As college campuses begin the process of welcoming back student-athletes to campus in the coming weeks, recruiting will not be part of that equation. The NCAA recently approved current and incoming college players to begin voluntary workouts beginning next week, but recruits will still have to wait until at least August before they will be able to make trips to campuses across the country. Wednesday, the NCAA decided extend its current recruiting dead period until July 31 after previously extending it to June 30 two weeks ago.

“The extension maintains consistent recruiting rules for all sports and allows coaches to focus on the student-athletes who may be returning to campus,” Council chair M. Grace Calhoun, athletics director at Pennsylvania, said in a statement provided by the NCAA. “The committee is committed to reviewing the dead period again in late June or early July.”

The decision impacts all sports.

The latest move by the NCAA means the summer recruiting season will be changed quite a bit. On the basketball side, July is arguably the most important month of the entire recruiting calendar since it gives coaches an opportunity to see prospects over the course of several weekends throughout the month.

Not having that time means programs will not likely have an opportunity to see recruits participate in games with their travel basketball teams, which has become an important part of the overall recruiting process.

The NCAA will have to decide if it will ultimately have makeup dates for the live evaluation periods that were lost this spring and summer, but some states are moving to have the fall semester begin earlier than normal and that could conflict with any move that is made to create in-person recruiting opportunities in the month of August.

As much as it is going to impact the summer recruiting season for college basketball coaches on both the men's and women's sides, the coaching associations for both sports had previously recommended to the NCAA the idea of pushing the dead period to the end of July.

Coaches aren't the only ones that are working through the challenges of recruiting during a pandemic as prospective student-athletes are also having to deal with the restrictions during an important time of the year. The spring and summer months are crucial for all sports to host camps and visits on campus, but the rules have restricted that since the dead period was first put into place as a response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Because that began in March, most recruits were not able to take unofficial visits on the football side and spring official visits that normally take place from April to June have not been allowed to happen.

Communication is still permitted to take place during a dead period, so college coaches have been able to build relationships over the phone and online during this time. That will continue to take place as the dead period moves forward. The NCAA has also relaxed some of the usual restrictions it has in place for virtual communication to help aid both coaches and prospects involved in the recruiting process.