Somewhere Ron Zook cringes

"Proactive" is the word that can best describe the forward-thinking Big Ten when it comes to recruiting.

Big Ten Conference football coaches hope to spearhead a proposal that would add a two-week dead period each summer to the NCAA's recruiting calendar.

Introduced this week at the Big Ten's annual meetings of coaches and athletic directors, the proposal requires each school to set aside two weeks during the summer as a dead period, which prohibits in-person contact with recruits either on or off campus. The period would afford coaches, particularly assistants, a respite before training camp and the season.

"We've gone to a policy where three coaches have to be in the office at all times," Purdue coach Joe Tiller said Wednesday. "God forbid you're not there when you've got a pretty good prospect and his parents standing outside the door. A dead period means nobody's going to drift into your office.

I'm sure Nittany Lion coaches applaud such a move because they are down one coach at the office. Okay that was a backhanded comment, I admit it. In theory this sounds like a great idea but it gets a little sticky in the implementation.

Tiller said the proposal initially called for a month-long dead period but was scaled back to two weeks. Because of varying academic calendars, each school would determine its own dead period.

Different dead periods at varying times – you know in the sleazy world of recruiting something like this would be used against a school during their dead period. As soon as School A takes their dead period every blue chip recruit on their list would have their phones ringing off the hook... ok, phones aren't on hooks anymore but you get the idea, coaches would strike while the iron's hot (how many clichés can I fit in one sentence).

"I don't know if everybody will buy it or not," Tiller said. "If not, I suppose we could do something independently as a conference, but I think we're going to take the lead on this nationally."

Yeah, let's put ourselves behind as a conference just so we can spearhead this thing. It's not as if the Big Ten is by default already behind with our cold winters and less than sun-tanned women, let's take a two week break and let the SEC and (God forbid) Notre Dame snipe our recruits while our coaches lounge around on a beach somewhere. I'm all for balancing the work-life aspect of coaching because college coaches poor their lives into the sport but let's not put schools behind the eight ball in the cutthroat world of recruiting. Make it a mandatory two week period for everyone; hey it would give Ron Zook more time to work on his motivational speaking.