Special to HBCU Gameday by Kobe Scales
On October 4th, 2023 the NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee proposed legislation to eliminate photoshoots for student-athletes recruits during unofficial visits. The statement by the NCAA reads:
“The Football Bowl Subdivision Oversight Committee introduced legislation into the pilot legislative process to prohibit, during a football prospective student-athlete unofficial visits, institutional involvement in arranging photographs or photographing the prospective student-athlete and those accompanying the prospective student-athlete.”
If this legislative effort by the NCAA pushes through, student-athletes on non-official visits will no longer be allowed to participate in photoshoots that have “institutional involvement in arranging photographs or photographing the prospective student-athlete or those accompanying the student-athlete.”
The rule change should have no true effect on the way that schools and recruits handle the business of “official” visits. Subsequently, players will still go on the unofficial visits but the often time-consuming aspect of photoshoots and professional photographers for players without offers will no longer be in play until the official visit.
Nonetheless, this does not stop the recruits and families from taking their own photos. Since the boom of social media student athletes of all levels of play have partaken in these photoshoots. However, the photoshoots have proven to be a burden for the school media teams and cause these visits to lose focus on traditional aspects of an unofficial visit like meeting the coaches and touring the campus.
In HBCU football, schools like Jackson State and FAMU have top-quality media teams that often produce pictures that go viral for both the athlete and the school’s social media pages.
Hue Jackson, head coach of Grambling State used several luxury cars in a viral recruiting moments as well.
