By now, you’ve probably seen the stories that refer to recent NCAA legislation (actually passed last year) that promises to send the Nebraska Shrine Bowl packing from its traditional home at Memorial Stadium for the 2013 game and beyond.
In 2013, the game may very well return to Seacrest, unless the NCAA reverses its field, so to speak, and rethinks its policy banning all “non-scholastic events” (including basketball and football all-star games) at the home venues of NCAA Division I institutions.
In fact, the only reason this year’s game was allowed to take place at Memorial Stadium was because the Shrine and NU had signed a contract for the game that predated the passage of the new rule.
Here is the rule in question: “…an institution [including any institutional department (e.g., athletics, recreational/intramural)] shall not host, sponsor or conduct a nonscholastic football practice or competition (e.g., seven-on-seven events) in which football prospective student-athletes participate on its campus or at an off-campus facility regularly used by the institution for practice and/or competition by any of the institution's sport programs.”
Evidently, the rule grew from a concern that some programs were gaining a recruiting advantage by hosting off-season 7-on-7 camps and tournaments.
But the net cast by the rule, intentionally or otherwise, also lands on all-star contests like the Shrine Bowl. No exceptions were made for events that are sponsored by charitable organizations.
Nebraska is not alone in this dilemma. The Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl, which will feature high school players from New Hampshire and Vermont in an August game, will have to move from its location at Dartmouth College next year. Like the Nebraska Shrine Bowl, that game received a one-year exception because a contract between the Shrine and Dartmouth had been signed prior to the rule’s adoption.
But the Minnesota Football Coaches Association was compelled by the ruling in April to move the site of its high school all-star game from TCF Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota to Division II St. Cloud State University.
Similar moves also took place for all-star games in Michigan and North Dakota. The Kansas Shrine Bowl is played at NCAA Division II member Pittsburg State.
Talk about your unintended consequences. It is difficult to fathom how playing these sorts of all-star games at NCAA Division I stadiums would unduly influence high school graduates, 99 percent of whom will have already signed letters of intent to attend and play for the colleges and universities of their choice.
Now the NCAA, which has seemingly legislated itself into a corner, faces the prospect of revising the rule to allow Division I institutions to host a limited scope of non-scholastic events or standing pat and alienating the fan base.
