletes unsupervised in the weight room where it can become all about weight and reps and not as much about the proper techniques that target certain muscle groups.
And athletic trainers, of course, are allowed to have contact with athletes because they are absolutely vital.
But those whose very economic existence is dependent on the performances of a group of young folks can’t even watch, let alone interact with, players. Well that’s just hogwash.
Several years ago the NCAA mandated the amount of time coaches can spend in organized interaction with their athletes. Many years before that they decreed what interaction can be had after a game, in answer to coaching staff that in their frustration ran their teams through rigorous practice scenarios after a frustrating loss.
Because there always are going to be those programs that push the envelope, I understand the need for certain limitations.
But it seems to me, in perhaps my naïveté, that coaching staffs want the best for their players and, for that matter, their programs and should be involved in players’ lives even in the offseason.
In fact, I am hard pressed to believe that they are not, even though such contact is an NCAA violation.
Summer workouts – seven-on-seven for example – are supposed to be optional but for years you have heard the percentage of a team’s players who stayed in town and participated.
It’s optional but most athletes realize, and peer pressure reinforces, that chemistry is developed when the majority of the group is in the weight room in the pre-dawn hours. Camaraderie and, of course, timing both benefit from “optional” summer situations, which now are attended by virtually every team member.
Don’t get me wrong, everybody needs down time and the mental and physical stresses of collegiate athletics are in themselves extremely stressful.
But not understating the value of the weight coaches and the athletic training staff’s participation, wouldn’t an approximate month-long break from contact make more sense than to completely walk away for months after the 20-day spring practice period? Does it make sense to have to regroup a month before a season’s opening?
If my youngster is playing college sports, I want them to have more coaching contact, not less.