Ryan Dunleavy

Staff writer

Between friends, business and family, Super Bowl champion coach Brian Billick had three irresistible forces pulling him into the Rutgers, Ohio State and Temple joint satellite camp.

Billick was added to the lineup for the Rutgers Football Tri-State Showcase last week after meeting Rutgers coach Chris Ash at a charity golf outing hosted by former Scarlet Knights star and loyal supporter Shaun O’Hara. Billick and O’Hara are Sunday analyst partners at NFL Network.

The former Baltimore Ravens coach made the most of his visit to New Jersey, meeting with about 80 high school football coaching staffs across the state to trumpet XTECH Pads. Billick is a board member of the Morris County-based company.

To complete the trifecta, one of XTECH’s carriers is Temple, where offensive coordinator Glenn Thomas is Billick’s nephew.

“There are a lot of connection points,” Billick told Gannett New Jersey. “(Ash) said, ‘We’d love to have you at the camp. Would you like to come by?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ It was as simple as that.”

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Of course, nothing is simple when it comes to satellite camps like the Tri-State Showcase, which is expected to draw more than 500 high school players – including some of the state’s top-rated recruits – and is set for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Farleigh Dickinson University in Madison.

The NCAA banned satellite camps in April only to quickly reverse course under pressure from prominent coaches. Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh and Alabama’s Nick Saban are the latest to trade barbs on the subject.

Billick, who coached at the high school and college levels in the 1970s and 1980s before a 16-year career on NFL sidelines, sees satellite camps as a “two-edged sword.”

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“It’s great for the kids to have that kind of exposure – they’ve been doing it in basketball forever,” Billick said.

“We have some gray areas here, and it’s one more thing for the NCAA to have to make sure that it’s done properly. I do have some concerns about it, not the least of which is it is one more thing that the coaches have to do. I think there are more concerns about how this actually plays out.”

While more than 40 college programs will be represented at the camp, Ash, Billick, Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, Temple coach Matt Rhule and Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano – the former Rutgers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach – are the headliners.

“I’ve known Urban for a long time, and Matt Rhule and Chris Ash are good young coaches,” Billick said. “He’ll do a great job at Rutgers. I’ve tapped into it because of Shaun being a Rutgers grad and having a lot of affection for being close to the Rutgers program. I think he’ll do a great job there with the staff they’ve put it together.”

Billick joining the camp initially looked like a checker in a developing tit-for-tat between Rutgers and Michigan, which is hosting its own simultaneous satellite camp Wednesday night at Paramus Catholic High School.

Harbaugh enlisted the help of his brother John at Paramus Catholic. Like Billick, John Harbaugh coached the Ravens to a Super Bowl title.

“It puts a lot on the coaches’ plate,” Billick said. “They spend the month of May recruiting and then there are satellite camps in June. It adds one more thing to what already seems like a limitless schedule for coaches. It’s a good thing for the players, but it can be awfully demanding for the coaches.”

Though Billick, who last coached in 2007, is no longer in the market for a coaching gig, he is excited about the prospect of working with players again. He is an occasional guest at clinics for friends in the profession.

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“I love to get on campuses and I love to get with young people,” Billick said. “I haven’t dealt with high school players in a long time, but because of the pad company we had a great time in New Jersey last week going to the different sites. However they want me to interact with the players, I’m all for it. I’m happy to be at their disposal.”

What Billick likely will see – especially given the spread offenses employed by Rutgers, Ohio State and Temple – is a style of offense that the 1998 Minnesota Vikings would relish. With Billick calling the plays, Randall Cunningham, Randy Moss and company scored a then-NFL record 566 points.

“Everybody seems to be doing it,” Billick said of the spread offense. “For a while it was the Delaware Wing-T and now it’s the spread offense. You see bits of it coming into the NFL. It makes it very difficult on the NFL to evaluate players coming out of that system, but obviously this is what’s hot in the college ranks and down into the high school ranks.”

Staff Writer Ryan Dunleavy: rdunleavy@gannettnj.com