NCAA finally does something right: Rule proposal would ban photo shoots on unofficial visits

It's been a busy day for NCAA rules changes, but perhaps the most impactful change to come out of today hasn't been passed yet.

On Wednesday, the FBS Oversight Committee introduced legislation to ban photo shoots for unofficial -- key word: unofficial -- visits. 

I happen to love this rule, for reasons I'll explain below. But I appear to be in the minority.

Reaction to this has not been popular, for a variety of reasons:

"The NCAA has not or can not solve every problem, so they shouldn't solve any problems at all." This fallacy is not limited to the NCAA, of course, but it was alive and present online on Wednesday.

"The schools are going to be mad that the mean ol' NCAA is doing this to them." These people forget, or fail to realize, the NCAA is the schools and the schools are the NCAA. The NCAA isn't doing this to the schools, it's doing it for the schools. 

"This rule change was not necessary. Let schools do what they want." Andy and Bobby of all people should realize this is not how college sports works. If one school does it, soon 132 others will, too. Welcome to college football. 

All of the above comments -- and there were plenty more where those came from -- were either uninformed, misguided, or both.

First of all, let's keep in mind this proposal is for unofficial visits only. Hundreds of kids per year take unofficials, because why not? Programs invest hardly anything into unofficial visitors -- in the majority of cases, it's a couple steps above a guided tour but flights of stairs below the investment put into each official visitor.

For most recruiting staffers, that is.

Let's walk through a scenario all too common in football buildings across America.

Johnny 5-Star is taking an unofficial visit. It's a big deal. Everyone in the building knows it's a big deal. But it's not just Johnny 5-Star; he's bringing along teammates Jimmy 3-Star and Timmy 2-Star. Again, why not? It's an unofficial visit.

An assistant coach sets up a photo shoot for Johnny 5-Star, because his unofficial is a big deal and the program needs to do everything it can to get him back for an official a few months down the road. 

Except, Johnny wants Jimmy and Timmy to get photoshoots, too. Johnny's just being a good teammate -- everyone involved knows Jimmy and Timmy aren't State U. material, but maybe this photoshoot will help generate offers elsewhere. 

The assistant coach certainly isn't saying no. It's his job to show Johnny a good time, and if that means Jimmy and Timmy get photoshoots too, well, what does it hurt him? He's not the one taking the photos.

So now a 1-hour photoshoot and several hours of post-production work have now been multiplied by three. 

And for what? 

What do these photoshoots on unofficial visits actually accomplish?

Kids take the photos on Saturday, post them to their social media accounts on Monday, and by Tuesday the dopamine rush of likes and faves and fire emoji comments have worn off and he's off to the next thing.

This is where I disagree with Andy and Bobby above -- a rule is necessary because stopping these pointless wastes of time are in everyone's best interest. How is it a bad thing for kids to de-emphasize the eternal chase for social media engagement on unofficial visits? How does a photo shoot help a kid make a more informed decision on the proper place for him to attend college? Don't we all agree that less social media would be a good thing for the typical American teenager?

But that's just a byproduct of the rule. The rule needs to happen because there needs to be a bad guy here. These photo shoots -- again, on unofficial visits only -- don't need to happen. They don't help anyone in any meaningful way, they reinforce the wrong message to kids, and they actively make the lives worse of almost everyone involved in recruiting student-athletes. But coaches aren't going to be the bad guy,  and recruiting and creative staffers don't have the power to be the bad guy.

And so the faceless acronym with the generic blue disc of a logo that everyone already dislikes becomes the bad guy, as it should. Hasn't anyone ever used the convenient disapproval of a parent or a spouse to get out of a social engagement they didn't want to attend in the first place? "Sorry, Jimmy and Timmy, we'd love to spend hours of our weekend taking photos that won't matter to you a week from now when you and I both know our coaches have no interest in actually offering either of you, but the NCAA says we can't. We totally want to, but it's against the rules. What a shame."

This rule proposal is actually a rare instance of the NCAA actually working as functioned as a national governing body. In fact, if the organization worked like this more often -- by listening to the staffers on the ground and writing rules based on their recommendation, rather than letting presidents and commissioners call the shots -- maybe people wouldn't hate the NCAA as much as they do.