Simplest way to put an end to the AAU problem (and nip the 7on7 problem in the bud) is to end recruiting at non-high school related events and only allow contact between coaching staffs and A. the recruit's family and B. their high school coaching staff.

To accomplish this you may have to expand basketball coaching staffs by one or two positions to give you a recruiter who actually has the time to go out and see these kids play since the regular seasons are intertwined but that's a trade-off I'd be willing to make and it opens up opportunities for more coaches to get their foot in the door.

(11-03-2017 06:15 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(11-03-2017 02:58 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  The more common arrangement now is for the shoe/apparel contract to be with the school rather than the coach but that money (usually paid to the booster club) helps fund the salary of the coach.

Schools would be much more inclined to regulate the intersection of college and shoe companies if it were only enriching the coach, but that isn't the case.

The NCAA could absolutely function on strictly dues. It might be pushed to eliminate some tangential programs but it could function.

If the NCAA Tournament was a direct pass through to the schools and had no revenue except TV, but the same basketball distribution formula was used, the value of a unit would be just north of $1.4 million so a conference with six one and done appearances would receive just over $8.5 million a year. Put that in their hands then tell them to pay back to the NCAA for dues, the NCAA would shrink pretty damn fast.

Now remember that the NCAA tournament pockets over 70 million a year on the tournament. That's 1,077,000 dollars per game more than what they pay out in tourney credits now. I'd say those units would be worth around 2 million each. But yeah, they would shrink in a hurry if thy had to live off of dues and that would probably be a danged good thing.

I just took the 1.1 billion per year new TV deal, took 128 credits per season times six (since it is a six year payout) and divided $1.1 billion by that. One thing to remember is a lot of the sponsorships are bundled into the TV deal. CBS/Turner sell a lot of the sponsorships as part of the total package but ticket sales revenue is not included so my number is high though there are expenses to deduct such arena rental, officials, team and officials transportation and meals.

Even with the expenses I'm sure my number is low.

(11-03-2017 04:22 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(11-03-2017 10:31 AM)Wedge Wrote:  The NCAA doesn't control its members; the members control the NCAA.

And the members have been feasting on that shoe company money for a long time and hope to continue doing so long into the future.

Good point.

The Presidents of the NCAA schools ultimately control the NCAA. But usually they can't be bothered with it, so the NCAA is run by Athletic Directors (who are controlled by donors and the shoe companies). The real question is: when will the presidents wake up, pay attention, take the power away from ADs, and start to reform the badly broken system?

If the Adidas scandal and the UNC scandal won't do it, I'm afraid nothing will.

One of the major mistakes made was reducing the power of the Faculty Athletic Rep. Until the Knight Commission shamed the presidents into taking a larger role the FARs ran the show and got the blame for how things were going and I think it is pretty clear that reducing the power of the FAR has hurt.

They typical FAR was tenured so could vote their conscience with little to no fear, had been at the school longer than the president or coaches, AD's used to serve at a school longer so they might have similar time in service, today they would have been at the school longer than most AD's.

They are the frontline if there are student-athlete problems though many schools now hire athletic department staff to short-circuit that.

You can't end AAU and you should not try.

For colleges it exists for a very simple reason, High School players are playing against mostly crap players, so it's nearly impossible to see if their games translate.[1] High Schools simply don't have the extra cash to fund year round player development.

A second issue is the top 150-250 players nationally are for the most part identified before they are even Sophomores, probably half before High School. Aaron Gordon, who played with my son in High School and in non-school league back in 5th grade (actually on another team, he was already almost 6' tall in 5th grade) was identified by the 6th grade and on the US National team by 9th grade. In all honesty our High School only saw him playing Basketball during the mandated period. He never was on the off season school teams or programs. I am sure this is true of the other elite players. It's not realistic to ask these kids not to find places to play and not to seek out teams of the best players in the region and play against players in who are also the best.

Note: The same situation, even more tilted toward AAU exists in women's Volleyball. And Women's Basketball the level of competition in school teams is an absolute joke. Even the Catholic schools with no boundaries struggle to find 5 competent players to put on the floor. Prospects absolutely have to find places to develop their game and showcase.

The biggest advantage of AAU type leagues is you can showcase the best, and even just the very good against similar talent, instead of, while fun since you have crowds and fans, your school team with marginal talent. The NBA G-League is becoming vastly superior a training ground for the 2nd tier elite players, as NBA teams are turning them into true development teams. The Santa Cruz Warriors are finally seeing Quin Cook in his 4th year, after 4 years at Duke including a National title, develop enough to actually play in the NBA. They have first round draft pick down there now, trying to get his game up to an NBA level. So the same issues exist at the pro level as at the college: School teams simply don;t develop the players.

