The Role of the NCAA and the Need for Reform in Big-Time College Sports

Rachel Madsen
M.A. student, University of Southern California
Head Women's Basketball Coach, California Institute of Technology

he current athletics systems in many large colleges are no longer beneficial to student-athletes or the academic premise the schools were founded under and are in need of intensive restructuring.  Ernest Boyer, former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching said, "I believe that the college sports system is one of the most corrupting and destructive influences on higher education" (1999).  In fact, it is widely acknowledged that there is corruption by many college coaches in the areas of recruiting, eligibility, degree progress, and academic integrity of athletes.  The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), the national governing and accrediting agency for college athletics, possesses the duty of policing such offenses, but it is currently in a position to make huge profits off big-time sports, despite their continued claims of a non-profit status.  The NCAA’s inconsistent enforcement of violations, seemingly based on the size of a program, has fueled many questions regarding the appropriateness of their role as a rules enforcement organization.  The corruption by coaches and administrators, and academic ineligibility of many athletes has led people to wonder whether the amateur status of Division I athletes is still appropriate.

The original intention of college athletics was to enhance the academic experience, and the NCAA came about due to the need to impose a set of regulations that would make college football safer.  However, the big-time college sports of football and men’s basketball have become a multi-million dollar entertainment enterprise, and it appears that the NCAA has lost all concept of it’s mission: "to maintain intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body" (NCAA).  The NCAA currently employs 270 people and has a yearly budget of $32 million; however one year ago, CBS paid the NCAA $6.2 billion for the right to broadcast March Madness (the Division I men’s college basketball national playoffs) for the next 11 years.  The NCAA also makes money from the advertising and gate receipts for this tournament.  Colleges with winning football and men’s basketball programs also bring in huge amounts of money.  Among the 62 football teams in the major conferences, those who make it to a championship bowl game receive $13 million, which, after shared with the other members of their conference, comes out to about $1.3 million per school per year.

Universities can sell sponsorships to various companies for advertising (at a minimum of about $300,000 per year) and have recently begun naming their stadiums after large corporations in exchange for large donations.  Most large athletic departments have lucrative deals, worth about $1 million yearly, with shoe companies.  Many colleges receive a substantial amount in royalties for college merchandise, which is sold under official license; some schools receive up to $6 million annually from this source.  Coaches also stand to make a significant salary (including base salary from school as well as television, radio, and shoe company stipends) with the highest paid football and basketball coaches currently earning $1-$2 million a year (Eitzen 2000).  Even among schools who don’t produce these extreme amounts of revenue, coaches are paid higher than other faculty members.  A study of one hundred universities revealed that the average salary for an academic professor was $51,000, and $61,000 for a head football coach (Cowley, 1999).

College athletics has undoubtedly become one of the largest commercial enterprises today, but amazingly enough, it still has the distinction of not having to pay its principal producers a salary.  Not only are schools making huge profits off their players, they are not even required to pay taxes on these profits because athletics are still considered to be part of the educational mission.  Due to the non-profit status of colleges, donations made by corporations are also tax-deductible.

In exchange for their athletic performance, athletes are supposedly paid with a college education.  Many players, barely meet the NCAA’s minimum academic standards to enter college however, and they are not properly prepared for the academic rigors of a college education.  These athletes clearly don’t belong in a college setting, but due to the lack of a minor league basketball or football system, they feel as though it is their only chance to become a professional athlete.  As a result, colleges have essentially become "farm teams" for professional teams.  Many athletes are admitted to colleges solely because of their athletic talent, and coaches take on the responsibility for ensuring their academic eligibility.

In order to keep many of these non-academic athletes eligible, coaches and athletic administrators often persuade players to pick courses and majors they can excel in.  As a result, many players never end up on a degree track and graduation rates for football and basketball players are dismal at best, with the lowest figures belonging to black, male athletes.  Division I football players graduate at a rate of 50% (42% for blacks) and 41% percent of basketball players graduate (33% of blacks) over six years.  Some private universities, like Duke and Stanford have exceptionally high graduation rates for their athletes (92% and 100% respectively).  On the other end of the spectrum however, some recent championship teams have atrocious rates.  In 1999 the University of Connecticut men’s basketball team were NCAA champions, but it graduated only 29% of its team members over 3 years.  Similarly, from 1995-1999, Ohio State graduated only 31% of its men’s basketball team (Eitzen, 2000).

Another issue at hand, is whether an athletic scholarship is equitable compensation for athletes who bring in millions of dollars for a school. This is particularly an issue at state colleges, where the tuition is relatively low and the graduation rates are even lower.  When figured out to an hourly rate, football players at Duke were found to make an equivalent of $20 per hour while those at the University of Texas-El Paso make about $3.50.  The median wage at all big-time schools is $680 for basketball players and $7.70 for football players (Eitzen 2000).   In an extreme, but noteworthy argument, Stanley Eitzen (2000) compared athletes to slaves, "They are exploited economically, making millions for their masters, but provided only with a subsistence wage of room, board, tuition, and books."

