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| From the issue dated February 2, 2007 |
Knight Commission to Fight High Salaries and Recruiting Pressures
Commissioners say NCAA may seek an antitrust exemption to control pay
Forum: What would you do to change college-sports recruiting? Share your ideas online.
Text: Ideas to Improve Recruiting
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Washington
A video of a 6-year-old boy playing basketball has attracted more than 100,000 page views on a popular Internet site. Two college football coaches considered among the game's best recruiters are known cheaters. Another coach, unaware that members of the notorious Crips gang had infiltrated his locker room, tried to recruit a member of the rival Bloods onto his team.
Those were a few of the eyebrow-raising stories and allegations that surfaced here last week during a lively meeting of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. Commissioners organized the meeting to tackle recruiting problems and gender inequities in college sports, but another topic — the high pay of football and men's basketball coaches — came up repeatedly.
Concern about the escalation of coaches' salaries, in particular the eight-year, $32-million contract Nick Saban recently signed with the University of Alabama to coach its football team, led two commission members to disclose that the NCAA might seek a federal antitrust exemption for college sports. Such an exemption could help universities cap coaches' salaries but not necessarily their overall compensation, which often includes money from boosters and shoe companies.
According to the commissioners, the NCAA's Division I Board of Directors discussed the possibility at the NCAA Convention in January, and the association has hired lawyers to determine whether it should pursue an antitrust exemption.
"We're seeing renewed interest in looking harder for solutions" to high coaches' pay, says Michael F. Adams, president of the University of Georgia and a member of the NCAA's Division I Board of Directors. "The competitive pressures are as great if not greater than they have ever been."
The association's members have discussed pursuing an antitrust exemption off and on for a couple of decades, says Wallace I. Renfro, a senior adviser to the NCAA's president, Myles Brand. "It has a significant standing in principle," he says, "but the practicality of it seems to be elusive."
Sheldon E. Steinbach, a Washington lawyer specializing in higher education, says that although Mr. Saban's contract "polluted the legislative atmosphere for sympathetic consideration of intercollegiate athletics," he doubts that the NCAA will seek an antitrust exemption from Congress.
"It will not occur in our lifetime," he says.
Blaming Big Sports
In a panel on gender-equity issues, experts pointed out other potential benefits of an antitrust exemption. They blamed escalating coaches' salaries and expensive new facilities for depriving women's teams and men's Olympic sports of resources.
"Men's budgets are being dominated by football and basketball, which leaves little money for the other teams," said Christine Grant, a longtime women's sports advocate and a former director of women's athletics at the University of Iowa.
Between 1985 and 2005, she said, the average budget for NCAA Division I-A football teams more than tripled, and men's basketball budgets more than quadrupled.
Those two sports make up, on average, 76 percent of institutional budgets for men's sports, Ms. Grant said. That expense is the real reason colleges sometimes decide to cut smaller men's programs, like wrestling or gymnastics, she said, even if the official reason is complying with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funds.
"It's not Title IX that's causing this problem," Ms. Grant said. "It's the insatiable appetites of football and basketball."
In addition to pursuing an antitrust exemption, universities should eliminate weeknight contests to help keep budgets in check, and give faculty members more control over athletics departments, Ms. Grant proposed.
Intruding on Recruits' Lives
Faculty members and university admissions officials should also become more involved in the recruitment of athletes, several athletics experts told commission members during two other panel discussions.
Panelists touched on various concerns about the recruiting process, including how the increasing use of text messages and Internet recruiting services are intruding on prospects' lives and sometimes pressuring students to commit to college at younger ages.
Recruiting Web sites, some of which receive millions of visitors a month, often showcase athletes in their early teens, and sometimes far younger, ranking players by how much they can bench-press and how fast they can run, with little news about their academic interests.
"Young kids — some of them in grade school and junior high — are getting taken out of their homes and away from their peer groups and groomed for professional sports," Harry Edwards, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, told commissioners. "The elite athlete prospect is almost totally commodified, nothing more than a product to be marketed."
