In yet another case of meaningless nit-picking by the NCAA rulebook, Georgia has reported a secondary violation by the football team stemming from the Bulldogs’ recent junior day.
UGA provided football recruits with “pictures which were taken during a campus visit via social media,” the Athens Banner-Herald reported after an open records request.
The university self-reported the violation along with a similar infraction related to the swimming program, classifying them as “Level III,” which offer only minimal recruiting advantages. The school shouldn’t face any sort of NCAA punishment, but the recruiting office did receive rules education, according to the Banner-Herald article.
NCAA bylaw 13.10.2.7 allows schools to photograph recruits “use in such things as a media guide but the photo can’t be provided to the recruit.”
With the advent of social media and its prevalence in recruiting, there’s an entire new sub-level of NCAA rules. Some are easy to follow (when coaches can and cannot contact recruits), while others are more difficult to remember.
I can’t believe it’s a terrible thing for a school to give a prospective student-athlete a photograph to commemorate an event like junior day, but the NCAA will tsk-tsk you if you do such a thing.
An itinerant journalist, Christopher has moved between states 11 times in seven years. Formally an injury-prone Division I 800-meter specialist, he now wanders the Rockies in search of high peaks.
