Blog Archives: July 2009

[Ashlen]

This is an archive of blog entries I published to the old Other Side Sports blog during July 2009.

[Ashlen]

Reporter and recruiter
07/05/2009

Doug Segrest of The Birmingham News wrote an interesting story last Friday about reporters and web site owners from online services acting as boosters for a school rather than being neutral when talking to recruits.  For example, a web site covering a particular team may have reporters that try to steer a recruit towards that team by passing along positive news about the team and negative news about other teams: 

“Mark Ouimet can tell you. He used to be a Saban rival. When the current Alabama coach was at Michigan State, Ouimet was Lloyd Carr's recruiting coordinator at Michigan.Ouimet sees serious conflicts with the Web sites that cover teams and recruiting on a couple of levels. First, the owners are often boosters of the program and the writers often have ties to the university.

If the NCAA were to judge them as boosters instead of media, there could be serious concerns over recruiting violations, Ouimet pointed out.

The second conflict is bias. Team sites explode when a team does well, so, as Saban alleged, there may be a rooting interest in the team covered.

"I'd say 80 percent of the time, the guys I worked with were graduates of the school," Ouimet said. "They are fans. And this is a problem that's nationwide and on every level as this business continues to grow. It's not just the SEC."‘

There is no doubt that many of these team sites are very popular and it makes sense that the people that own and report for these sites are connected to the schools they write about.  Granted, many local sportswriters for newspapers may have connections as well, but online reporters may not have to hold the same level of ethics.  The NCAA could be more proactive in credentialing reporters, but discriminating between legitimate reporters and people with nefarious goals is a difficult task that would drain resources.  With that in mind, athletics departments should restrict access to questionable media and advise recruits to do the same, but I doubt that many would turn away such friendly help.

[Ashlen]

Political football
07/05/2009

This Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights will have a hearing called “The Bowl Championship Series: Is It Fair and in Compliance With Antitrust Law?”  Senator Orrin Hatch, ranking member of the subcommittee, has long been a critic of the BCS.  Now Hatch has more local support for his cause when the University of Utah went undefeated in 2008 including a BCS bowl victory, but was not allowed to contend for the championship perhaps because their Mountain West Conference is not a BCS conference.  I’m sure we will hear the same questions and answers that have come from previous Congressional hearings regarding the BCS. 

However, a CQ Politics (Congressional Quarterly) Guest Columnist, Richard L. Connor, summarized the real issue:

“The system is illogical and unfair. But is it a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act? And if it is, does it matter in a material way to the bigger issues facing this country?

The economy is in collapse. Nations such as Iran and North Korea are making gestures which threaten global peace. There is a Supreme Court nominee to vet. Government’s intervention in the banking and automobile industry has raised fears about damage to the free market system.

The bigger problem with college sports is a sociological one. As Hatch points out in Sports Illustrated, college sports are a big business. They shouldn’t be one. Paying college football coaches millions of dollars is ludicrous. The problem is not the BCS. That is the result of more systemic problems in using revenues from college football — and basketball — to underwrite education.

First of all, those revenues do not bankroll higher education. The revenues help pay ridiculous salaries and airline travel for teams. They encourage cheating in the recruitment of athletes. They cause the star players to be accorded more attention than the top science student.”

Of course, Connor also summarized why Congress, as well as the President and Vice President, are vocal about their criticism of the BCS: 

“Really, who cares about the BCS? Well, fans do. And fans are voters.“

Perhaps Congress really is concerned about the BCS, but as Connor concluded, is it really that big of a deal all things considered?  If Congress really wanted to stick their head in college sports, which is unlikely to happed no matter how many hearings there are, they should look at the educational and budgetary aspects of college sports before they look at how championships are decided.  Even if they had to look at the current football bowl situation, they should evaluate whether bowl games are legitimate non-profit educational organizations rather than if whether or not the bowl game system creates a logical champion.

Murray Sperber pointed out in Beer and Circus that colleges use big time athletics to distract students from the ills of higher education such as the lack of focus many institutions have on undergraduate education.  Perhaps Congress is using college football as a way to distract the public on real issues of national concern.  Distractions and diversions can be healthy especially when an organization has to deal with so many important issues like Congress does, but the size and scope of those distractions must be in check.  Universities have not kept the sports distraction in check.  Ultimately, that is where the discussion should start, but as Connor points out, it is a question that should first be asked by the public that supports the status quo.   

