Death of Boise State recruit Emil Smith highlights NCAA's puzzling flaws
Leave it to the NCAA to regulate how much contact a member school can have with prospective student athletes and their families - even when they are dead.
It's a rule that needs changing.
Boise State football recruit Emil Smith died in a July 18 car accident in Hemet, Calif. His brother Dimitri Garcia, 22, also died in the accident.
Garcia, a father of two young children, was driving the speeding yellow Dodge Neon. Smith, a passenger, was a star football player entering his senior year at Rancho Verde High who had committed to attend Boise State on June 23.
Smith said the Broncos' coaching staff was influential in his decision to join the Broncos' 2011 recruiting class. Running backs coach Keith Bhonapha was Smith's primary recruiter.
"What really fascinated me was the coaching staff. I really liked the coaching staff," Smith told me during a phone call in late June. "They showed me a lot of love. They were very enthusiastic about what they were doing."
Recruiting - the very act of convincing an 18-year-old to leave home and become part of your family - requires a close bond.
It is easy to tell which coaches recruited which player in the Boise State football offices, special teams coordinator Jeff Choate said, because the players will always stop by to say hello.
"It's like they're your child kind of. You have that kind of relationship with them," Choate said. "You get to know these kids, the ins and outs. You have really honest conversations with them."
But when Smith died, the Broncos' coaching staff was handcuffed by NCAA rules.
Because Smith had not signed a National Letter of Intent (NLI) - signing day is in February - Boise State coaches could not comment on Smith.
They could not attend his funeral. They could not send flowers. They could not call his grieving parents or any other family members.
"There was nothing the school could do," said Scott Hobbs, Boise State's assistant athletic director for compliance.
Hobbs said the Broncos contacted officials at other schools, the Western Athletic Conference and the Mountain West Conference to discuss their options.
The answer was the same.
In phone conversations with Hobbs, he was careful never to reference Smith by name. Instead, he outlined the NCAA bylaws that Boise State felt compelled to obey.
Such as NCAA Bylaw 13.10.2, which states member institutions may only confirm its recruitment of a prospective student-athlete before he or she signs a NLI.
Or NCAA Bylaw 13.2.9, which outlines how large of a donation or other token of support ($100) a school may provide in the event of his or her death, provided he/she has signed an NLI.
No phone calls are allowed from a team to players or their families from between June 1 and Aug. 31, Hobbs said, meaning no Boise State coach could call Smith's parents.
Since no off-campus contact is allowed - and since Smith's funeral was to be attended by his teammates (or, in NCAA parlance, recruitable athletes) - even the funeral was off-limits.
In recent years, the NCAA has taken steps to be more sensitive to student-athletes' needs. But the organization still has work to do.
They can start with this issue - and afford schools with verbal commitments the same latitude in dealing with deaths that it does for players in the program.
It is, fortunately, a rare occurrence. And it should be handled with more dignity and respect than the NCAA currently allows.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/08/04/1290962/emil-smith-case-highlights-ncaas.html#ixzz0vllVRLD6