Why the NCAA ban on satellite camps will backfire on the SEC
The SEC is the stronghold of college football power because they have the best natural resources — players — in their schools' backyards.
But that distinct geographical advantage in recruiting was being challenged, so Friday the NCAA stepped in and helped out, banning all satellite camps, effective immediately.
Is it really shocking that two powerful entities that openly flaunt their regressive agendas amid a rapidly changing and innovative landscape would team up in their coinciding quests to maintain power?
Of course not.
The two entities' combined pettiness won't have any real-world consequences — this is just college football, after all — but it does highlight the SEC and NCAA's unremorseful zeal in maintaining power.
The SEC would rather squash others' rights than take advantage of their own.
The NCAA would rather create a prohibition than regulate.
Satellite camps have become en vogue over the last few years, as Big Ten schools — Penn State and Michigan most famously — realized that they could exploit an NCAA rule loophole and fly south to be "guest coaches" at camps across the Sun Belt.
The SEC didn't like it. They had a ban on satellite camps in their league, and if Nick Saban couldn't do something, why would any other coach have the right to do it? They leaned into other leagues and convinced them not to like the camps either, hence Friday's ban.
(The ACC also had a 50-mile rule, but come on, ACC, have some dignity. Don't try to join the side of your oppressor.)
The shortsightedness of this quickly-instituted (that's the first time that's ever been applied to the NCAA, by the way) ban on satellite camps won't stop Big Ten teams from recruiting in SEC territory. It will make it a bit harder, but Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer still have private jets and connections across the South.
The SEC and NCAA don't care that this is a rule that will hurt prospects, whose abilities to earn a scholarship will be limited by it.
(Despite their advertising campaigns, neither entity has been about anything but money, and this rule tangentially helps the SEC keep it.)
The SEC and NCAA don't care that the rule will hurt small school coaches who will no longer be able to leverage their location to bump elbows with the big names of the game.
(The schism of Power Five and Group of Five has created two distinct classes and the gap between the two has been larger than originally projected and will only grow.)
But they should care that this new rule could hurt the SEC.
The SEC was only against this rule because they had a "professional courtesy" on the books. But the college football world is flat and ruthless and the only way to get ahead is to challenge the status quo. The SEC could have set up satellite camps of their own in Miami and California and leveraged their considerable power in new markets.
The cat is out of the bag — every coach in the country knows that one of the most efficient ways to get ahead is to recruit in SEC territory, and they'll just find a new way to help them do that now.