The End of the NCAA?

College athletics are a mess.  While select schools reap tremendous economic rewards, the student athletes must take whatever the NCAA determines they are worth.  This is a remarkable system, especially if you are the one in control of the means of production.  I don't need to quote Marx here.  The point is too obvious for words.

Here's the problem, in the words of Michael Rosenberg:

But college sports, at their core, have nothing to do with amateurism. I mean that in a very practical sense. Players choose schools for education or playing time or because they like the coaches or the helmets. They work out and practice and study and party. Coaches watch film and recruit and put together game plans and punt on fourth-and-1 when they should go for it.

Nobody gets into sports because they have a passion for players not getting paid. They are certainly players who believe in following rules, but that doesn't mean they believe in the rules themselves.

This why all these scandals are not terribly surprising.  There is a market for elite college athletes, and there is also a need to win.  Put those two impulses together and you get exactly what we see in Miami and North Carolina; in Oregon and Southern California; in Auburn, Alabama, and Ohio State.

Anybody who thinks bad things only happen at other schools in not living in the real world.

Part of the problem is that the rules make no sense.  They address different questions for different times, and are established by people who lead comfortable lives and make more money than they probably deserve.  Case in point: Terrelle Pryor quarterbacks his OSU team to victory over hated arch rival Michigan and is given a pair of funny looking pants.  They are given to him because he had, as a student athlete, the opportunity to represent Ohio State.  This is an opportunity that other students do not have.  The pants themselves are immaterial, for the student population does not have access to them, irrespective of whether Pryor decides to sell them or not.  Of course, when Pryor decides to sell these pants, he violates an NCAA rule that does not allow him to benefit in ways other students cannot.

Not sure how that makes any sense.

This is why, to Guy's question whether disclosure would work, the answer depends on your goal for college athletics.  Clearly, disclosure only works once we disabuse ourselves of the quaint idea that  elite athletes go to college to get a top-notch education. Some do, I am sure.  But too many come to college to prepare for "the league."  And there is really nothing wrong with that.

It is time to turn back the clock to 1905 and blow up the system.  The NCAA exists only because a lot of fat cats want it to exist. 

Were I NCAA czar, I would begin my reform project with three basic ideas.  First, I would stop pretending athletes have no value.  They do.  And they know it. Pretending otherwise is not really working.  This reminds me of Nancy Reagan's abstinence program. Makes plenty of sense in theory, even if impractical in the real world.  Amateurism no longer makes any sense.  Big time college athletics are big business.  We should treat the athletes accordingly and stop pretending otherwise.

Second, I would punish schools for their indiscretions.  Heavily.  This might force them to monitor their coaches.

Third, I would also punish the head coaches.  As matter stand today, coaches walk away while their schools are left behind to pick up the pieces.  It happened at Indiana University with the mess left by Kelvin Sampson, and at USC with Pete Carroll, who went on to a $33 million contract with the Seattle Seahawks.  This also makes no sense.  To ask schools simply to show cause in hiring these coaches is not enough.  Restitution might be a much better option.

More on Student-Athletes, Recruiting, and Oversigning

There will come a moment in the history of football as a national pastime when the violence of the game will no longer allow casual fans to enjoy it.  Last night's Super Bowl was quite lax in terms of injuries and ghastly moments, and yet it still had instances that made one turn away.  A knee turned awkwardly; a head shot or a body slammed violently to the turf; broken collarbones or twisted ankles.  This is the reality of the game we call football.  Every game offers myriad chances for injury.

But what we say when it comes to these athletes is that, while they put their bodies on the line, they are compensated handsomely.  They are adults, know the risks inherent to the game, and willingly do what it takes in exchange for financial stability.  

Understanding What Drives the Modern University (hint: it is not academics)

For those who wonder when the decline of the American empire began in earnest, look no further than this Sunday's sports edition of the New York Times.  In its front page, you will find a story about a school in Texas spending $60 million dollars to built what the Times labels a "palace," also commonly known as a football stadium.  In these difficult economic times, this community put the question to a vote, whether to pass a $119 million bond to finance the project as well as a few other projects, and it passed by a resounding 63% of the vote.  

I cannot speak about other states, but in my home state of Indiana, communities went to the voters this past election to ask for money to finance basic school needs, and were largely rebuffed.  It is all about priorities, I say.  

The BCS, Antitrust Laws and Politics

Back in October, Senator Orin Hatch wrote a letter to President Obama asking for a Justice Department probe of the Bowl Championship Series, the method currently in use to determine the national champion in Division I football. The Department of Justice acknowledged that it is reviewing the Senator's request.

I have three reactions to this.

The cynic in me wonders whether the federal government, and particularly the Department of Justice, doesn't have anything better to do with its time. Gone are the times when the Attorney General would go to Congress and explain that some federal laws would go under-enforced for lack of attorneys to enforce them (I have in mind here the debates over the Voting Rights Act back in 1965).

