Ohio State's hiring of Urban Meyer as its new football coach, a move set in motion by misdeeds worthy of NCAA sanctions, has ironically prodded the NCAA to allow OSU a maximum recruiting advantage during the pivotal month of December.
The favor comes by way of permitting Meyer and some staffers to recruit while the previous coaching staff, under Luke Fickell, prepares the Buckeyes for their bowl game.
It is not a policy appreciated by the likes of Dave Brandon, Michigan's athletic director, even if his own school received a similar favor when Rich Rodriguez succeeded Lloyd Carr as head coach in 2007.
"No one will ever convince me of the merits of allowing anyone — including the University of Michigan — to have this kind of advantage, or that this is sensible in terms of being a fair and equitable approach," Brandon told The Detroit News last week.
"Our coaches right now are sleep-deprived. They've got to plan to get 130 people to New Orleans (Michigan plays Virginia Tech in the Jan. 2 Sugar Bowl), practicing and preparing a game plan and doing all the things coaches do, and yet this is one of the busiest recruiting seasons of the year."
OSU is not alone in receiving a dual-staff allowance from the NCAA. Illinois, which is also dealing with a coaching transition as it heads to a bowl game, as well as UCLA, are two more big-name schools getting a timely boost in coaching personnel.
Recruiting analysts such as Tom Lemming say the NCAA's new and more generous recruiting policy for staffs in transition is designed around a single concept.
"It's now a money business," said Lemming, a 30-year recruiting chronicler whose publications and on-air analysis have made him a fixture in college and high school circles. "It's all about playing good football and making big bucks.
"The colleges are now playing more games, the super-conferences are evolving — everything's expanding. And this (permitting temporary dual staffs) allows schools to keep building their programs."
NCAA spokesperson Stacey Osburn said in an e-mail response that granting dual-staff waivers to schools such as Ohio State was becoming more common. The provision, the NCAA has said, is because of "extenuating circumstances" that can otherwise hinder staffs in transition.
"We granted six waivers of this nature within the last five years," Osburn said. "This year, we had a total of five."
Big Ten officials declined to comment about the issue of waivers granted to two of its member schools. Scott Chipman, a Big Ten spokesman, referred in an email to The News comments made by Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith'sin a recent interview with theAssociated Press.
Smith called the Buckeyes' approval of waiver "normal in some transitions" and "within allowable NCAA and Big Ten rules."
[h=3]Added clout[/h]The NCAA's newer approach to schools in transition comes with restrictions. No more than seven coaches at any one time may be involved in recruiting, and no more than 10 can be engaged in staggered recruiting assignments. The same 10-coach limit applies to staffs as they prepare and work during bowl games.
Meyer was hired last month by the Buckeyes to oversee a program walloped by NCAA infractions that led last May to the forced resignation of former head coach Jim Tressel and self-imposed penalties. The Buckeyes this week were punished by the NCAA with one more year of probation (for a total of three), a one-year postseason ban (in effect after the 2012 season), and additional scholarship reductions.
In previous times, such a coaching transition would have forced a staff in transition to focus its limited staff either on bowl-game preparation, or recruiting.
Meyer, however, was permitted to focus on recruiting and hire his own staff as Fickell and his colleagues prepare OSU for its Jan. 2 Gator Bowl game against Meyer's previous employer, the University of Florida.
The Buckeyes have gotten obvious clout from Meyer since he was hired. They have received verbal commitments from a number of blue-chip recruits, and, in news that made Michigan State wince, Meyer was able to persuade four-star defensive end Se'Von Pittman of Canton (Ohio) McKinley High to de-commit from the Spartans and pledge to OSU.
Pittman had been among the most highly-ranked recruits in MSU's 2012 class prior to defecting.
Mark Hollis, Michigan State's athletic director, declined to comment on the dual-staff issue and referred all questions to the NCAA.
[h=3]Recruiting swing[/h]Michigan's ire, says Brandon, is sourced in the transparent edge any school, let alone Michigan's chief rival, receives in getting a compound advantage in coaching numbers at a time when other schools are limited. That rules infractions in some cases lead to a recruiting advantage is, in Brandon's view, one more measure of the policy's flaws.
"I don't get it," Brandon said. "Because of circumstances, you're able to have a bloated coaching staff and divide responsibilities and focus. My coaches are running around, having to be at three places at once, and so is every other coaching staff in the country.
"But that changes if you can go to Indianapolis (NCAA headquarters) and get a piece of paper that says you can have two coaching staffs. One can coach, and the other can go recruit.
"Someone has to explain to me why that makes sense."
Brandon says Michigan's 2007 waiver by the NCAA was no less correct, but that it was dramatically different from the provisions granted OSU, Illinois and UCLA.
"The way it was explained to me by our compliance people," said Brandon, who became Michigan's athletic director in March 2010, "is that when Rich came in, there was a quiet period where you could not do off-campus recruiting. We got a waiver so that Rich could make phone calls.
"That's very different from forming a staff and getting on the recruiting trail."
Lemming says OSU, once Meyer was aboard, reversed a recruiting season that had been beneath the Buckeyes' norm and turned it into a potential bonanza.
"I had said a few months ago that Ohio State would be dead in the water unless they brought in a superpower coach — Urban or Nick Saban," Lemming said. "And only then would their recruiting be good, as opposed to below average, which is where it was headed.
"By the end of last spring, all 12 of the best players in Ohio were leaning toward Ohio State. Then Tressel was let go and the dominoes began to fall and almost every top player was headed elsewhere.
"But Urban's one of the best recruiters in the country, and now he's got a couple of those kids back, and he may get a couple more."
[h=3]Business as usual?[/h]Another Big Ten school that got a recruiting waiver was Illinois, which sees the more relaxed dual-staff policy as fair to all parties. Illinois is playing UCLA — another university granted the additional-coaches waiver — in the Dec. 31 Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and has allowed new coach Tim Beckman the same recruiting privileges Meyer has received at Ohio State.
The more generous rules allow committed and prospective recruits to "get a feel for the new staff," said Jay Lener, associate athletic director at Illinois.
Lener says it simply enables schools in transition to conduct business as usual.
"If the old staff is informed they're not going to be retained," Lener said, "they're surely not going to recruit for the incoming staff."
Brandon, for one, doesn't disagree. Rather, he believes a school in the midst of occasional football upheaval should not benefit in ways unavailable to other programs.
"Urban Meyer is able to spend 100 percent of his (December) time recruiting athletes, and no other coach in our conference has that flexibility," said Brandon, acknowledging the exception to Beckman and non-bowl teams.
"The NCAA preaches over and over about maintaining a level playing field and treating everybody the same. If that's their guiding principle, someone at the NCAA needs to explain how this translates into a level playing field."

