By Natalie Pierre | npierre@al.com on May 14, 2015 at 3:42 PM, updated May 14, 2015 at 7:29 PM
Satellite camps are still allowed, but the NCAA Interpretations Committee recently informed schools that coaches who serve as "guest" teachers for the high school football camps are not allowed to promote them in any way.
It appears first-year Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh has the NCAA's attention, in addition to many Power Five programs – especially in the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference – that are vehemently opposed to satellite camps.
Harbaugh launched an unprecedented marketing campaign last month for his program's cross-country summer tour, which will include nine stops in seven different states, including Prattville, Alabama.
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Michigan's advertisement for its "Summer Swarm Tour 2015" included a private plane above a maize U.S. map that featured Michigan's blue block "M" in nine spots, denoting the locations where Harbaugh and his staff will stops for high school football camps this summer. The ad, which was promoted on the university's official social media accounts last month, has since been deleted.
The interpretation handed down by the NCAA's Academic and Membership Affairs staff earlier this month states that coaches are not allowed to play any role in developing marketing materials or promoting non-institutional camps or clinics online – social media and recruiting correspondence included.
However, coaches' names, quotes, likenesses and images can be used in marketing materials by the school hosting the satellite camp, but the guest coach can not promote it.
Many consider the mere existence of satellite camps - where coaching staffs from major college programs can travel to smaller campuses around the country and act as "guest" teachers for high school players - to be a loophole in NCAA Rule 13.12.1.2.
"An institution's sports camp or clinic shall be conducted on the institution's campus, within the state in which the institution is located or, if outside the state, within a 50-mile radius of the institution's campus," the NCAA rule states.
Current SEC and ACC bylaws prevent its coaches from taking part in satellite camps.
"Ironically, when we're talking about satellite camps - as we remember camps, they were instructional and development opportunities," incoming SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said last month. "Now, what we're talking about is recruiting tours. So, let's just be clear about what we're really talking about here."
The SEC's coaches would like to see national legislation passed that prevents programs, like Harbaugh's, from setting up satellite camps in their backyard – Prattville High is just 70 miles west of Auburn.
"I think the SEC coaches last year made it clear that we'd like it to be that way throughout the country," Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn said.
Alabama head coach Nick Saban added: "If we're all going to travel all over the country to have satellite camps, you know, how ridiculous is that? I mean we're not allowed to go to all-star games, but now we're going to have satellite camps all over the country. So it doesn't really make sense."
The SEC will continue to discuss the issue of satellite camps at its spring meetings later this month in Destin.
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2015/05/guest_coaches_can_no_longer_pr.html
