Did Alabama violate NCAA rules by giving each player an Apple watch for workouts?
There’s a lot of uncertainty in college athletics right now because of the coronavirus pandemic. That uncertainty is about things that are serious, like the health of students and staffers and their families and friends. Or there’s uncertainty about other slightly less serious things like how athletic departments will be able to function normally now and in the future despite potential revenue losses.
Uncertainty also surrounds things that are far, far, far, far less serious. Like if Alabama is violating an NCAA rule by giving each of its football players Apple Watches. Welcome to the maze of NCAA rules during an unprecedented modern pandemic.
Players are working out and wearing Apple Watches
Here’s the deal: Alabama coach Nick Saban told reporters Thursday that the team’s new strength directors David Ballou and Dr. Matt Rhea “were very instrumental in setting up this whole program of what we’re doing with the players in terms of Apple Watches for their workouts, apps on their phones for weight training programs.”
At the moment, NCAA rules allow teams to distribute workouts for players to do at home but they can’t supervise those workouts and players cannot report back to schools about workouts they decided to do on their own.
Is Alabama supervising workouts by prescribing them to players, looking at players’ Apple Watch data and thus potentially making workout adjustments based on that data?
The school says it is not and that data like sleep patterns and other general health indicators is only being reviewed by an associate athletic director for sports medicine and not the strength and conditioning department. In a statement to The Athletic, Alabama said the SEC knew it had distributed the Apple Watches.
“The SEC is aware that Alabama provided Apple Watches to some of our student-athletes,” Alabama senior associate AD for compliance Matt Self said in a statement. “We are in constant communication with the SEC discussing the appropriate manner in which to utilize these and any other resources to provide for the health and well-being of our student-athletes during this crisis.”
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Alabama operating in a gray area?
Alabama is giving itself a lot of latitude by citing the health of its players. And it very clearly knows that. The same report from The Athletic cited uncertainty among fellow SEC coaches regarding Alabama’s compliance with NCAA rules and that they had also reached out to the league office. Others took notice too.
But other officials around college athletics, who requested anonymity, questioned that interpretation on multiple levels, suggesting that not only is Alabama violating the spirit of the rule, but that sending Apple watches to players who didn’t have them is a clear end-around of the NCAA’s more flexible approach to what schools can provide during this unprecedented situation.
In addition to a gray area in NCAA rules such as this one, conferences are also operating according to their own standards within the NCAA’s guidelines. The SEC on Friday extended its suspension of in-person activities through May 31 while also upping the number of hours per week that coaches can meet with players virtually to go over film from two to four. The previous two hours of film per week rule was a revision by the SEC after it initially said that players and coaches couldn’t meet virtually at all while in-person activities were canceled.
When it comes to the Apple Watches, Alabama is operating in a gray area. And guess what, that’s no different than a lot of other NCAA rules. Lots of coaches and programs are very good at finding the lighter shades of gray in rules that are intended to be black-and-white. And if the NCAA officially deems that Alabama’s Apple Watch activity is in the clear, you can bet that a lot of other power programs will have their players wearing watches as soon as possible.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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