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As we all know by now, the NCAA recently rejected an appeal that would have sustained the April evaluation period for college coaches. In truth, the NCAA never warmed to the idea of live -- meaning college coaches can attend -- travel team events during the academic year, so the move to keep the entire month closed in many ways appeared inevitable.

That said, what are the likely effects?

The immediate effect is that players will get far less exposure in the spring than they have been getting in recent years. Every spring, recruitments boil over and many players enter May with numerous new scholarship offers in hand.

From the NCAA's perspective, the belief is that perhaps the early decisions will decrease, but that may not be the case. If anything, it may pressure coaches to offer following the traditional July evaluation period after a prospect's rising junior summer. Alternatively, they may offer at about the same stage weighing more heavily on a player's high school season.

Whatever the effect on commitment timetables, any benefit won't account for the clear problems created by decreasing scouting opportunities for coaches. Two things will happen: 1) Players will get under-recruited and be deprived of the number of opportunities their talent warrants; and 2) players will get over-recruited, thus creating unhappiness for some athletes with a likely increase in transfers as a result.

It's admirable that the NCAA wants to inject sanity into the grassroots world, and certainly some of these players haven't helped themselves academically during April due to all the travel. That said, these young players still will be on the road in April, so it's questionable how much that issue even will be addressed. It's simply a matter of who's watching them.

Fortunately for our readers, we'll be at all the major April events -- as always -- and continue to provide detailed reports that will entertain our subscribers and become more valuable than ever for our subscribers among college coaches.