The stories are told often. A college coach is in the stands at the Peach Jam or the AAU Nationals in Las Vegas, watching a potential prospect.

In the course of a game, another player stands out and the coach offers a scholarship to a kid he didn't know existed.

If college conference commissioners have their way, this story will go away.

The Collegiate Commissioners Association voted to recommend the elimination of the July college basketball recruiting period to the NCAA Division I Board of Directors during its Oct. 28 meeting, which was first reported by ESPN.com.

At the meeting, the board can decide to take the recommendation of the college commissioners, create their own legislation on the recommendation and go through the typical NCAA legislative process, study the issue further or do nothing.

If it passes, the accidental find would be even rarer.

“It would disappear and that’s why we call it an evaluation period,” Eastern Michigan coach Charles E. Ramsey said. “The great thing about going to the AAU Nationals, when you go ... you have close to 500 teams. You go to events of that nature, you can always find something you weren’t looking for.

“There’s always that diamond in the rough, a young man that can help your program that you didn’t even know about. Well, you take that period away and now you take the avenue of that occurring."

Currently, college coaches have two 10-day windows, separated by a five-day break, to recruit at summer tournaments nationwide.

If the proposed recommendation passes, there is debate about when it would start. ESPN reported it would begin in 2012. However, Big South commissioner Kyle Kallander told AnnArbor.com on Thursday it would begin with the summer of 2011.

He also said there was not a unanimous vote among commissioners in favor of the proposal, refuting the ESPN report that said commissioners voted 31-0 to approve the recommendation.

While he wouldn’t give an exact number, he said “it was an overwhelming majority that voted in favor of the proposal and the proposal was to recommend that the Board of Directors propose legislation in this current legislative cycle to eliminate the July recruiting period beginning in the summer of 2011.”

The biggest question coaches seem to have is why.

Under the current structure, small and mid-major school coaches are able to save money by seeing multiple prospects in one venue. Coaches can also see prospects play against higher-caliber opponents than most see at the high school level. There's also player discovery.

It is also the only AAU period coaches can evaluate talent in this setting. Coaches used to have a spring evaluation period, but that was eliminated.

“One was concern was about the culture of the summer, trying to gain more control of that,” Kallander said. “Secondly was the thinking that if the proposal for the summer bridge program -- where incoming student athletes, and student athletes (in general) for that matter, are attending summer school and have additional opportunities to work with coaches during the summer -- that it would be beneficial to have coaches on campus during July rather on the road recruiting.”

Kallander said he believes the board will propose legislation, which would send it through the regular NCAA cycle and then be voted on by the membership.

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, through a league spokesperson, deferred questions to WAC Commissioner Karl Benson, who chairs the Collegiate Commissioners Association.

Benson did not return a call seeking comment.

Kallander said the college commissioners understand the importance of an evaluation period and that the commissioners also proposed the NCAA look at the overall recruiting calendar.

“Another proposal we voted on at the CCA was to ask the appropriate governance bodies in the NCAA to recommend how the overall recruiting calendar would look, making proper adjustments, if summer were eliminated,” Kallander said. “So the intent of that is to explore if we can take some of those evaluation opportunities and move them to another time in the calendar.”

This is where negotiation can happen. Would the calendar re-open the spring weekends? Possibly create some fall events?

Notre Dame coach Mike Brey, a National Association of Basketball Coaches board member, said 20 days in July is too much. But he said that coaches need some time -- whenever it is -- to evaluate players.

“My hope would be that cooler heads would prevail and that we would get some summer, but we don’t need 20 days (in July),” Brey said. “We would be close to unanimous, I think, if we could cut that down, get a little spring back, we could make it saner. But we’ve got a strong push coming from conference commissioners and presidents saying ‘Over. End of game.’

“So we have to be able to react accordingly.”

If the summer period is eliminated, it could change the way coaches recruit. Brey said he offered two of his current starters -- forwards Tim Abromaitis and Carleton Scott -- without seeing them play live.

Coaches might have to go back to that.

“It means you’d have to do your work earlier if you can’t be there in the summer,” University of Missouri-Kansas City coach Matt Brown said. “After their junior year in the spring, you have to have a pretty good feel on a kid then because you won’t see them in the summer. Which means, when do you see them again? Do you see them again in the fall?

“You’d have to do your work a lot earlier.”

Overall, coaches hope this is merely the beginning of a process, not the finality of a change in the way they recruit. They are open to talking, open to negotiating and adjusting.

They just need the time to do it.

“The commissioners, the athletic directors will make sure they make an informed decision when it is all done,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “I believe that they will. Our hope is that they’ll reach out to the basketball coaches and hear the advantages, all the things we see to it, and that we will listen to them as far as what changes, what are the alternatives.”

Michael Rothstein covers Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.