By: Pat Griffin
All college coaches engage in efforts to attract promising high school athletes to their school. Coaches using ethical recruiting practices try to “sell” their own program and school by describing its outstanding qualities, excellent opportunities and convincing an athlete that she will have the best chance to achieve her athletic and academic goals at their school.
Negative recruiting, on the other hand, is an unethical coaching practice. When coaches use negative recruiting tactics, they not only positively describe their own program to potential recruits and their families, they also make negative comments about other schools and athletic programs they know the athlete is considering. Negative recruiting is a serious problem, especially in Division I where competition for top athletes is most fierce and the career consequences for losing coaches are most severe.
Negative recruiting can include criticisms or innuendo about any aspect of a rival school: The coach's experience, particular academic programs the athlete is interested in, or the conference of which the school is a part, for example. However, negative recruiting in women's team sports often is intended to play on the fears and concerns a high school athlete and her family might have about playing on a team with lesbian or bisexual coaches or teammates. Unfortunately, lingering stereotypes among athletes and their parents about lesbians as a sexual threat or religious concerns about the “moral” climate of a team that includes lesbians or bisexual women make homophobic negative recruiting an effective tool for unethical coaches.
This kind of negative recruiting can be direct or subtle. Coaches sometimes tell a recruit and her family that a rival coach is a lesbian or that there are lesbian players on her team. Coaches use this tactic even if they do not know the sexual orientation of the coaches and athletes at the other school. Other coaches can be more subtle. They might allude to rumors or make innuendos about problems on another school's team caused by “lifestyle” or “moral” issues that the coach believes the recruit and her family might find offensive or threatening. Though college coaches are more likely to engage in negative recruiting, high school coaches do also. High school coaches are often influential in helping their athletes make decisions about what college to attend and can use negative recruiting to steer an athlete and her family away from a particular college program.
Negative recruiting creates a hostile environment for lesbian athletes and coaches as well as heterosexual women coaches. Heterosexual coaches are not exempt from being targeted by homophobic negative recruiting even though they are not lesbians. Innuendo about the presence of “predatory” or “immoral” lesbians on a team have damaged the reputations of coaches and tarnished the image of college teams. Both of these effects can take a toll on a coach's ability to recruit as rumors spread. Many women coaches go to great lengths to present a heterosexual image to avoid having their programs tagged with the lesbian label. Many lesbian coaches hide their identities and their families in an effort to avoid being targeted by negative recruiting. Lesbian coaches (and coaches perceived to be lesbians) compete under the shadow of stereotypes that place them at a disadvantage in recruiting efforts with high school athletes and parents who believe lesbian stereotypes are true.
In October, 2006 the National Center for Lesbian Rights sponsored a “Think Tank” on negative recruiting in men's and women's athletics. In conjunction with the NCAA, this think tank marked the first national effort to address negative recruiting. Think tank participants included NCLR and NCAA staff, athletic directors, coaches, CEOs of coaching organizations, athletic conference executives and other expert educators and researchers. Participants identified education and research action plans designed to eliminate negative recruiting in collegiate athletics. These plans are the first organized effort to address negative recruiting. As these efforts move forward, It Takes A Team will provide resources and information on our web site.
As general attitudes about lesbians, gay men and bisexual people become more positive, homophobic negative recruiting in athletics will lose its effectiveness. This change is beginning to happening now as more high school recruits and their families are either offended by a coach's assumption that they share his or her negative beliefs about lesbians and bisexual women or by the coach's use of unethical recruiting tactics. More high school athletes attend schools with Gay-Straight student clubs and more families know and care about lesbian and gay relatives, friends and co-workers. As these changes occur in the larger culture, homophobic negative recruiting will backfire more often as high school athletes and their families decline to attend a school because of a coach's unethical tactics. In the meantime here are some suggestions for addressing negative recruiting tactics.
Recommendations:
- The NCAA, NAIA, NFHS and other school-sport governing organizations should provide more information to member schools about their policies prohibiting negative recruiting with specific reporting procedures and appropriate penalties for violations.
- Athletic departments, coaches associations and athletic conferences should develop specific policies prohibiting negative recruiting and identifying procedure to follow to report negative recruiting by another coach.
- Ethics codes for coaches should identify negative recruiting as an unacceptable practice.
- Coaches' handbooks, orientation programs, or professional development sessions should address negative recruiting and develop policies against it.
- High school recruits and their parents should be informed about negative recruiting policies and encouraged to report violations to the school, athletic conference, and national governing organization.
- Coaches education programs can address LGBT issues and their connections to negative recruiting practices.