queencitybuckeye;1023921 wrote:Now that UM finally beat tOSU, it's interesting that we're the Maize and Blow's "chief rival" once again.

WebFire;1023913 wrote:I agree Brandon should have just kept his mouth shut. But Rodriguez and staff did not have this benefit when he was hired. I believe it had more to do with the timing of it though.

I was a bit surprised they granted it while at the same time handing down punishment for an investigation. That is why Brandon (and others) did not like it. It isn't the rule itself, as it gets used all the time.

Also...

December 22, 2011 at 1:00 am

WebFire;1023924 wrote:Didn't know they weren't.

WebFire;1023924 wrote:Didn't know they weren't.

WebFire;1023913 wrote:I agree Brandon should have just kept his mouth shut. But Rodriguez and staff did not have this benefit when he was hired.

WebFire;1023913 wrote:I agree Brandon should have just kept his mouth shut. But Rodriguez and staff did not have this benefit when he was hired.

ytownfootball;1023952 wrote:Did Michigan apply for the exemption or is this just another example of Ohio State, you know, being proactive?

vball10set;1024051 wrote:It's nice to see that OSU's not the only school with an AD that doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut

WebFire;1023913 wrote:I agree Brandon should have just kept his mouth shut. But Rodriguez and staff did not have this benefit when he was hired. I believe it had more to do with the timing of it though.

I was a bit surprised they granted it while at the same time handing down punishment for an investigation. That is why Brandon (and others) did not like it. It isn't the rule itself, as it gets used all the time.

Also...

Writerbuckeye;1024332 wrote:Good Lord what moronic logic. The NCAA isn't about to deny a school a STANDARD WAIVER that many get when changing coaches just because they happened to be in trouble at the time. One has zero to do with the other -- unless you're a whining little bitch from a school that just got its first win against a main rival in nearly a decade, who was hoping the NCAA would help them out a little.

Why?

Because they know that with Meyer heading up OSU that winning "streak" against OSU is likely to be very, very short lived.

This has everything to do with Meyer being at OSU and little else. If Ohio State had hired Tim Beckman we wouldn't be hearing a peep out of scUM or anyone else. The folks who hate Ohio State do not want to see them recover quickly from these sanctions.

Writerbuckeye;1024332 wrote: Why?

Because they know that with Meyer heading up OSU that winning "streak" against OSU is likely to be very, very short lived.