At last week's NFLPA annual meetings in Hawaii, the board of player reps voted to modify the so-called "Junior Rule," which previously prohibited contract representatives from contacting underclassmen until they had been certified for early entry into the draft.
According to Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Journal, the union has now alerted the agents to the change.
Moving forward, agents will be permitted to contact underclassmen after their final regular-season game, their conference title game, or December 1, whichever is later.
It previously was believed that one of the triggers would be the player's bowl game, which would have delayed the ability to contact some underclassmen until early January.
In our view, the change still doesn't go far enough.
The rule should permit open contact with all players upon the completion of the second football season after graduation of their high school classes. This would give the players a full year to gather information about a decision that then officially could be made after the third football season following high school graduation.
Under the current rule, the player has roughly a month to make a decision that could end up being more important to his NFL career than most people realize. Agents have a huge potential impact on a player's draft standing, from the pre-Combine training regimen in which the player is enrolled to the manner in which his Pro Day is handled to the arrangement of pre-draft workouts and visits.
Most of these players are adults, and they should be permitted to compile as much (or as little) information as they want before making such an important choice.
Agree and disagree with this. Just because the law says that a 19 or 20 year old is an adult doesn't make them one and agents can and are very pressuring.
The rule should read that they may contact after the second football season but only in the presense of a counselor and the parents of the player. If not more lives would be ruined by non caring agents out just to make a buck.
But really, a lot could be avoided with a rookie salary cap in which I believe there would be less early entries and kids (which is what they are) would get a degree where it would mean more to them down the line because most of those kids will not be in the NFL more than a few minutes.
So basically they're saying the best way to keep people from breaking rules is to get rid of the rules?
Is that the rule that prevent you from having your crazy Uncle whacked when he shoots you?
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