Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen seems to be on the opposite end of the spectrum with many of his peers regarding the NCAA’s newly-adopted legislation on deregulating recruiting, particularly on the issue of unlimited phone calls and text messages to recruits.

UGA athletics director Greg McGariy is one of the nation’s most outspoken critics of the legislation (which could be overturned next month), while Steve Spurrier worries that the unlimited communication is “bad” for recruits.

Mullen? He’s fine with at least that aspect of it.

“To me, the communication part is a great deal,” he told the AJC. “The reason I view it that way is because you look at your players. My players contact me more through text messages than they call. I guess, with 17 year-old kids, that’s how they are communicating, through text messages.

“(With recruits now), I’ve got to log into my Facebook account, and communicate through a Facebook message or a direct message on Twitter. I don’t consider myself to be tech savvy … I’m probably more advanced than some, and not as advanced as others, I’d be right in the middle there … but it seems like it would be a lot easier just to text somebody rather than go through my Facebook or Twitter account to do things. That part of the new rules, the communication, that makes sense to me.

“I don’t know if it will change an awful lot with how you’re currently recruiting but it makes it a little easier to communicate and prevents you from messing up.”

By messing up, Mullen means avoiding an NCAA secondary violation by contacting the recruit in a dead period, or making too many outgoing calls in a week.

What rule would Mullen change about recruiting if he were in charge of the NCAA?

This is where it gets interesting. Mullen is seriously thinking about making a proposal this year to the SEC or NCAA to have a four-week “dead period” in the summer for recruiting. We’ll let him explain:

“I don’t want to want to sound like a non-worker, but everybody worries about these new rules, and how you will be working 24 hours per day. They want to know where is your down time? If they want a time for where coaches have to shut it down, then you designate four weeks in the summer where you’re completely off. You can do no recruiting during those four weeks, and you’ve eliminated the problem for all coaches.

“Currently, we have eight weeks where we’re not allowed to do anything with our (current) players. You can do that for coaches with recruiting, too. You would let the schools pick their four weeks because schools get out earlier in the South than they do up North. Schools up North, they would need later recruiting times to do camps and summer visits. You can pick your four weeks, and move from there. So for four weeks, you can’t do anything during the summer.”

Said Mullen: “You like that? I’ve got all kinds of ideas.”

Another idea is for early signing period – which is the most worn-out storyline in the history of recruiting. But Mullen’s idea has a twist:

“I’d be in favor of an early signing period but before that early signing period, you can’t take any official visits. You can’t even take an official visit to the school you’re signing with … because basically, if you’re going to sign early, you knew you wanted to go there all along.” Mullen said an early signee would still be able to take an official visit, but after the early signing period.

“The argument against it would be, how could a kid commit if they haven’t taken an official visit? But some kids already know where they want to go. How could they commit before their senior year if they haven’t taken an official visit?”

Thoughts? Please post below