Fundamentally all such regulations are designed to give men of questionable competence -- high school coaches-- more power. I say screw that. I have dealt with those guys and they are all over the map in ability. Why give them more power?



[1] I personally knew a player who was the public school MVP in the SVAL six years ago, and UCSB would only give him a scholarship if he performed well enough on a summer league AAU team they chose for him, because they told him flat out, he did not play against strong enough competition for them to evaluate him. So that is what he did. The SVAL is in Silicon Valley, a region with 3 million people, and there are 16 high schools of 2,000 students.

(11-06-2017 01:13 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Fundamentally all such regulations are designed to give men of questionable competence -- high school coaches-- more power. I say screw that. I have dealt with those guys and they are all over the map in ability. Why give them more power?

No, you prefer to give more power to men of questionable character.


The AAU system is rotten to the core and has been for well over a decade. It either needs to clean itself up or be removed from the process

No. I see both school coaches and AAU coaches/programs as deeply flawed. I have dealt with both, and there is sleaze on both sides, lots of sleaze. Once money gets in you have the University of Phoenix phenomena. Nothing you can do about that.

The rules are tilted very heavily in favor of school coaches and against players. That is a huge issue, as it is set up like a typical government union, designed to give job security to these guys.

You also seem to think coaches just grow on pods for schools. It doesn't work like that. Most coaches have to toil for years running youth teams and teaching before they ever get a coaching job. The AAU and other leagues serve as places they can hone their craft, and collect a small stipend (believe me $1,000 to $2,000 for coaching a couple of 6th grade boys teams for 6 months is hardly anything you can live on). Every year former players come back from college and want to get into the coaching career. Most are sincere and some are sleazy. It is what it is.

Basically what I am saying is you cannot legislate character. And there is no way you can put the genie back in the bottle and say kids can only play a sport in season. The entire out of season started with parents forming teams and leagues, and they would do it all over again. More legislation will have unintended consequences and will almost certainly fail without draconian and oppressive measures. I prefer to go the opposite direction and admit some players have professional and commercial value and let them have the money straight up. Get rid of the pretense of amateurism.

The real question to me is how do we get payola out of the system? I don't know that you can so long as colleges are gatekeepers to professional careers. This is a uniquely American situation. No other country has colleges as gatekeepers.

Note, Frank the Tank points out for top prospects, playing a couple years for a major college with cheering fans and young girls throwing themselves at you, than is playing in the depressing atmosphere that is the G-League (note, a few teams have good atmospheres, such as Santa Cruz and Sioux Falls, but most are like playing in B-level AAU tournaments before a few dozen marginal fans). The money and fans are not there. Colleges have monopolized the fans. So they occupy a space they probably shouldn't, and they have figured out how to monetize it.

It's a mess. In a perfect world there should be no school teams, and professional contracts, including prospect contracts, should be legal. Frankly in sports they should be legal as they are in Engineering and some other fields (yes students actually get paid if they are top prospects) -- they don't lose scholarships for taking that money. Frankly that is the way college sports should be. Players should be allowed to have development contracts and not loose scholarships. But we pretend it's amateur.

(11-06-2017 01:39 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  

(11-06-2017 01:13 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Fundamentally all such regulations are designed to give men of questionable competence -- high school coaches-- more power. I say screw that. I have dealt with those guys and they are all over the map in ability. Why give them more power?

No, you prefer to give more power to men of questionable character.


The AAU system is rotten to the core and has been for well over a decade. It either needs to clean itself up or be removed from the process

And, they are also all over the map in ability, like high school coaches. The AAU does a lot more "showcasing" than "coaching".

(11-06-2017 02:49 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(11-06-2017 01:39 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  

(11-06-2017 01:13 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Fundamentally all such regulations are designed to give men of questionable competence -- high school coaches-- more power. I say screw that. I have dealt with those guys and they are all over the map in ability. Why give them more power?

No, you prefer to give more power to men of questionable character.


The AAU system is rotten to the core and has been for well over a decade. It either needs to clean itself up or be removed from the process

And, they are also all over the map in ability, like high school coaches. The AAU does a lot more "showcasing" than "coaching".

Having been involved in coaching both at the high school level and various "travel" teams I agree. The vast majority of AAU coaches I have had dealings with wouldn't last a season coaching high school ball, if they could have passed a background check to be hired to begin with.

The AAU system is corrupt from top to bottom. What started out as a good idea allowed corrupt and questionable characters to infiltrate their organization and ruin it. The sports world would be far better off if AAU burned to the ground and a replacement arose from the ashes that barred the cancer that destroyed AAU from taking root in the new system.

