Hog Calls

Satellite camps may change recruiting

Arkansas coach Bret Bielema talks to an unidentified player during a football camp Sunday, June 5, 2016, at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.

FAYETTEVILLE -- Because his excellent column in Sunday's Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette concerned drawbacks to this summer's satellite football camps, Rick Fires' subject changed direction from his lede.

Quoting Rick's lede: "I was surprised when a high school basketball coach told me recently he was not involved in the recruiting process of one of his players."

From that opener, Fires transitioned to Alabama football Coach Nick Saban's objections to the satellite camps that colleges suddenly operate throughout the U.S for high school players in addition to the traditional high school age-group camps they hold on their own campuses.

"We are the one sport that the high school coach still matters," Saban was quoted. "Until this satellite issue came up, you still had go through the high school coach. Now we're doing what what we've done in every other sport that we complain about every day -- AAU basketball and all this."

Chances are the "guardians" in AAU basketball who sometimes seem more like quasi-agents disguising themselves as coaches/adoptive parents are more apt to manifest during satellite football camps.

Nevertheless, unless the NCAA changes that first Wednesday in February football signing date, high school coaches still matter in football's recruiting process. Their coaching influence is still fresh.

Not so in basketball. Many high schools haven't even begun their basketball season when the November early signing period begins.

So recruiting influence in both men's and women's college basketball rides most with the summer ball AAU coach.

It increasingly has swayed that way over three-plus decades as November became the early option over the traditional April signing directly after the high school basketball season.

Not that all high school coaches are saints and all AAU coaches sinners, but overall you would think those teaching within a school system likely would be better trained and also less inclined to put their own interests first.

You would think the NCAA would think that, too.

But big money can alter even the obvious.

Shoe companies -- $hoe companies perhaps are more accurate -- cast an enormous economic influence on both the NCAA and AAU.

Money talks and inevitably gets the most avid listeners.

November signing will stay in basketball vogue.

Now with its newly NCAA legalized satellite camps, college football begins a precarious orbit.

TIM HORTON: AUTHOR

Although a wide receiver when excelling from 1986-89 for Ken Hatfield's Razorbacks, Tim Horton has coached running backs long enough and successfully enough to write a book.

And so he did.

Complete Running Back is the title of Horton's book geared to coaches on any level improving and preparing their running backs spanning drills on the field to the weight room.

Current Auburn running backs coach Horton knows what it takes from coaching a variety of great running backs in a variety of offenses under a variety of historically successful coaches, including College Hall of Famers Jerry Moore (Appalachian State) and Fisher DeBerry (Air Force) plus at Arkansas under Houston Nutt and Bobby Petrino, and Gus Malzahn at Auburn.

Sports on 06/25/2016