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Report: SEC coaches hindered by rare recruiting rule

John Sommers II / Reuters

Dallas Mavericks forward Jae Crowder was born in Georgia, played his high-school ball in Georgia, and went to two junior colleges in Georgia. Why, then, did he not play his NCAA ball in the state?

The answer, according to some SEC coaches, is a little-known recruiting restriction that applies only to the SEC and not any other major conference. As Gary Parrish of CBS Sports explains:

That's because Crowder started his career at South Georgia Technical College, which is also a junior college. He then transferred to Howard County Junior College for his sophomore season and thus became ineligible for SEC programs because (did you even realize this?) the SEC does not allow its member institutions to sign and enroll prospects who do not spend at least three semesters at the junior college from which they graduated -- the lone exception being when a prospect only spends one season at a junior college because he started his career at a Division I university before going JUCO.

That's a complicated way of saying the SEC requires incoming junior college recruits to have spent three semesters at a junior college, whereas other conferences can pluck these players sooner.

In the case of Crowder, he eventually landed at Marquette, went to the Sweet Sixteen twice, and was a second-round draft pick in the NBA.

"Jae Crowder is a perfect example," Georgia coach Mark Fox said. "He's a Georgia kid. So I get the job, and he's at Howard JUCO [in Texas], and I've got a good contact over there. But he wasn't eligible for us to recruit."

This doesn't impact some of the bigger SEC schools like Kentucky or Florida, but even they're on board with removing the restrictions, according to Parrish's report. The less powerful recruiting schools in the conference have an obvious incentive to want the rule gone.

"Maybe not every coach in the league is going to recruit junior-college players," Tennessee coach Donnie Tyndall said. "But I do feel like every coach in the league would support the rule being changed ... because they know it would put our league on a level playing field. It could help our league grow stronger."

The strength of the conference is important to each member school, so Tyndall is probably right in his assessment. Even though it doesn't seem like the biggest deal - impact junior college players like Crowder aren't readily available, anyway - it's an easy way to improve the conference's standing, and it's probably something the SEC will look at in the future now that concerns have been voiced.

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