Coaches must now submit online profiles including Facebook Twitter and blogs for the Pepperdine athletics office to review. The deadline for submission by both head and assistant coaches was Sept. 14.
According to Assistant Athletic Director Marcus Brown these parameters have been instituted to encourage compliance with reasonable expectations regarding contact with current and prospective players.
“Communication both in-person and through certain media is a highly regulated category of NCAA activity Brown wrote in an email. The technology used whether telephone e-mail Internet chat rooms or the current platforms must be regulated for the purpose of maintaining athletic fairness and equity between athletic programs and protecting athletes from unreasonable intrusion.”
Basic NCAA regulations state that a college coach is only permitted to contact a prospective athlete in person off the college campus only on or after July 1 when they have completed their junior year of high school. Coaches are permitted one phone call a week to that athlete. College coaches are also required to have an official ACT or SAT score and a copy of the athlete’s official high school transcript before the athlete can make an official visit to the campus. These rules apply at all Division 1 schools and universities are allowed to institute other policies at their discretion.
“The intent of our policy is to comply with the NCAA regulations regarding permissible communication and contact with prospective and current student-athletes Brown wrote.
There are still many usage freedoms offered to coaches who utilize online accounts. According to Brown, the coaches are asked to identify their accounts as personal” or “athletically related.”
“A personal account means that its use has no athletically related purpose and does not have a link or connection with prospective or current student-athletes Brown wrote. If named as personal, the account will not be checked at all.
An athletically related account means that is has an athletically-related use and/or includes links or connections with prospective or current student-athletes Brown continued. These are the accounts that will be periodically monitored for compliance with NCAA regulations.
Brown said these regulations were recently put into place as Pepperdine and the NCAA realized the potential uses of online networking sites and developed a policy towards them.
This establishment of our policy at this time has as much to do with timing as it does with having a comfortable understanding of how these social networking platforms work and how the NCAA expects institutions to permit their use within the rules Brown wrote.
It has important to note that the NCAA has not taken a official stand on how much a university can monitor or restrict accounts, but has left it up to the individual institutions to determine their own Facebook policies at this time, according to Frank Butts from the university of West Georgia and author for the United States Sports Academy.
At other D1 schools, most of the focus regarding Facebook regulations is geared toward student-athletes, instead of coaches like Pepperdine has chosen to focus on. But Pepperdine athletes have yet to feel demands of these regulations.
There have not been any restrictions placed on student-athletes but they are encouraged by the compliance office and the coaching staffs to be wise and conscientious about their use of these same services for reasons that might have consequence with the University NCAA personal or professional entities Brown wrote.
Pepperdine coaches have not been strongly opposed to these new regulations.
The vast majority [of coaches] have complied without question or comment Brown wrote. Many accept these limitations as a reasonable attempt to prevent abuses and ensure accountability”
He does however see more restrictions being placed in the future.
“This is neither the first nor last category of activity that the NCAA rules will constrict he continued.
