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BREAKING: NCAA D1 Council Approves Early Football Signing Period, 10th Assistant & More

Big changes coming to FBS College Football

Mississippi State Bulldogs v Alabama Crimson Tide
Roll Tide!
Photo by Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images

The NCAA Division I Council began meetings Thursday in Indianapolis, with a number of potentially sweeping changes for college football being put up for a vote. A few of the results are trickling out onto the Twitterverse:

**** This is all based on the NCAA's Division I Council Friday vote. Decisions are not final until April 26 at the conclusion of the Division I Board of Directors meeting. ****

Here is the Reader’s Digest version:

  • Early signing period in December.
  • Adding a period for official visits beginning April 1 of the junior year and ending the Sunday before the last Wednesday in June of that year. Official visits cannot occur in conjunction with a prospect’s participation in a school’s camp or clinic.
  • Preventing FBS schools from hiring people close to a prospective student-athlete for a two-year period before and after the student's anticipated and actual enrollment at the school. Men's basketball adopted similar legislation back in 2010.
  • FBS schools limited to signing 25 student-athletes. There are some exceptions.
  • Limiting the time for FBS coaches to participate in camps and clinics to 10 days in June and July and requires that the camps take place on a school's campus or in facilities regularly used by the school for practice or competition. In other words, no more satellite camps, Jim.
  • Coaches employed at a camp or clinic can have recruiting conversations with prospects participating in camps and clinics.
  • Adding a 10th FBS assistant coach (effective Jan. 9, 2018).

Nick Saban is all...