Iowa has skin in off-campus instruction ruling

The great college football debate of the moment is satellite camps. You might think it's about Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh and his shirtless incursion into Alabama for a camp last June.

That did grab headlines and, certainly, the attention of southern schools. Last Friday, the NCAA Division I Council banned schools from holding satellite camps away from their campus and coaches from working camps off their campus.

The reported vote among the Division I conferences was six in favor of the ban (SEC, ACC, Pac-12 and Big 12 among the 'no votes') and four against it, including the Big Ten, Mid-American Conference and Conference USA.

Harbaugh's seven-state tour was the headliner for this rule, but there's more to it. This ruling also keeps coaches from attending and lending instruction to off-campus camps.

Iowa conducted four satellite camps last summer throughout the midwest. This year, it didn't have any planned, but the Iowa staff did plan on attending camps in Detroit, Mich., and Georgia.

This wasn't just Harbaugh. Iowa had skin in this, too.

Iowa coaches have attended the 'Sound Mind Sound Body' camp in Detroit for several years. Desmond King, the Hawkeyes' all-American and Thorpe Award-winning cornerback, is a product of the SMSB camps.

During Rose Bowl media interviews, Iowa defensive coordinator and secondary coach Phil Parker said the first time he saw King was at the SMSB camp. King received offers from Mid-American Conference schools (Central Michigan and Ball State to name a few) because of exposure at that camp. Parker saw King and decided to dig a little deeper.

'When you go to those camps and you see those guys and you see somebody that might be a younger guy, you kind of have the idea, 'hey, this guy's a good football player,'' Parker said.

King remembered seeing Parker at the SMSB camp when he was a freshman at East English Village Prep.

'I actually met coach Parker ... Well, I didn't actually speak to him but my first time seeing him was in the ninth grade at the Sound Mind Sound Body camp,' said King, who led the Big Ten with eight interceptions last season. 'He was coaching the DBs there. I was in the cornerback group, but I was a youngster. I was just trying to soak in all the information I could.'

That camp exposure gave King something to work toward, according to his mom, Yvette Powell.

'It gave a lot of kids hope for some college coaches to come to a camp and see them work out,' she said Monday. 'Desmond attended SMSB and the program helped him in so many ways.

'He attended camps in a lot of cities. Here in Michigan the Sound Mind Sound Body provided him with opportunities to meet college coaches that wouldn't normally be in Michigan. The satellite camps gave exposure for a lot of guys who weren't being recruited heavily.

'Now, how will the guys have that exposure? NCAA has set so many athletes back.'

This sentiment echoed throughout social media last weekend. Several former Michigan preps stood up for the Sound Mind Sound Body camp.

Michigan cornerback Jourdan Lewis:

We can't let the NCAA do this. Everybody get April 10, 2016

We can't let the NCAA do this. Everybody get #ChangeNCAA trending. They think they're hurting Coach but they're really hurting the kids.

— Jourdan Lewis (@JourdanJD)

Iowa State wide receiver Allen Lazard also let his feelings be known.

The NCAA is taking away the only opportunity for some kids to receive a college degree just so they can make more $$ April 10, 2016

The NCAA is taking away the only opportunity for some kids to receive a college degree just so they can make more $$ https://t.co/CH0BfTM6ln

— Allen Lazard (@AllenLazard)

The solution to this will be more on-campus camps. Iowa is likely looking at those on a weekly basis in the month of June. The invites for these camps are selective and include prospects the school believes it can recruit and turn into Big Ten players. Now that coaches can't work at other schools' camps, smaller schools will be shut out. The squeeze on opportunities for prospects comes down to this: It's $90 and a drive to attend a local camp like SMSB. For a Detroit prep to make it to Iowa City for a camp, the expense grows through transportation alone.

Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz is OK with the ruling, especially the part that keeps instructional camps on campus and keeps it within that school's coaching staff. His view is more toward keeping communication between the prospect and the school without an intermediary.

'In my opinion, I think camps should be done on your campus,' Ferentz said after Iowa's practice Friday night at West Des Moines's Valley Stadium (this would remain legal, by the way). 'I also think the next step is to have them run by personnel from your university and people who actually work in your football department, period, so there are no third parties. We've seen that be a problem in other sports and I think it's becoming an issue in football.

'I think some schools, I'm not going to say they're encouraging it, [but they are] partaking in it and I'm not sure that's healthy for our game, either.'

It's not over for satellite camps and off-campus instruction. On April 28 the NCAA board of directors will decide whether to approve this proposal.

A Twitter hashtag began circulating Sunday — #ChangeNCAA. Maybe the NCAA listens.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com