Minnesota takes advantage of current NCAA recruiting rules: SEC teams to follow?
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There’s a fine line between breaking NCAA recruiting rules and taking advantage of an oversight that currently exists in the rule book. Credit is due to new Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck for utilizing the latter in a recent camp hype video the school issued Thursday.
According to Chris Hummer of 247Sports, Fleck was turned in by several schools for breaking recruiting rules following the release of the video. As current NCAA recruiting rules state, teams are not allowed to use recruits in promotional videos for recruiting purposes. However, Fleck and Minnesota argue that’s not what was being done here, as the school was rather using this video to promote the school’s summer camps. Promotional videos are permitted to have footage of recruits participating in on-campus camps.
Watch the video for yourself and see if you can tell the difference between a camp video and a school-issued recruiting video:
A couple ELITE camps in the books, excited to see more ELITE prospects in our next few!! Make sure you sign up! #RTB https://t.co/QCnbyomMFz
— P.J. Fleck (@Coach_Fleck) June 8, 2017
The NCAA apparently is okay with this video, as it does indeed promote Minnesota’s camp circuit and not the recruits in the video. Considering this ruling, it’s safe to assume nearly every SEC school is going to start doing similar videos with elite prospects on their campus and in team-issued gear.
Not only is Fleck finding unique ways to promote his new program but his efforts have thus far paid off in the 2018 recruiting cycle. The Golden Gophers currently have the nation’s No. 19 recruiting class, ahead of football recruiting giants Alabama, Florida, Auburn, Georgia, and USC. While that likely won’t be the case when more prospects eventually commit to those schools and sign their scholarship papers in December and February, the early momentum Fleck has got in Minnesota is impressive heading into his first offseason with the program.
If nothing else, he’s teaching the SEC how to promote summer camps in a new way.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
