Penn State Set for Swath of Assistant Coach Hires Following NCAA Rule Change

Penn State is set to make the most of an NCAA rule change adopted in January that will allow for expanded staff sizes for a number of athletic programs on campus. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, Penn State listed over a dozen new assistant coaching positions on its job board spanning various sports from wrestling to men’s and women’s hockey.

The listings come months after the Division I Council opted for a rule change that eliminated the voluntary coach designation. Instead, programs will be able to hire an additional countable coach for a full-time staff position. Previously volunteer coaches had limited roles which largely kept them from certain roles on both the recruiting and coaching fronts. Those limitations are now no longer in place.

“The Council’s actions today for coaching limits reflect the ongoing efforts within Division I to modernize NCAA rules,” Lynda Tealer, executive associate athletics director at Florida and chair of the Division I Council, said at the time. “These changes will ease the burden on campus compliance staffs and increase the number of coaches who can assist with recruiting activities.”

It remains to be seen how many programs will take part in actual searches for these new roles rather than simply opting to promote internally many of the current volunteer assistant coaches to a newly available full-time role. In either case, assistant coaching jobs were listed for softball, men’s volleyball, women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s swimming and diving, women’s hockey, men’s hockey, wrestling, men’s and women’s soccer as well as men’s and women’s lacrosse.

Football and men’s and women’s basketball were not impacted by the rule change, although the council did vote to approve the expansion of both men’s and women’s basketball staffs by two coaches, neither of which are permitted to recruit.