MORGANTOWN - Bill Stewart likens recruiting to his adolescent days in New Martinsville.

"It's like chasing a girl back in junior high,'' the West Virginia football coach said. "The more attention you give her, the better chance you have.''

And so with that in mind, it's not hard to figure out Stewart's thoughts regarding a new NCAA rule that has kept him and every other Division I-A head coach out of most high schools for the past month and a half.

"It stinks,'' he said.

Here's the deal. Beginning this year, head coaches were not allowed to take an active part in the NCAA's month-and-a-half evaluation period that began April 15 and ends Saturday. While assistant coaches are free to stay on the road virtually without pause, moving from high school to high school talking with coaches, teachers, advisors and principals and watching film on potential prospects, head coaches are persona non grata in the process.

It's derisively called the Saban Rule for Alabama coach and Monongah native Nick Saban, and here's why. Coaches are not permitted to actually talk with recruits during their visits to all of those schools, but there is also a clause in there called the bump rule. If a coach shows up at a high school, who is to say he won't accidentally run into that recruit? The bump rule allows the two to basically exchange pleasantries.

The trouble is, during his first spring at Alabama, Saban visited about 100 schools and his Southeastern Conference brethren accused him of "accidentally'' bumping into just about every recruit on his list. It's one thing if Jim Bob Goober, the linebackers coach, goes into a school. He generally doesn't draw that much attention. If Nick Saban or Pete Carroll or Charlie Weis show up, it's an event.

So, to make a messy story short, Saban's fellow SEC coaches led a push to have head coaches banned from the process and it worked. And as a result, Bill Stewart - who will freely admit he's a lot closer in profile to Jim Bob Goober than to Nick Saban - can't even drive across town and talk to Morgantown coach John Bowers or University's John Kelley about a player or two. Nor can he fly to Virginia Beach or Florida or Alabama and do the same.

"It's all about the glitter and the so-called stars out there,'' Stewart said, referring to any number of high-profile head coaches whose popularity borders on rock star status in some football-crazy places. "Most of us aren't like that.''

Saban, of course, has moved on to Plan B, along with several other coaches. And in a way, it is almost better than "bumping'' into a recruit in a hallway for a few moments. Saban and others have begun using video teleconferencing with recruits, which according to NCAA rules is the same as the one permissible phone call allowed from coach to player during the evaluation period. And since most high schools are now equipped with the technology to do a video teleconference, coaches can speak face-to-face with a recruit and actually talk about things.

Only a handful of coaches have gone to it, though, and Stewart isn't one of them. He said he doesn't have plans to do it in the future, either, although there was probably a point in his coaching career when he thought text messaging was out of the question, too.

"To me, I just don't see it,'' Stewart said. "I'm not into the high-tech stuff. Even the texting got out of hand before [the NCAA put limits on that]. Kids were getting text messages in the middle of class and some of them were paying $600, $700 cell phone bills every month. How does a 16-, 17-year-old kid pay for a $600 phone bill?''

As for the ban on head coaches visiting schools during the April-May evaluation period, some are finding creative alternatives to that, too. Several have begun conducting or at least visiting coaching clinics around the country, a place where they won't bump into athletes, but can talk to hundreds of high school coaches in the same room.

Many, though, are using the time to pay more attention to the players they already have in school.

"That's one of the things [WVU athletic director Ed Pastilong] said to me when I got this job: 'Don't forget your own players,'" Stewart said. "We were so busy trying to hire a staff and recruit 25 players and get ready for spring practice that sometimes you forget about the players you already have.''

And the time off the road for Stewart hasn't exactly been time off the road. The April 15-May 31 period that includes the evaluations is the same block of time during which the Mountaineer Athletic Club holds its banquets and fund-raising get-togethers.

"It's good for us because we need to get out and do the caravans,'' Stewart said. "But if I could I'd like to get out and see kids, too.''

To contact staff writer Dave Hickman use e-mail or call 348-1734.