Story by Steve Wieberg of USA TODAY:

A panel overseeing college football is questioning: What
hath Rutgers coach Greg Schiano wrought?

The NCAA's Football Issues Committee wants to prohibit
exposure-seeking coaches from conducting camps outside
their state or surrounding area--as Schiano has done the
last three years in heavily recruited Florida.

The committee, headed by former Georgia coach Vince Dooley,
is shopping the proposed rules change to conferences and
other NCAA boards, seeking a sponsor. The measure, which
ultimately would need approval from the association's top
policymaking boards, could take effect as early as next
year.

If no sponsor is found by the NCAA's July 15 deadline for
legislation, the effort would be delayed a year.

Dooley's committee has drawn up a second measure, also
recruiting-related, that would bar NCAA football coaches
from attending the growing number of high school combines.
The concern is the same: If one coach does it, many or all
will be compelled to follow for fear of losing recruiting
ground.

"Where does it stop?" Dooley says. "There's no limit once
you get into the competition of doing that."

Coaches themselves suggested the action, according to
American Football Coaches Association executive director
Grant Teaff. "What our coaches have said is, 'Let's don't
let the tail wag the dog.' There'd be camps for every
school all over the United States. Is that what's best for
recruiting?

"There's a pretty strong consensus among the coaches that
it's not."

Schiano, whose Rutgers roster includes 27 players from
South Florida, has one-day camps in Dade, Broward and Palm
Beach counties and in Tampa. That's up from three Florida
camps the last two years.

"Our camps have two purposes," says Schiano, who spent two
years as Miami's defensive coordinator before going to
Rutgers in 2001. "One, it's to say thank you...to the
communities down there and to the coaches. We invite the
coaches to get right up in the drills and listen to the way
our coaches are coaching the kids. It's kind of both a
coaching clinic and a camp for the kids.

"I'd be disappointed," he says, if the camps were outlawed.
"When you have that concentration of your scholarship kids
from, actually, three counties in the state of Florida,
it's important to us to be able to give back to those
places."

Miami's Larry Coker, for one, has taken note of Rutgers'
presence in Florida. Miami's offensive coordinator while
Schiano was with the Hurricanes, Coker suggested he could
conduct similar camps in Texas, according to the NCAA's
Dennis Poppe.

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