Malcolm Moran, who holds the Knight chair in sports journalism and society at Pennsylvania State University, said that recruiting Web sites were notorious for "dehumanizing" recruits and misstating information about them, and that operators of such sites were often not held accountable for their mistakes.
Bobby Burton, chief operating officer of Rivals.com, a popular recruiting Web site, defended his business, saying it has helped curb recruiting violations on campuses and assisted many high-school athletes in getting college scholarships.
But Andrew Crummey, a football player on scholarship at the University of Maryland, said the recruiting Web sites did him no favors.
"These sites, they all want the numbers — what's your bench, your squat," he said. "You end up thinking that those numbers are all that matter."
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Constantine Ananiadis, men's and women's tennis coach, Washington College "I would tighten the calendar in terms of contacting recruits. The problem we face in Division III is that it's nonstop, year-round. It takes up a lot of our time and resources, and because someone else is doing it, you've got to do it." Claire Bordley, women's lacrosse player, U. of Virginia "I would change the recent trend for coaches to put pressure on recruits to commit to their school early in their junior year. I think there should be some type of rule that restricts kids from committing too early on in their high-school career, so that way they would be able to explore all of their college options." Bob Chichester, athletics director, U. of California at Irvine "My concern is we're reaching out to younger and younger kids, and are they in the best position to decide where they want to spend some of the most important years of their life? We should take a closer look at the appropriate time frame for contacts and decision making." Tyler Davis, highly recruited tennis player from Father Ryan High School, in Nashville, who has committed to the U. of Notre Dame "There are so many rules that it gets frustrating to try to follow all of them. The biggest thing is if a player initiates a call with a coach and leaves a voice mail, the coach should be allowed to call him back." Elana A. Meyers, softball player, George Washington U. "I would change the format of official visits. At many official visits the itinerary is very rigid, which ... limits self-exploration of the campus by student-athletes. ... I would also mandate that one of the days spent on an official visit must be spent as a typical student-athlete (attending classes, practice, weight training, etc.). Experiencing a day in the life of a student-athlete is much more useful when deciding where to attend than sitting in meetings." Chris Petrucelli, women's soccer coach, U. of Texas at Austin "The big thing I'd love to have is more access — more time with the kids to figure out if it's a good match. Most kids are making up their minds in their junior year, but we're not allowed to call them before July of their senior year. That means students are making decisions without enough information." Julie Roe, director of enforcement, National Collegiate Athletic Association "In an ideal world, I would simplify the recruiting rules (i.e., Bylaw 13) to a permissive list of the Ten Commandments of Recruiting, with the stipulation that if an action is not listed, then you can't do it. Some of the NCAA membership's rules are generated to close unintended loopholes discovered in our bylaws. It is easy to understand the frustration of being disadvantaged if a competitor has found a loophole unknown to others. The goal of simplifying the recruiting rules — but not diluting the regulation and protection of prospects' interests — is to answer those seeking to find a loophole with 'If it's not on the list, you can't do it.'" Richard M. Southall, assistant professor of sport and leisure commerce, U. of Memphis "I would want there to be an independent Reality-Check Office on each campus that would explain [to students] the nature of one-year grants-in-aid, majors being manufactured, or athletes being directed into certain majors, ... and the power imbalance inherent in the present system. Point out to them that they need to take charge of their education and work the system, so the system doesn't exploit them." Turtle Thomas, assistant baseball coach and recruiting coordinator, Arizona State U. at Tempe "I would change the recruiting calendar to let coaches make visits sooner and take away the quiet period when we can't contact players. March 1 is too late to go out. I suggest no later than February 15, and February 10 would be better." Erick Willis, vice president, National Athlete, a recruiting company in Tifton, Ga. "Fans shouldn't have as much access to information about high-school athletes as they do. That information should be limited to the high-school coach and the college recruiter." |
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Section: Athletics
Volume 53, Issue 22, Page A28