[Ashlen]

A good proposal for Division II
07/08/2009

R.J. Cooper of the St. Joseph News-Press reported today that the NCAA Legislation and Championships committees have come up with a proposal to shorten seasons for eight sports.  For example, the maximum allowable volleyball games would be set at 26 instead of 28 as it is now.  According to the committees, this would allow the athletes to miss less class time.  This proposal has a few steps to take before it is presented for a vote at the Division II convention in January 2010.

According to the article, some coaches believe that the NCAA’s real intention with this proposal is to reduce expenses instead of helping the athletes produce in the classroom.  I would not be surprised if this is true, but either way, this seems like a solid idea.  The negative side to this proposal is that the athletes would not get to participate in as many games, but most sports are losing less than a handful of games.  That is a small price to pay in exchange for getting additional classroom time and cost savings for the schools.   

[Ashlen]

How to police academic fraud in college sports
07/14/2009

Last week, Steve Wieberg from USA Today reported that the president-elect of the N4A, Gerald Gurney, is calling for a reform of the NCAA’s academic reform policies.  One of Gurney’s points is that the sliding scale of high school GPAs and test scores for freshman initial eligibility should be scrapped:

Primarily, he [Gurney] takes exception to the NCAA's elimination of minimum SAT and ACT scores in determining athletes' initial eligibility for competition — done at least partly in response to concerns about the standardized tests' disparate impact on low-income African-Americans. Gurney says virtual "open admissions" have allowed too many academically underprepared athletes into college, leading schools to shepherd them into easier majors and courses.

According to the article, Gurney believes the underprepared athletes and the schools that admit them are under such intense academic stress that academic cheating is a natural end product:

Cheating cases have surfaced most prominently at Florida State, and Gurney says he's "very fearful" there are more that haven't been uncovered. "Think about the terror a poorly prepared student-athlete must feel … in the classroom. Imagine how that affects their daily lives," he says. "It's a far more formidable opponent than anything they'll face on the court or on the field. Is there any doubt we have higher incidents of academic dishonesty?"

Kevin Lennon, an NCAA vice president, responded to Gurney’s complaints and mainly defended the NCAA’s current policies.  Lennon did, however, bring up an interesting point:

"Now, do we have some institutions that use our eligibility standards as de facto admissions (guidelines)? We do. That's their problem. If he's talking about a national solution to that, I don't know how one does it. They need to examine themselves and look at whether the kids they're bringing in are academically successful."

Ultimately, both Gurney and Lennon are correct.  The NCAA stands firm behind their academic reform policies fully knowing that many schools are manufacturing academic progress and graduation rates by placing students in easier majors with friendly professors that may offer trivial independent study courses.  Although advanced academic advising is seen as an answer to academic concerns, the N4A has stated before that they feel that advisors are under pressure to advise players to a point of maintaining eligibility rather than advancing course content mastery. 

It can be debated whether or not the NCAA purposely placed such large loopholes in their policies to allow such unethical tactics, but ultimately some schools will find loopholes or flat out cheat no matter how stringent policies are.  That is simply how highly competitive industries operate.  The NCAA is not equipped nor has the motivation to detect and punish all cases of academic fraud.  Ultimately, most cases of academic fraud goes unnoticed. 

Although it is important for the NCAA to maintain policies supporting high academic standards, academic misgivings go beyond the scope of college athletics and the NCAA.  Accrediting bodies need to look at admissions double standards and cases of fraud.  That is what the accrediting bodies are there for.  Schools may not fear NCAA punishment (and why should they), but the loss of accreditation is one way to instill fear throughout the campus and alumni body.  Jim Bob Alumnus may think twice about pulling for the latest five star recruit with a rock bottom SAT score when he finds out that the recruit may make his college diploma worthless.

[Ashlen]

Two stories about high school graduates
07/15/2009

There have been two stories the past two days about high school athletes trying to get into college that have caught my attention.  First, Charles Hoff from the Federal Way News reported how a local high school athlete with a high GPA and aspirations to play sports for the University of Oregon was denied admission into four-year colleges.  It appears that the student failed to take proper math credits, including algebra, to get into college much less pass the NCAA’s rules for freshman initial eligibility. 

According to Hoff, the parent of this student believes that her child was misguided by school officials.  In Hoff’s opinion, the student may have been misguided, but blame goes to both the parents and the school.  Hoff believes that the parents and school focused too much on athletic talents and not enough on academic matters until it was too late.  Granted, non-athlete students make poor decisions regarding academic plans all the time, but Hoff’s story does describe what can happen when parents, in collaboration with schools hungry for on-the-field success, focus their higher education plans on athletics instead of academics. 

