The Kelly aftermath – is there a fix?

A couple of interesting suggestions to the NCAA made in this article for you to ponder, in the wake of Brian Kelly hustling off to South Bend:

… The NCAA, which never has been shy about establishing rules, needs two more of them.

Rule One: No school shall contact a coach about a job opening if that coach still has a game remaining on his team’s schedule. No sit-down interviews, no phone calls, no contact whatsoever. If it’s determined that contact has been made, the school in search of the coach is put on probation and loses five scholarships, or 10 scholarships, or whatever the fair penalty is for defying the law.

Rule Two: Put off the national letter-of-intent day – the next one is scheduled for February 3, 2010 – by three weeks, so schools in search of a new coach aren’t forced to act quickly or else lose valuable time on the recruiting trail. Kelly, for instance, had no choice: If he isn’t amenable to the offer he got last week, Notre Dame immediately executes Plan B because the race is on for elite high school prospects.

So delay the race. Delay it for three weeks. The awful trauma of putting off the national letter-of-inent (sic) day until Feb. 24 would be more than offset by allowing coaches of bowl-bound teams to conduct unfinished business.

I’m not sure if the first of those is legal, but the second sounds sensible on its face, although I would expect to hear complaints from coaches who will have to hold their verbal commitments together for a longer period of time.