And I still would prohibit colleges from recruiting at non-high school sanctioned events. While even that isn't totally free of corruption there are at least safeguards at the high school level in place to prevent the worst of the worst that AAU has seemingly embraced.

Players and their families are part of the problem as well.

I know of a kid who was on a fundamentally sound AAU team thanks to good coaching. Kid was leading his team in scoring but not putting up huge numbers. He switched to a team that was a "showcase". He put up great scoring numbers but his assists, steals, blocks and rebounds all fell off the table. He (or his family) thought he needed more points to draw recruiting attention, as result of the switch a kid who was getting some interest from also-ran P5's and some above average mid-majors (none of the top mid-majors) fell to getting interest from Southland, SWAC, and A-Sun schools.

(11-06-2017 07:02 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Players and their families are part of the problem as well.

I know of a kid who was on a fundamentally sound AAU team thanks to good coaching. Kid was leading his team in scoring but not putting up huge numbers. He switched to a team that was a "showcase". He put up great scoring numbers but his assists, steals, blocks and rebounds all fell off the table. He (or his family) thought he needed more points to draw recruiting attention, as result of the switch a kid who was getting some interest from also-ran P5's and some above average mid-majors (none of the top mid-majors) fell to getting interest from Southland, SWAC, and A-Sun schools.

The top AAU teams brag that nearly everyone on their team gets a D-I scholarship offer. If you can get regular playing time on one of those teams, it must be tough to decide to pass that up in favor of a team, whether AAU or high school, where maybe one kid every four years gets a D-I offer. On the other hand, it might be better in terms of getting noticed to be clearly the best player on an AAU team rather than the 5th best player on one of the top Nike or adidas teams.

(11-06-2017 07:31 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-06-2017 07:02 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Players and their families are part of the problem as well.

I know of a kid who was on a fundamentally sound AAU team thanks to good coaching. Kid was leading his team in scoring but not putting up huge numbers. He switched to a team that was a "showcase". He put up great scoring numbers but his assists, steals, blocks and rebounds all fell off the table. He (or his family) thought he needed more points to draw recruiting attention, as result of the switch a kid who was getting some interest from also-ran P5's and some above average mid-majors (none of the top mid-majors) fell to getting interest from Southland, SWAC, and A-Sun schools.

The top AAU teams brag that nearly everyone on their team gets a D-I scholarship offer. If you can get regular playing time on one of those teams, it must be tough to decide to pass that up in favor of a team, whether AAU or high school, where maybe one kid every four years gets a D-I offer. On the other hand, it might be better in terms of getting noticed to be clearly the best player on an AAU team rather than the 5th best player on one of the top Nike or adidas teams.

I suspect the players on those elite teams would get a DI offer even if they skipped playing AAU ball. Probably not as high of offers because of the reduced exposure.

One thing I do like about AAU ball. One of the best freshmen A-State signed spent his summers playing AAU ball. We signed him as a football player. If he had spent his summers going to football camps we probably never get him.

(11-06-2017 07:31 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-06-2017 07:02 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Players and their families are part of the problem as well.

I know of a kid who was on a fundamentally sound AAU team thanks to good coaching. Kid was leading his team in scoring but not putting up huge numbers. He switched to a team that was a "showcase". He put up great scoring numbers but his assists, steals, blocks and rebounds all fell off the table. He (or his family) thought he needed more points to draw recruiting attention, as result of the switch a kid who was getting some interest from also-ran P5's and some above average mid-majors (none of the top mid-majors) fell to getting interest from Southland, SWAC, and A-Sun schools.

The top AAU teams brag that nearly everyone on their team gets a D-I scholarship offer. If you can get regular playing time on one of those teams, it must be tough to decide to pass that up in favor of a team, whether AAU or high school, where maybe one kid every four years gets a D-I offer. On the other hand, it might be better in terms of getting noticed to be clearly the best player on an AAU team rather than the 5th best player on one of the top Nike or adidas teams.

My suggestion would offer an alternative to spending summers on an AAU team. I propose that the NCAA sponsor summer skills camps for the elite players entering their junior and senior years. These could be funded with some of the millions being stockpiled through the NCAAT revenues.

It would require some strict rules to keep the top programs from furthering their already considerable recruiting advantages, but those could be worked out. The camps could be located strategically around the country, and players could attend more than one so they could compete against players from other regions besides their own.

In my mind, the camps would be run by D-I assistant coaches, none of which could coach at a camp located near their own campus. All D-I coaches would be prohibited from attending the competing AAU leagues, or contacting (including texting and phone calls) any players in those leagues during the AAU season.

The NCAA camps could include frequent scrimmages between clinics to enable both the camp coaches and other NCAA coaches in attendance to evaluate talent in game situations.

AAU doesn't have to be the only place a talented player could showcase his own skills.