Due to NCAA regulations, coaches aren’t allowed to work with their players and recruits during the summer. I’ve always found this kind of strange since coaches are coaches, and there are lots of college athletes on campus during the summer taking classes and working out with the strength-and-conditioning coaches, which is allowed.
This can be especially bothersome to a college program when you have a situation like that facing the Houston Cougars men’s and women’s basketball teams this summer.
Both teams have new head coaches and new assistant coaches, and while the reputations of the players is known, and while the coaches can actually talk to the players and watch game film of the players, what they can’t do is actually coach the players.
“It’s difficult,” men’s coach James Dickey told Hair Balls. “And
from the player’s perspective, they’re going to be playing. They’re
going to be working them out. And it would be nice if the coaches from
the respective sports could be doing that. I don’t think any coach I’ve
talked to wants to have year-round practices, but I think that all
sports, softball to baseball, they’re going to be playing in the summer.
“Basketball,
football players are going to be conditioning, lifting, working out,
running, catching passes, doing their skill work, and so it would be
nice if you could have your collegiate staff available to them. Right
now, the rules do not permit that. I think that’s something that comes
up at a lot of the rules sessions, to have more access. But right now,
we can’t, so you just have to do the best you can and get cranked up
again come September.”
Dickey may not actually be coaching any of
his players right now. But he and his assistants are busy. They’re
still settling into their new offices. They’re still out recruiting
players, and Dickey is out with athletic director Mack Rhoades selling
the alumni on the plans to renovate Hofheinz Pavilion which is perhaps
the most important thing that can be done for the survival and
advancement of the school’s basketball programs.
“It’s been a
pretty hectic pace, but that’s typical for college coaches,” Dickey
said. “There’s a lot to be done. We’re doing a lot of firsts. We’re
getting ready to start our camps, and that’s a first for us here. And
then we go on the road in July. It’s going to be a very busy time. There
certainly has not been any down time. We’ll catch our breath just a
little bit in August, then things will start again. But the month of
June, we got three weeks of camp, then we’ve got 20 days of recruiting
in July, then we’ve got a few days in August before school starts.”
Things
are working the same for Todd Buchanan, the new women’s coach. He
recently completed his staff, and he’s out there on the recruiting
trail, trying to nail down his team for this season. But if there was
just one thing he could be doing right now, it would be coaching his
players, players he has only had the chance to watch.
“It’s very
difficult. You want to get your hands on them, and a basketball as soon
as you possibly can, but in the parameters of the NCAA rules,” he said.
“You have to understand, and it is what it is. I do think it’s
unfortunate, what with the way the rules are set up.
“Obviously
they’re set up to protect the student athlete, and the players, you know
the kids, and I understand that, but for those of us who have always
done it the right way, and always will, and don’t compromise, I really
think when you throw out the monies that we throw out for summer school,
and those kind of things.
“I really, really wish that the NCAA
would look at those kind of rules and maybe implementing them and
tweaking them in the fact that hey, we’re putting them through school
during the summer just like we do during the academic year,” he said. “I
wish that someway, somehow down the line they’d implement and kind of
tweak the rule and let us a have a certain amount of hours to do exactly
that. To give them more about basketball, and really, their skill
development.”
It’s a strange thing, being a coach, but not being
able to coach. Yet it’s something that Dickey, Buchanan, and coaches
throughout the NCAA deal with every summer. Most do get through it, some
don’t. And it’s safe to say that there are no two people more ready for
the end of summer than James Dickey and Todd Buchanan.
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.
