OWHEichorst is an optimistic guy. College football recruiting would test any optimist’s mettle. Nevertheless, Eichorst is in the thick of the issue as a member — and the Big Ten’s representative — of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee. Eichorst is also the chairman of a subcommittee focused specifically on camps and clinics. Obviously, camps are no longer solely designed for youth development and safety awareness. They are recruiting events, sometimes set to rock music.
Satellite camps held in ACC and SEC country — or FBS coaches working as guest coaches at camps hosted by smaller schools in those regions — are a hot button topic among Power Five programs. The ACC and SEC have offered proposals — to be voted on by NCAA membership in April — that could effectively end the practice starting this summer.
Considering Eichorst’s own coach, Mike Riley, uses satellite camps to help identify prospects — Miami Southridge cornerback DiCaprio Bootle’s commit to the 2016 class is a direct result of NU working a camp in Miami — it makes sense that NU would want to keep those camps, or have some way of evaluating prospects in person without having to make those prospects pay thousands to travel to Nebraska’s camps.
Eichorst makes clear: He’s not on the subcommittee because he desires a specific outcome on the satellite camp issue. In fact, he’d rather the NCAA membership didn’t try to address recruiting in a “piecemeal” way. Instead, he wants to see “full-scale” comprehensive reform, a package of ideas that, in theory, satisfies the whole membership.
“I think we can come together and reach some amicable solutions that aren’t geographically based,” said Eichorst, who has also worked at South Carolina, Wisconsin and Miami, which gives him a “fairly global perspective” of the recruiting issue. That’s valuable.
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