Chapel Hill, N.C.–”You may get the idea that I’m somehow anti-NCAA or that I’m a critic of the NCAA,” Jay Bilas said in all seriousness. “I’m critical, but I love college sports. I believe in what the NCAA is supposed to stand for–I just don’t think they always stand up for that.”
That’s how one of the NCAA’s biggest critics started his keynote address at the annual conference of the College Sport Research Institute here Thursday. Then, over the next hour, the ESPN analyst picked apart the many contradictions he sees in the association.
Among his criticism:
Amateurism, the bedrock principle upon which NCAA sports is based, is a sham. “Amateurism doesn’t provide us with anything of real value. It doesn’t make a person a better student. It doesn’t enhance their education. It doesn’t make them a better teammate,” he said. “All it does is provide a cap among college athletes.”
…
Chapel Hill, N.C.–That’s the provocative question Kathryn Shea teed up here today at the annual meeting of the College Sport Research Institute. After studying decades’ worth of major-infractions cases involving men’s basketball, she’s come away with a pretty strong view: Not only do the rules appear to do little to deter violations, but the NCAA has become more lax in enforcing the stiffest penalties over time.
Shea, an assistant professor of sport management at Springfield College, looked at an admittedly narrow set of data: 167 major-infractions cases involving recruiting inducements in men’s basketball. But she came away with some striking findings:
Because colleges have little incentive to point out problems in their programs, few actually do. In her sample, just 13 percent of institutions self-reported the violations.
Six years ago, Berkeley’s athletic department announced a mighty goal: to increase its $40-million athletics endowment to an eye-popping $1-billion fund by 2030. It planned to do this through a novel mixture of borrowing and long-term seat licenses. The money was to help finance a $300-million renovation of its football stadium.
As the Wall Street Journalreports today, that plan has failed to materialize. As of December, the athletic department had collected just $31-million toward the goal. It’s likely the university will have to borrow the vast majority of the rest, leading to all sorts of grumbling on a campus facing widespread state cutbacks.
“It is disconcerting that the university may be gambling with student fees and other academic funds to cover a massive financial commitment for a football stadium,” Cal computer-science professor Brian Barsky told the Journal.
Compared to the shenanigans in men’s basketball, the women’s game is relatively clean, writes Sally Jenkins in Sunday’s Washington Post. But NCAA rules violations announced last week against Baylor University, the reigning women’s national champions, could signal the moment when the women’s game lost its way, Jenkins says.
No disrespect to Jenkins, but if you listen to the players, women’s basketball already has some of the biggest problems of any sport–and coaches are largely responsible. According to a 2010 NCAA survey of nearly 20,000 college athletes across all sports and divisions, women’s basketball players singled out their coaches as a primary source of their dissatisfaction with the sport: More than a third of the Division I players surveyed said they had been contacted too often during the recruiting process, and just 39 percent of players—the lowest percentage across …
Clemson, S.C.—When James F. Barker called his first meeting as head of an NCAA committee charged with revamping the association’s vast rule book, he asked the group’s members to list their core ideas on a single page.
After eight months of trying to whittle down the rules, he has come to several realizations: You can’t take a 500-page book down to one sheet. But he believes his group can realistically cut the rule book by half, if not more, he said here Tuesday night during a panel discussion with two other campus leaders.
Speaking at an event commemorating the 10th anniversary of Clemson University’s Rutland Institute for Ethics, the Clemson president made it clear that the scandals tarnishing the reputation of college sports call for tougher standards.
“We need to regulate less and punish more,” Barker said.
And whatever size the rule book eventually becomes, the burden…
The key architect of the NCAA’s $11-billion CBS deal was replaced today in a senior-management shakeup that has unsettled the normally staid organization.
Greg Shaheen, the veteran head of championships who was the day-to-day face of the NCAA tournament, was replaced by Mark Lewis, the president of Jet Set Sports, a hospitality and event company.
Although the move was widely speculated after the NCAA posted his job in December, it has not gone over well among coaches and colleagues who saw Shaheen as one of the association’s most likable leaders.
During more than a decade on the job, he built the NCAA men’s basketball tournament into one of the crown jewels in all of sports, regularly selling out the Final Four in 75,000-seat stadiums and turning it into must-see TV for millions of viewers around the world.
The deal he helped negotiate with CBS and Turner represents some 90…
Quite a week for Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino, who was placed on administrative leave on Thursday after lying about details of a motorcycle accident he was involved in last weekend. The coach failed to disclose that a 25-year-old former Razorbacks volleyball player was on the back of his bike when he crashed.
Petrino, who broke four ribs and cracked a neck vertebra, appeared at a news conference on Tuesday where he told reporters that he was alone when he crashed. He said he had spent Sunday at a lake with his wife, Becky, and was going for an evening ride.
A police report released Thursday, however, showed that Jessica Dorrell, recently hired as the university’s student-athlete development coordinator, was also on the bike.
Jeff Long, the Razorbacks’ athletic director, first learned that detail on Thursday afternoon. Soon after, Petrino issued a statement,…
Who knew college baseball players were such hams? This impromptu “dance-off” happened last night during a rain delay between Ole Miss and Southern Mississippi. (It gets pretty funny around the 3:45 mark.)
Thanks to my colleague Don Troop for spotting. His Video Wednesdays on Tweed are legendary.
New Orleans–When Kentucky and Kansas square off for the national title tonight, their coaches have some hefty bonuses on the line.
If the Wildcats win, John Calipari will bring home an extra $350,000 in incentives. Add that to the $400,000 he’s already pocketed for winning the SEC regular-season championship and advancing this far in the tournament, and he would have earned $750,000 just in bonus pay alone, according to USA Today‘s Steve Berkowitz. If all that happens, it would move his total compensation for the season to more than $6.1-million.
Surely Bill Self’s agent could’ve done a little better for him. If his Jayhawks take home the title, he would receive $200,000, in addition to the $150,000 he earned for winning the Big 12 regular season championship and reaching the Final Four. The $350,000 in incentives would move his season earnings to more than $3.9-million.
New Orleans–Attendance woes have many people in college sports concerned, as ticket sales make up about a quarter of all generated revenue in Division I athletics. A couple of dozen colleges have stepped up their sales and marketing efforts, and new research shows what sort of impact that is having at the gate.
According to two Illinois State University researchers, the most successful athletic departments are making as many as 3,500 phone calls every week to try to sell more tickets. And the tactics are paying off, with many departments bringing in $1-million or more a year in additional revenue, according to Nels Popp and Chad McEvoy, who did the research.
After surveying all 340-plus Division I members, the researchers found 84 programs where at least one member of their staff was making so-called “outbound” ticket sales calls. Fifty-three of those 84 programs provided…
Stung by outspoken criticism from a New York Times columnist,
the association is dishing back—and it's gotten personal.
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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