The NCAA's Division I Cabinet on Tuesday introduced a package of proposals that would hand oversight of several long-standing national rules back to individual sports, and in some cases do away with them entirely.
The package covers coaching limits, official visits and playing season dates, and the Cabinet could adopt it as early as January.
The proposals came out of a recommendation from the Division I Decision-Making Working Group, according to the NCAA. The Cabinet also plans to keep reviewing other areas for decentralization, with a goal of wrapping that work up by this summer.
"Last year, we restructured Division I to streamline our self-governance, increase student-athlete representation and more nimbly respond to challenges facing college sports, and one of our top priorities for that new structure was to reconsider which rules need to be regulated at a national level and which could be regulated more locally, either at the campus or conference level," said Illinois athletics director Josh Whitman, who chairs the Cabinet. "If adopted in January, these changes would represent a first step toward achieving that broader goal."
The coaching piece is the one football staffs will be drawn to first. Under the proposal, sports would no longer have limits on the number of countable coaches. The only cap left would be on off-campus recruiters, and each sport's oversight committee would set that number.
Football has been moving in this direction for a while now. In June 2024, the Division I Council voted to allow any staff member to provide technical and tactical instruction during practice and games, a change that took effect immediately. That vote left the off-campus recruiter limits in place, at 11 for FBS programs and 13 for FCS programs, with four more for the service academies. It also kept the FBS limits of four graduate assistants and five strength and conditioning coaches.
If this package passes, the "countable coach" label goes away, and the decision on how many staffers can hit the road for recruiting would fall on the Football Oversight Committee.
On recruiting, schools would be allowed to arrange transportation and cover accommodations and entertainment for a prospect and four accompanying individuals on an official visit, within reasonable modes of transportation and in line with each school's own transportation policies. For a lot of recruits, the decision gets made by a parent, a grandparent, a high school coach and a sibling. This rule would let all of them come along on the school's dime.
Playing seasons would also get standardized dates for the start of practice, the start of regular-season competition and the end of the regular season, rather than relying on each school's academic calendar. The NCAA noted the changes could also eliminate rules that govern how often a school can compete in foreign competition during the season.
There's a lot left to be decided between now and January, especially on what each oversight committee does with the authority it would be handed. Staff limits have long been one of the few guardrails between the programs with the deepest pockets and everyone else, and it will be worth watching where football's committee lands on the recruiter number.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.