A Weak Policeman Talks Tough When Tackling College Sports and Its Critics
Myles Brand came to Washington this week to speak before the National Press Club about the state of his National Collegiate Athletic Association. He had been there before on a similar mission in 2003, but the stakes were higher now.
These are tough times for the NCAA president, beset by on-field brawls, and by charges that college sports budgets are out of control and that the games themselves are moving further away from the collegiate model and closer to the pros, with longer seasons, cross-country travel and games played throughout the week. Then last month came a Congressional inquiry into his organization’s tax-exempt status.
If this were football, officials would blow the whistle for piling on.
“The simplest way to characterize the problem with college sports is to recognize that it is a very profitable commercial entertainment business that is moving farther and farther away from its original academic purposes of the university,” says James Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan.
Mr. Brand seemed undeterred by the storm clouds, and stressed the overall health of college sports, especially rising graduation rates tied to stronger regulations affecting entire teams: Poor academic performance costs scholarships and, if it continues, bars teams from post-season play. The graduation rate is 63% today compared with 58% five years ago for athletes in Division 1 schools—those with the biggest sports programs.
But he also cited a need for improvement. His address coincided with the release of a report by a task force charged 18 months ago with mapping out a better future for college sports. Much of the report—which deals primarily with Division 1—was on fiscal responsibility.
“Institutions hold mortgages on burgeoning facility expansion that represents on average 20 percent of intercollegiate athletics spending,” said Mr. Brand in the report. “This factor puts institutions at risk over decades of time if the popularity of college sports wanes.”
The task force recommended more thorough and regular reporting of budgets to the NCAA, and complete transparency of those budgets, stressing that budgets are now often “clouded” by individual schools’ interpretations. Working with the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), the NCAA has called for all financial reports to undergo third-party review, and presidents to sign off on the reports.
Other suggested reforms were geared to strengthening the tie between athletics and academics. They included using academic faculty to oversee athletics policy, and ensuring that academic advisers report directly to the office of academic affairs and not the athletic department. Compliance directors would report directly to the president or an administrative officer reporting to the president. These recommendations all reflect an effort to make sure athletes are actually students.
The majority of these measures have been supported by the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, credited with initiating the current wave of reform when it was created in 1989. It was the Knight Commission that urged greater involvement of university presidents in college sports, which led to Mr. Brand’s appointment in 2002 as the first college president to head the NCAA.
Since then he has gotten presidents more involved; 48 of the task force’s 50 members are current or former heads of universities. But presidents are only part of the college power structure. Behind them stand the governing boards; they hire and fire presidents and set university policy. Monday’s speech announced a new effort to bring them into the process through the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB).
That speech did not duck the recent letter from the House Ways and Means Committee, which demanded justification of tax-exempt status for a college sports industry that generates millions of dollars every year. Mr. Brand defended sports as a vital part of the college experience. In a telephone interview, he said that he takes the letter seriously, but not the threat it implies.
“The real issue that the letter brings us is whether there should be a new statute passed by Congress that takes football and basketball and makes them for-profit,” he said. “I don’t see in the near future that will be a serious issue.”
The problem with the speech and with the report is that, for all its public presence, the NCAA is by design a weak policeman. It has only as much power as its member schools give it. They cede power to run their championships and establish certain rules to create as much of a level field as can exist in an arena in which the mighty University of Michigan plays football against Ball State.
The NCAA investigates academic fraud, but only when member schools self-report violations, when it receives information from individuals, sometimes anonymously, or sees reports in the press. It has no subpoena power or other mechanism to compel testimony from any individual. If schools want to build elaborate training facilities, they can; if they want to over-pay coaches, the NCAA is powerless to stop them. When it tried in 1991 to limit the salary of assistant coaches, it was sued on antitrust charges and forced to pay the plaintiffs $54.5 million.
The Ways and Means Committee questioned the value to education of luxury facilities and million-dollar coaches in its letter, to which the NCAA must respond by Nov. 13. The consensus among many who are involved with higher education is that it’s a warning.
“That letter is a shot across the bow,” says Mr. Duderstadt. “It’s saying these are the kinds of considerations that you need to keep in mind as you make decisions.”
There certainly is power to fix the excesses of college sports, and it lies—as the NCAA well knows—with the presidents, and especially their governing boards, whose members often remain in place for decades while presidents, on average, last less than five years. There’s the rub; many board members really like winning sports teams.
“I think you often find, where boards go wrong on intercollegiate athletics, there is a faction where the personal agenda is advancing athletics and academics takes a back seat,” says John Walda, chairman of the AGB from 2002 to 2004, and now head of NACUBO and a task force member. “It shows up in behavior issues with athletes and in poor graduation rates with athletes, things that happen when the athletic program is singled out as being more important than the rest of the university.”
The simple reality is that intercollegiate athletics is a complex combination of sports, academics and commerce. On the sidelines are passionate academicians who believe that sports has no place on a campus, and sports fanatics who tolerate anything to see their team win.
Both camps assessed October’s brawl in the Orange Bowl between players from the University of Miami and Florida International University, and reacted differently. Editorial comments on ESPN and even the CBS Evening News condemned the fight, and some columnists criticized UM President Donna Shalala, who suspended 12 players for one game and one indefinitely; they wanted stiffer penalties. Equally upset were Miami fans, incensed by criticism from national commentators; count the Miami Herald among them. “The over-heated, hysterical reaction from the national media is unfair and irresponsible,” wrote the Herald’s Michelle Kaufman.
When it comes to intercollegiate athletics, there is no shortage of strong opinions, but finding a unified approach to its many problems is akin to holding a paper bag filled with water.