“In America, a person is presumed innocent until proved guilty. Unless, that is, he plays college sports.” If you had to pick a dominant theme from Joe Nocera’s recent attacks against the NCAA, these two sentences would neatly summarize it.
Nocera (left), a New York Times columnist, has written more than 11,000 words about college sports since late December. The vast majority of those words have condemned the NCAA for failing to treat athletes fairly in its eligibility and enforcement actions.
The association has pushed back hard, defending its practices and calling Nocera out for a perceived conflict of interest and errors in his reporting. I write about their war of words in this week’s Chronicle.
How fair is Nocera’s complaint that the NCAA mistreats athletes? Brian L. Porto, an associate professor at Vermont Law School, has an interesting take.
Fewer major-college athletes may be eligible to receive extra money toward their cost of attendance, under a new proposal being considered by Division I colleges, according to an NCAA document obtained by The Chronicle.
The plan, which is to be voted on next week by an NCAA working group and would still need the endorsement of the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors to go into effect, would require athletes to prove financial need before they could qualify for an extra $2,000 stipend. An earlier proposal, approved by the board last fall but revoked after strong pushback from more than half of the Division I institutions, would have allowed colleges to provide the additional $2,000 to any full-scholarship athlete, not based on need.
“The idea of students’ getting the money who may not need it just did not sit well with a lot of people,” said Percy…
The University of Memphis today accepted an invitation to join the Big East Conference starting in 2013, making it the seventh program to be added to the league in recent months. Four of the new additions (SMU, Houston, Central Florida, and now Memphis) are coming from Conference USA.
I was struck by the statement put out by Britton Banowsky, Conference USA’s commissioner:
“Based upon my conversations with commissioner Marinatto, the Big East has now completed its future membership plan,” Banowsky said. “If this is true, it is very helpful as we can now move forward with our plans in a more stable national environment. We hope that the other conferences appreciate the value of stability in intercollegiate athletics and higher education.”
He didn’t put it this way, but here’s how it sounded to me: The Big East is done picking apart our conference, now can everyone back off so we…
Ideas for overhauling the NCAA’s enforcement process, which are due to be circulated to member colleges in coming days, will focus on the new violation structure (i.e., most egregious, still-pretty-damn bad, not-so bad, not worth our attention), stepped-up penalties (up to a 50-percent loss of scholarships for the worst offenders), and a faster mode of processing cases (weeks rather than months).
That’s not all the NCAA’s enforcement working group has considered since taking on this gargantuan task last August. In a conversation I had this week with Edward Ray (pictured above), Oregon State’s president and chair of the group, he singled out several ideas the group has discussed for improving the way athletic departments operate. It’s unclear if any of these will make it into the draft sent out to colleges, but they’re worth thinking about. Among the suggestions:
Budget pressures are starting to catch up with fast-growing athletics programs. On Wednesday, Moody’s Investors Service took the fairly unusual step of downgrading the revenue-bond rating of FSU Financial Assistance, a unit of Florida State University’s well-heeled Seminole Boosters.
A supporting organization of the university that raises money to feed the athletics budget, Seminole Boosters has long been one of the stronger fund-raising arms in college sports. But increasing costs in the athletic department–expenses climbed to $55.3-million in fiscal 2011, from $44.5-million in 2007–have drawn down the booster club’s financial reserves, Moody’s says, weakening its operating performance.
At the same time, Florida State appears ready to take on more debt, Moody’s says. The Seminole Boosters are considering several capital projects, with possibly $45-million in added bonds….
“National signing day is the Lady Gaga of college football. It’s absurd, excessive, self-important, and ridiculous beyond belief. Which is exactly why I’ll spend every waking moment Wednesday breathlessly monitoring every delicious, knucklehead moment of it.”
That’s Gene Wojciechowski, the senior national columnist for ESPN.com, describing today’s widely publicized coming-out party for star high-school football players, in which they commit to the biggest and best college football teams across the country.
The breathless build-up to their decisions helps support what’s become a gargantuan recruiting industry, with companies tracking every move of amateur athletes as they waver on where to suit up. It makes for great theater, if you’re into it: Gunner Kiel, a stud quarterback from the state of Indiana, got offers from 17 colleges. After verbally committing to Indiana University,…
Have men’s teams gotten preferential treatment over women’s programs in scheduling practices and games? The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights investigated a complaint alleging such discrimination in college sports two years ago, and a federal-appeals-court ruling on Tuesday involving a separate case—this one in high-school sports—has reopened the debate.
In the latest case, in which an Indiana girls’ high-school basketball coach accuses her school of violating Title IX by giving preferential scheduling slots to boys’ games, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found that scheduling discrimination in high-school sports is actionable under the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. (A district court had dismissed the case, but the appeals-court ruling allows it to proceed.)
To be fair, Gary Williams apparently graduated 15 of the last 17 seniors on his Maryland basketball teams. But over his last 15 years on the job, just 21.4 percent of his players reportedly got their degrees—one of the worst rates in Division I.
Tonight, however, the university will name its basketball court after him. Williams, who retired last year, won his share of games, no doubt. His teams earned a national title, made four Final Four appearances, and took 14 trips to the NCAA tournament. Some say he was a great ambassador for the university.
But many alumni and others aren’t so happy about the move. Among other things, they question whether an academic institution should celebrate such a dismal academic record. There’s also concern over a donation that was reportedly tied to the naming decision. Some members of the university system’s Board of Regents apparently heard…
Further Big 12 expansion is “very possible,” two high-ranking sources told The Chronicle. An expansion committee, dormant for months after the conference accepted West Virginia and TCU into league play, will meet today to discuss its options.
While conference officials stressed that no decision is imminent–and there is some opposition to moving beyond the current 10 member institutions–two schools are at the top of the list, should the league make a move.
Louisville, which the Big 12 considered adding last year, is the likeliest choice, according to people with knowledge of the talks. And Brigham Young, another university the conference has considered, continues to be a possible target. One official said the league was open to adding just one institution. “The Big Ten made 11 work for a number of years,” the source told The Chronicle.
A renewed focus of ours at The Chronicle is to identify new ideas and thinkers shaping higher ed. Or, as my editor Liz McMillen said in an e-mail to the staff today, we’d like to examine more closely “how new thinking helps solve old problems.”
“You could say that we are in something of an ideas renaissance today, with the growth of ideas festivals (Aspen, Ted, Davos) and the emergence of new sites such as Big Think, Edge, IntelligenceSquared, and podcasts like Big Ideas,” she went on. “Judging from these new projects, there is a tremendous appetite for new thinking.”
We’ve got our share of problems in college sports, with plenty of people offering solutions both big and small. Who are the new visionaries in and around the game? I’m hoping to identify more of these people in the coming months, and could use your help. Who should I be talking to?
Leaders are keeping their options open. Any invitations could be
months off, and there is some reluctance to expanding beyond the
current 10 institutions.
Players: The Podcast
Making College Sports Accessible: After 25 years of overseeing the Ivy League's athletics conference, Jeffrey H. Orleans talks about the future of gender and racial equity in college athletics, and the challenges of making college sports accessible to athletes from diverse backgrounds.
When Athletics Are Too Expensive: Not every athletics program can be a juggernaut. John R. Thelin, a professor of higher education at the University of Kentucky, explains how smaller athletics programs often incur significant debt trying to recruit and build like the hegemons of college athletics.
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