The Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet is seeking feedback from the membership on current coaching limits and athletics personnel, a topic the group identified as a top priority when the cabinet first met last summer. The group is circulating a discussion document with potential legislative ideas to facilitate debate on the issues.

Petrina Long, chair of the cabinet and senior associate athletics director at UCLA, said the cabinet has not taken a position on any future legislation and wants to hear from the membership before constructing any legislative proposals.

“Our goal is to get people thinking about what they want and providing that feedback to us,” Long said. “The document does not reflect a consensus of opinion from the cabinet.”

The group hopes to evaluate the entire current coaching and athletics personnel issues model.  The cabinet encourages conferences to discuss the issue at spring meetings and is looking for feedback from coaches groups and member institutions as well. The cabinet discussed these issues at its first two meetings, and decided it was one of the top three items it needed to address in an effort to determine what the appropriate coaching and personnel model should look like.

“We’ve seen the proliferation of both coaching and non-coaching personnel in various sports, and really, in a time of great budget concern, I think it’s important for us to take a look at it,” Long said.

One of the major focus points for the cabinet will be non-coaching personnel with sport-specific duties, an area that has seen phenomenal growth in recent years. Among the problems, as cabinet members see it, are vague job descriptions, a lack of uniformity in titles and duties, and subsequent difficulty in monitoring those holding the positions.

The lack of clarity surrounding these positions and the ability to hire an unlimited number of people to fill different roles for a single sport has contributed to the proliferation of “package deals” involving prospective student-athletes and adults close to them.

The cabinet is interested in hearing what kind of restrictions, if any, the membership would like to see on these positions, including limiting the number per team or the allowable duties.

“It seems to be an endless proliferation (of non-coaching positions). If that’s what everyone wants, that’s where the membership will end up, but it seems that in this time of budget crunching,  to have eight and nine additional full-time people outside of coaches is a luxury we may not be able to afford,” Long said.

While non-coaching positions are a hot topic in this discussion, other positions that make up the remainder of the current model will also be reviewed, including countable coaches, graduate-assistant coaches, student-assistant coaches, volunteer coaches and team managers. The cabinet has identified a number of issues within each category and the document includes several different ways the concerns could be resolved while keeping opportunities for professional development for coaches and easing time demands in the profession.

The group hopes to get feedback from conferences and institutions that will help them form legislative proposals that could be ready as early as the 2009-10 legislative cycle.

To submit feedback, contact Amy Huchthausen or Charnele Kemper, staff liaisons to the cabinet.

Coaching limits memo 

Coaching limits discussion document