Last year, the NCAA permitted one phone call to be made by a division one college coach in the month of March to a high school junior. The NCAA also allowed for division one coaches to make an in-person contact in April at the players’ high school.  However, effective immediately, these rules no longer exist. Below is the rationale that the NCAA has given as to why the “contact rule” will no longer be utilized. Any in-person off-campus or phone contact made by a division one coach prior to July 1 is now a violation. Email contact and in-person on-campus contact is still permitted. Players are also allowed to call the coach at any time during their high school career.  The coach however, cannot call them until July 1.  This rule change only affects division one schools.
 
“The junior-year contact was originally adopted only in men’s basketball and was intended to minimize the nonscholastic influences in the basketball recruiting process. The rule was then adopted in all other sports (other than football). Recently, men’s and women’s basketball rescinded the junior year contact. Permitting a junior-year contact causes coaches to feel pressured to use the additional contact and secure early commitments at a time when their focus should be on enrolled student-athletes. Further, eliminating the contact relieves the pressure on prospective student-athletes to commit early, is less intrusive, and will bring consistency in the application of the contact rules for all sports. Finally, the original intent of the March telephone call in the prospective student-athlete’s junior year was to arrange the April contact. If the April junior-year contact is eliminated, the March telephone call is no longer necessary.”

Portions of this article were taken from www.ncaa.org.  For more information, please contact Baseball Factory.