On the other side of the country, Lindsay Peterson of The Tampa Tribune chronicled the story of a Wesley Chapel High School graduate believed to be Kamran Joyer.  Joyer, a University of South Florida football recruit, was denied admission into USF after the university discovered that Joyer had several positive grade changes on his high school transcript.  USF found nine grade changes on the transcript.  This situation parallels the questions brought up in the Derrick Rose academic scandal where it has been alleged that Rose’s high school changed grades for athletes.  Although the school is still investigating, it would be interesting to know how many big-time athletes get their grades adjusted by high schools. 

It would also be interesting to know what the motivation is for schools to adjust final grades.  Is it for the publicity or to avoid negative publicity?  Is it because school officials are boosters?  Are the schools paid to change grades?  Do school officials just love athletes?  Put another way, is the school full of jock sniffers?  Clearly schools have a reason to change grades when the athlete is still in school in order to maintain eligibility, but there is reason to believe that schools also change grades even after eligibility is used up.  That said, I give a lot of credit to the University of South Florida for aggressively investigating Joyer’s transcript.  I’m not sure if many other schools have a process in place to investigate such things.

[Ashlen]

Major clustering at UTEP
07/15/2009

An El Paso television station, KVIA, aired a story today about major clustering among athletes at the University of Texas at El Paso.  According to the station, 34 of 65 upperclassman football players, three of four upperclassmen men’s basketball players, and four of five upperclassmen women’s basketball players are majoring in multi-disciplinary studies.  Certainly those numbers indicate clustering. 

Multi-disciplinary studies is a relatively new major at UTEP.  Administrators claim that the major is useful for international, military, and junior college transfer students.  On the other hand, a basketball player interviewed by KVIA believes that many athletes pick the major because it is easy.  In other words, majoring in multi-disciplinary studies is equivalent to majoring in eligibility.  The report does not state how many non-athlete students major in multi-disciplinary studies.  That would be important in knowing whether or not the major is truly an athletic major, but the clustering is still a concern either way.  Obviously, multi-disciplinary studies may allow athletes to pick the easiest courses, but it may allow the use of questionable independent studies courses.  Of course, multi-disciplinary studies may also allow the maximum schedule flexibility.  As KVIA points out, the important question is whether or not the athletes are steered towards the major or not.  Clearly there would be major ethical issues if the athletes are told what to major in.         

[Ashlen]

The Internet police and changing planes
07/21/2009

Mobile, Alabama’s Press-Register is publishing a series of articles about recruiting with a focus on the SEC.  Yesterday’s Press-Register included a story about the power of Internet message boards on recruiting.  Specifically, the article discussed how fans from one team make accusations about recruiting violations against rival teams.  According to the article, some fans go as far as hiring private investigators to dig up dirt against the opposition.  One quote from the article was particularly interesting:

"We have more compliance now and we have less rules violations across the board," one SEC coach said. "All this stuff about people cheating and doing this and that, it really is very little of it going on. There's too much at stake for too many people, and there's too much exposure with the media, the Internet and everything else. You can't get away with anything if you wanted to."

I think this anonymous coach is trying to make things look cleaner than they really are.  Yes, the increased scrutiny of rabid fans participating in Internet forum discussions does increase the risk of being caught, but there are so many wishful or false allegations spread on the Internet (and elsewhere) that it is difficult to separate the nonsense from the plausible allegations.  The NCAA certainly is not equipped to do this. 

Secondly, the cost of getting caught is less than the cost of underperformance.  The punishment is weak in the rare cases where the NCAA rules against a school especially when it is a big-time program like most SEC schools.  On the other hand, fans are quick to analyze every coaching decision, including recruiting, to the point that coaches have no choice but to be aggressive in obtaining the best talent or Internet forum groupthink will set in and cause a movement for the coach to be fired.  This naturally leads to cheating.   Although fans are against other schools cheating, it seems that few fans believe that their team cheating is a bad thing.  To that extent, coaches may purposefully commit and report those legendary secondary violations not just to appease the fans by getting superior talent, but they do it to show the fans that they are willing to go the extra mile for them. 

Sunday’s Press-Register discussed the monetary cost of recruiting.  This article also had an interesting quote featuring Mississippi‘s football coach Houston Nutt:

The NCAA cut costs earlier this decade by outlawing the use of charter planes to transport recruits on official visits. But each school is still responsible for arranging a recruit's commercial flight to a major airport, followed by transportation to campus.

