Foremost among six recruiting reforms approved Thursday by the NCAA Division I Board of Directors as emergency legislation is a rule requiring schools to develop written policies for a prospect's visit. The school president or chancellor must sign the report, which must be submitted to the conference office or the NCAA by Dec. 1.
Not that anyone can wait that long.
"There's a (far earlier) de facto deadline," said Robert Hemenway, the board of directors chairman and chancellor at Kansas. "It means you can't bring somebody to campus until you've done (the policy report)."
Visits are allowed from the start of the academic year. If a school doesn't complete its policies until November, it likely will be far behind its peers.
But Florida, Florida State and South Florida have been preparing for this series of rules to pass, almost a formality following the sex scandal at Colorado as well as the criminal acts committed by heralded linebacker Willie Williams during his visit to Gainesville.
"We've been working on it since February and certainly my involvement on the (recruiting) task force gave us an opportunity to see where this was headed nationally," UF athletic director Jeremy Foley said. "Our policies will be done next week."
FSU associate athletic director Bob Minnix said FSU has done some re-evaluating of its recruiting practices and he's confident that existing guidelines address many of the problems exposed at Colorado.
Several women alleged they had been raped by football recruits in Boulder and reports surfaced that alcohol and strippers were commonplace for prospects. Coach Gary Barnett was suspended and nearly lost his job as the scandal touched off Congressional hearings.
The NCAA has said schools' policy reports must specifically prohibit alcohol, drugs, sex and gambling as recruiting tools.
"We probably need to go back and double check and make sure all those things are included," Minnix said. "Gambling is not talked about, so we'll have to do that. ... But if there's more we need to do, we'll do it."
USF athletic director Doug Woolard has not been on the job long, hired mid-May and in Tampa about six weeks, but he realized recruiting reform would be high on his to-do list.
"One of the first things I did when I came here was put together a task force to review our entire recruiting philosophies and policies, including but not limited to official visits," he said. "The group has met a couple times so at least we've got a leg up on the process."
Most schools haven't had a curfew for prospects and, though the NCAA hasn't mandated one, it's likely most will adopt one that likely will vary from school to school. Another area for school officials to discuss and put to paper is a list of where student-athlete hosts can or cannot take prospects. "We're going to lay out the parameters of what we expect," Foley said. "Obviously, it's something we should have been doing previously."
NCAA president Myles Brand called the reforms "major steps in the right direction" in the establishment of accountability and eliminating a "sense that no holds are barred in recruiting student-athletes."
Four of the other five measures passed with little debate, including those that dealt with the star treatment. The last proposal called for the use of commercial aircraft at coach-class fares only, something that schools not serviced by commercial airports saw as a disadvantage.
"There was sufficient concern about the air transportation that we actually separated the issue," Hemenway said, adding that the board eventually voted 11-3 in favor of commercial.
Foley, who told the task force that the SEC was against it, said he saw both sides. Florida used a charter 10 times to pick up 14 different recruits last year, he said, so that will change.
He's on the clock.
BASKETBALL: Georgia was placed on four years probation for rules violations under former coach Jim Harrick involving academic fraud, unethical conduct and improper benefits in the men's program. The NCAA did not impose a one-year postseason ban on the team, citing the school's self-imposed penalties in which it pulled the team out of the 2003 SEC and NCAA tournaments.
The school's athletic department is on notice for the next five years. A violation by any Georgia athletic program before April 2009 could result in stiffer penalties.
Athletic director Damon Evans said the school plans to appeal.
The team will lose one scholarship for each of the next three seasons, forfeit its 30 victories from the 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons and lose official credit for participating in the 2002 NCAA Tournament.
The violations centered on former assistant coach Jim Harrick Jr., the son of the Bulldogs' former coach. Harrick Sr. was not named in any of the allegations.
WOODEN AWARD: Oklahoma State senior forward Joey Graham, the former Brandon High star, and Florida's David Lee and Anthony Roberson were among the top 50 candidates for the 2004-05 John R. Wooden Award as the nation's most outstanding basketball player.
Times staff writer Antonya English contributed to this report, which used information from other news organizations.
