After a summer of camping, SEC coaches still not sold on satellite camps

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Months after the SEC joined the satellite camp craze, the conference still isn’t sold.

The fad trending up in 2016 — thanks to Jim Harbaugh’s braggadocious 2015 summer tour — had SEC coaches traveling all over the country working with thousands of high school athletes, but they still serve as more of a pain than an instructional endeavor.

“It’s about recruiting, it’s about exposure,” said Kentucky coach Mark Stoops, who said he and his staff reluctantly participated in double-digit satellite camps this year. “If you want to spend millions of dollars and run around and put your logo all over the place to recruit one kid, go right ahead.”

Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said he and his staff reluctantly participated in double-digit satellite camps this year in the name of exposure for his program. David Blair/Icon Sportswire

The reality is that while these camps bring in hundreds of prospects at a time, only a couple at each camp are actively recruited by major Power 5 programs. Coaches say that’s where the trouble begins and continues inside the gray area of the parties running some camps.

To them, organizations or high schools running these camps open the door for more improprieties to occur. While no camp is created equal, many coaches expressed their skepticism with registration monitoring, control over prospects and their families improperly communicating with coaches, third-party individuals who become de facto recruiters, and where the money paid by schools to work these camps (which can run thousands of dollars) goes and who’s in charge of it.

“I want no part of that,” said Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze, who didn’t attend any satellite camps this year. “It’s going to become AAU basketball … that’s why I didn’t go and I won’t go.”

Alabama coach Nick Saban doesn’t care for satellite camps or denouncing schools that participate. However, he does denounce the sketchiness that can arise with camps run outside the jurisdiction of college campuses, most notably the possible third-party influences on prospects when it comes to …

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