Those preseason exhibition games, the feel-good affairs where a former collegiate star such as UCLA's Ed O'Bannon got to play again against his old college team, weren't always only feel-good affairs.
Some of those games were turned into off-the-court pressure cookers where club team coaches twisted the arms of college coaches for a nice payday in return for putting in a good word with a particular recruit.
So, for the first time this year, NCAA men's Division I basketball teams can only play exhibition games against other college teams. No more games against the EA Sports All-Stars or makeshift AAU-league teams or even against that staple of preseason play, Athletes in Action, a traveling team of Christian players who wanted to spread a little gospel along with getting one last chance to catch the eye of a professional scout.
Instead, UCLA imported Simon Fraser, an NAIA team from Canada. USC gave Occidental players the chance to measure themselves. Cal Baptist in Riverside will match up against Pepperdine.
"It has worked out well for us," Cal Baptist Coach Tim Collins said. "I think it will help our recruiting. At our level, we get a lot of drop-back players, guys who went Division I then transferred back down. These games against Division I teams appeal a lot to those guys, and these are games we wouldn't have gotten without the new rule."
The catalyst for the change came last spring in response to a public spat between coaches at the University of Connecticut and Maryland after UConn scheduled a game against the Beltway Ballers, a club team haphazardly collected by the summer league coach of Rudy Gay, a nationally honored high school star who had signed with the Huskies.
Gay, from the Washington, D.C., area, had also been heavily recruited by Maryland. After the Nov. 13 game, Terrapin Coach Gary Williams was quoted as saying, "We could have scheduled an AAU team and given them $25,000 like some schools I know." His quote was widely read as a pointed shot at UConn.
NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson said it believes that "limiting these exhibition contests to other four-year collegiate institutions is a healthier environment overall and eliminates the potential for problems."
NCAA Division I women's teams can still schedule non-collegiate teams. "Some of the same issues in the men's game," Christianson said, "aren't at the same level for the women's game."