In 1990, the Knight Foundation brought together a group, the Knight Commission, made up of 22 business leaders, college presidents, and politicians, to report on the problems in college athletics and recommend changes.  Their report was very influential, and prompted the NCAA to make serious efforts to deal with the existing problems.  The NCAA did heed some of the Commission’s original broad recommendations (e.g., higher academic standards, more involvement of college presidents) but did not correct some other serious issues, which have since intensified.  Among the issues identified were graduation rates and the massive revenue brought in by and required to operate college sports.  The Knight Commission reconvened this past August and in 2001 will produce a report on the current state of college athletics, the progress made since their last report, and new recommendations (Suggs, 2000).

There is some evidence that the NCAA is committed to bringing about positive change.  They recently proposed 11 rule changes to take place in Division I men’s basketball in an attempt to deal with some of the problems associated with the recruiting process.  These changes would go into effect in 2001 and include the following:

• Colleges that graduate less than 50 percent of their basketball players in any given year will lose a scholarship in the next academic year
• Coaches may not recruit more than 5 new players a year and no more than 8 in any two-year period
• Coaches will be allowed to issue scholarships for summer classes prior to the freshman year
• After the summer of 2001, coaches will not be allowed to attend summer camps or AAU games for high school players (Suggs, 2000).

Certain conferences have also begun to pass their own policies regarding academic progress, and have linked it to the one aspect coaches can’t ignore, scholarships; "…a proposal that rewards those institutions that do a good job of supporting the academic aspirations of their student-athletes.  The proposal links athletes’ academic success to the number of athletic scholarships an institution can award annually" (Wyatt 1999).

These rule changes have been protested by coaches and players alike, who are understandably accustomed to the current system and the freedom it allows.  One could argue that the current system has become too corrupt and simply cannot be sufficiently cleaned up by new regulations.  David Meggysey, the western director of the NFL Players Association said, "I believe it can be categorically stated that every big-time athletic program violates NCAA rules or university policy" (2000).  Large colleges are under tremendous pressure to compete athletically and can never be assured of other’s compliance.  "Schools seldom resist the temptation to build successful teams by letting academic standards slide" (Leef, 2000).

Athletes who only attend college in order to play sports and have a shot at a professional career do not belong in a college environment and, in fact, are jeopardizing the entire undergraduate process.  A college education is not the goal of every high school student, nor is it the best choice for all students.  I believe the only solution to the current system is the creation of professional minor league programs for both basketball and football, to give non-academic athletes an outlet for their talents without having to pretend that they are interested in obtaining a college degree.  There are some current arguments for the NCAA to begin paying players a modest weekly salary to cover expenses outside tuition.  However, the temptation to make large amounts of money from unethical sources would still be present and non-academic athletes would still be pressured to attend college for the wrong reasons.

A minor league system, on the other hand, would allow college athletics to return to its original intention of supporting the academic mission, as well as reducing the bulk of corruption that presently exists.  A perfect example of how this could effectively work can be seen in the current baseball and ice hockey minor league system.  Baseball or hockey athletes who desire a college degree can still obtain scholarships and compete for four years as an amateur, but there is an alternative for those without academic priorities.  In fact, for whatever reason, the percentage of college baseball players who go on to play professionally is the highest at 10.5%, with hockey coming in second at 4.1% (NCAA).  Academic and recruiting violations are far less frequent in these sports because coaches are only dealing with students who truly desire a college education.

There currently exists, what can only be described as, post high school football and basketball academies, which are in business for the sole purpose of raising player’s SAT scores up to the NCAA’s minimum.  In other parts of the country, junior college athletic departments find themselves in this role.  This seems like an incredible waste of time and money for all involved.  If those same athletes were given an opportunity to try-out for a minor league team, they would immediately know if they had the skills to play professionally, and if not, they could then begin finding a suitable career.

In a recent study done by the Carnegie Foundation, Dr. Howard Savage concluded that "what is needed is a change of values in a field that is sodden with the commercial and the material and the vested forces that these forces have created.  Commercialism must be diminished and college sport must rise to a point where it is esteemed primarily and sincerely for the opportunities it affords to mature youth under responsibility, to exercise the body and mind at once, and to foster habits both of bodily health and high qualities of character" (Cowley, 1999).  This is precisely the direction college sports need to go in, however it is my firm opinion that the only way to right this incredibly wrong system is to tear it down and re-build it – with a minor league system at the base.
 

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    The Chronicle of Higher Education, 46, A45-A46.
Suggs, W. (2000). Knight commission gets an earful from critics of big-time college sports.
    The Chronicle of Higher Education, 47, A54.
Suggs, W. (2000). NCAA adopts rules changes aimed at curbing abuses in men’s basketball.
    The Chronicle of Higher Education, 46, A54.
Wyatt, J.B. (1999).  Our moral duty to clean up college athletics. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 45, A56.
    http://www.NCAA.org/

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

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