BOCA RATON – Following Thursday’s adidas camp at FAU, Lane Kiffin once again criticized a new NCAA rule governing such high school instructional camps, a topic that he first touched on prior to Monday’s elite camp.
Simply put, Kiffin isn’t a fan of the edict that essentially prevents FBS schools from hiring high school coaches to teach at their summer camps.
“These new rules make it more difficult because you can’t hire these guys, unfortunately, which I think is a really bad rule because (hiring high school coaches for camps) allows us to help high school coaches or younger coaches financially and allows us to help them grow and learn from our stuff. We teach them all our drills and everything, so unfortunately we can’t do that.”
In past years college coaches would often hire their high school brethren to handle the teaching aspects of camps, freeing the college coaches to evaluate potential recruits.
The rule, approved in April, is designed to keep football programs from hiring coaches, mentors or others associated with a recruit to perform off-the-field duties (analysts, player personnel, etc.) in hopes of luring the recruit to sign with the school.
It declares a recruit ineligible to play football for that school if he enrolls two years before or two years after his high school coach or another individual associated with his recruitment works a camp.
Kiffin’s previous boss, Alabama coach Nick Saban, is among those who have spoken out against the rule.
On Monday, Kiffin called it a “dumb rule.”
Three days later Kiffin elected to joke about about the possibility of future NCAA edicts.
“The rules change so much I just know what they are at the time and then next year it will all change again,” Kiffin said. “Pretty soon we won’t be able to coach our own kids.”
Kiffin and the Owls hosted more than 500 high school football players at Thursday’s camp, a day in which the weather cooperated. That can’t be said for Monday, when rain helped keep the turnout lower.
Coaches whose programs are outfitted by adidas, FAU’s official outfitter, were invited to the camp. About 15 programs were represented in Boca Raton. Mississippi St.’s Dan Mulllen and North Carolina St.’s Dave Doeren were the most prominent head coaches to take the field.
Former FAU offensive line coach Luke Meadows, now with Eastern Michigan, also worked the camp.
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