The college football fan in me hopes they succeed. For the life of me, I cannot understand the appeal of the BCS, nor do I, or anyone anyone, believe the arguments proffered by University Presidents against a college football playoff. The usual response is their worry that a playoff would cause too much disruption to the lives of student athletes. Tell this to college basketball players who participate in the three-week long basketball tournament March Madness -- or to the scores of student athletes who take part in playoffs for lower divisions within the NCAA, or those players who appear on ESPN night games on ESPN, some of which ended long after 11:00pm. The Presidents' want to tell us they care about the students, but their hypocrisy is too apparent.

The American citizen in me is tantalized. We know this much: Senator Hatch and President Obama do not agree on many things. After the recent State of the Union address, for example, Senator Hatch issued a statement labeling the President "stone deaf" for refusing to hear the American people on health care. He also called the President's budget for the fiscal year 2010 "simply awful."

And then there is college football and the BCS. For his part, Senator Hatch has been a longtime critic of the system. President Obama similarly said in 2008 that he was going to "to throw my weight around a little bit" to move college football towards a playoff.

Strange bedfellows, don't you think?

Maybe the BCS violates antitrust laws, maybe it doesn't. The real lessons, however, lie elsewhere. When the President reaches out to Republicans, as he recently did during a House Republican retreat, it might be a good idea to air their policy differences over a game of basketball, maybe touch football. Or perhaps they should debate our country's many problems while watching a football game.

Super Bowl Sunday might be a nice place to start.

Roll Tide!!

How is this for academic priorities? The University of Alabama announced that it would cancel three days of classes, from January 6 to the 8th, so that students and faculty wishing to attend the Rose Bowl could do so. Not to worry, of course, as "[s]tudents should expect additional assignments to make up for the lost class time."

This is from the same university that pays its football coach, Nick Saban, 4 million dollars a year, which is seven times what its president makes.

And to think that some people still refer to the football players as "student-athletes." "Commodities" might be a much more appropriate moniker.

At least the University of Alabama does not pretend to be anything it is not.

Pasadena better be ready as the Tide rolls!!!

Race, College Football, and the Curious Case of Toby Gerhart

Guy wants to know "[w]hy are the faces at the bottom of the well always the same ones?" For an answer, look to the race for the Heisman Trophy this year, and in particular the candidacy of Stanford running back Toby Gerhart. In case you don't know, this would be Stanford's white running back. According to Phil Taylor of Sports Illustrated, his chances of winning aren't very good, apparently because of the fact that he is white, not in spite of it.

This is a remarkable story not only about the world of college football but, far more importantly, for what it tells us about the world of hiring and debates about the need for diversity.


Put simply, white players are not supposed to be running backs, the same way that black players were not supposed to be quarterbacks not that long ago. In 2003, for example, a white running back for the Chicago bears played one game in place of the injured black starter. The white running back, Brock Forsey, had a spectacular game. By the next game, however, the starter was back from the injury list, and Forsey never saw the field again. He carried the ball three more times during his brief and undistinguished NFL career. To this day, he cannot explain what happened. "No one ever said anything about race. But there may be some preconceived notions out there. A white guy from Idaho isn't what you have in mind when you envision an NFL running back."

This story in mind, think about the history of the Heisman Trophy, awarded every year to "the outstanding college football player whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity." What exactly the standard to win the award is, and who deserves to win any given year, is anybody's guess. But we know this: from the inception of the award in 1935, twenty-seven black players have won it, the first one coming in 1961. From these twenty-seven, twenty have been running backs. Yet prior to 1961, of the twenty-six players who won the award, eighteen were white halfbacks (i.e., running backs). We know exactly what happened post-1961: college football coaches opened their doors to black student athletes. Racism made all the difference in the world. This was a revolution in the truest sense of the term. Black players only needed a chance to show what they can do.

So the question is, can Toby Gerhart, white running back from Stanford University, win the award this year? If historical trends hold, the answer appears to be no. In this vein, here is a question from a nationally syndicated radio personality: "But lets be honest here, Toby. White tailback. How many . . . coaches are looking at you saying, 'I don't think you can play that position for me, but I think you're a football player.'"

Now take that question and apply it to the world of universities, and law schools in particular. The numbers are still pretty skewed, and some law schools are yet to hire their first professor of color in years, if not ever. Dirty-dozen lists abound. I cannot help but wonder: how often do we go through the hiring process and say to ourselves exactly what people are telling Toby Gerhart, or what Brock Forsey thinks happened to him? In other words, how often do we look at a candidate of color and envision a law professor? And for those who get hired, how often is the road to tenure filled with barriers not faced by everybody else? How often do we say the same thing in reference to law clerkships, law review editorships or, as we saw during the confirmation hearings of Justice Sotomayor, for appointment to the Supreme Court?

I don't think racism alone explains why Toby Gerhart is unlikely to win the Heisman trophy, nor does it explain the dearth of professors of color at our law schools, or "why the faces at the bottom of the well [are] always the same ones." But surely, to suggest that we live in a post-racial America, an America where we are ultimately judged by the content of our character, is nothing more than a canard, and a cruel and dangerous one at that.