Thousands of high-schoolers attend camps every year. In football, a new a kind of camp has taken its hold on happy-go-lucky campers. They are called satellite camps. Most of these camps are hosted by large recruit-heavy high schools, and hundreds, sometimes thousands, of potential recruits attend a single camp. Satellite camps many years ago were few and far between and only recently did more coaches and recruiters actually attend these camps. But in April of this year, the NCCA slammed the ban hammer down and called this recruitment process “against NCCA rules." A couple weeks later, this ban was tried by the courts and found to be wrongly stated and was lifted.
Many major college football programs from across the country attend these camps today. The University of Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh attends the most of these camps out of anyone. Harbaugh and many other prominent college coaches speak and watch these kids do drills. Harbaugh recently hosted a satellite camp at Cedar Grove High School near Atlanta, Georgia. Harbaugh hosted this camp with the new University of Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart, who has bashed Harbaugh on recruiting ways in the past. Seems like the two have sort worked it out, don’t you think? All for the sake of recruiting and keeping their jobs, of course.
It is very likely that the NCCA, in the future, will look more closely at these camps and try to stop some of what is happening at them. The NCCA recently delivered heavy punishments to the University of Alabama for recruitment violations, of a different variety. So as a result, Alabama coaches will not participate directly with satellite camps. Alabama has sent recruiters to these camps who represent the university, though. Alabama head coach Nick Saban has commented on these camps, and Jim Harbaugh responded to Saban’s comment via Twitter.
Many coaches and schools across the country have recently joined in on the fun at these satellite camps as well. LSU coach Les Miles held his first very own camp recently and many other coaches are going to or are hosting their own camps as well this summer and this upcoming fall. More and more recruits from across the nation will attend these camps. Do these camps make our favorite college football teams better?