Ole Miss typically flies recruits through Memphis.

"When gasoline was up, that's a tough deal. You want direct flights and all those things," Nutt said. "Sometimes with these young men, it's their first time to ever fly. You probably could save some money by having him stop four times, but it's probably not necessarily good when your competition is not going to do that. When a young man hadn't flown before, you want the quickest route to your campus."

Although it is clear that Coach Nutt is justifying the added expense of giving recruits the best possible travel experience by stating that there are recruiting advantages attached to it, Nutt also makes it look like they are benefiting the athletes.  It is completely understandable that someone would be impressed by a school that can be reached directly or with one stop rather than one located in the middle of nowhere, I find it odd that Nutt would imply that potential college students would have trouble transferring at an airport. 

Granted, Ole Miss has a history of recruiting players alleged (by their own mother in this case) to be illiterate.  It might be difficult to change planes if one cannot read, but I think Nutt's statement is a slap in the face to recruits.  Many observers believe that athletes suffer from learned helplessness because of all the basic help they get from schools and colleges from basic daily tasks to academics.  This is fuel for that theory.   On the other extreme, it may explain egotistical behavior.  In the end of the day, the reason why teams spend so much on shuttling recruits is to make their school look as impressive as possible.  It is done to fulfill the school’s needs, not the athlete’s needs.       

[Ashlen]

Amateurism and the O’Bannon case
07/23/2009

Ed O’Bannon, a former UCLA men’s basketball star, may end up changing the landscape of college sports far beyond his winning contributions on the court.  O’Bannon’s lawsuit against the NCAA has received considerable publicity from the sporting media.  O’Bannon argues that the NCAA should compensate former players for the use of their likenesses in stock footage, video games, and other forms of media.  The NCAA requires players to sign waivers allowing the NCAA to use the images, but O’Bannon argues that the waiver only covers the years in which the athlete competes. 

If O’Bannon wins this case, and legal scholars believe there is a shot of that happening, amateur sports as we know it may change or cease to exist.  Although athletes will not be paid to play directly, they will be paid when their likenesses are used by the NCAA.  Paul Haagen, professor of law at Duke University, provided a very interesting quote to Inside Higher Ed regarding this case:

“There are a whole series of issues here,” Haagen said. “Suing the NCAA is not easy. Still, I think [the NCAA] is almost on their weakest possible ground, in terms of amateurism, that they could be on, because what they’re doing is requesting the right to commercialize and to retain commercial rights against these persons for the rest of their lives. This presents a series of awkwardnesses. When things get awkward, it’s hard to predict a court’s behavior.”

Like the legal scholars, I have no idea how the court will decide in this case.  It might be a long time before the dust settles on this issue.  I’m sure the O’Bannon side will discuss how the NCAA and the schools that make up the NCAA exploit athletes by forcing them to be amateurs in a very non-amateur industry.  I’m sure the NCAA will argue that their policies are vital in protecting amateur athletics.  We will have to see which argument is more congruent with the law. 

One of main arguments brought up by the public in any athletes’ rights case is that students are not forced to participate in athletics.  Therefore, the athlete needs to weigh the pros and cons of athletic participation before signing away waivers.  Still, there are some concerns about the current system aside from the amateurism debate.  For example, a company could use a player’s likeness to promote an organization that the athlete opposes.  A realistic example of this is a nutritional supplement company using the image of an athlete that believes the nutritional supplement in question is unhealthy.  The player would have no choice but to accept the unpaid pseudo testimonial portrayal of the advertisement.  One could say that the athletes should have seen it coming given that they signed a waiver that is now in question, but it could be argued that the athlete should have at least some control over his or her likeness.  Clearly there are a lot of interesting debate points stemming from this lawsuit!

[Ashlen]

A Tribute to Alexander Heard
07/26/2009

Alexander Heard, the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University from 1963 through 1982, died July 24th at the age of 92.  Heard offered an interesting take on the role of intercollegiate athletics at Vanderbilt and in higher education in general in his 1995 autobiography, Speaking of the University: Two Decades at Vanderbilt (Vanderbilt University Press):   

I do not believe that any part of our athletic program at Vanderbilt, including our participation in intercollegiate athletics, is justified unless it serves those goals [healthy bodies, capacity for constructive recreation, capacity for teamwork, and capacity for competition under pressure] for our students. I know full well that much of the enthusiastic interest in Vanderbilt basketball and football stems from the immediate excitement of seeing, or wanting to see, a winning team. And I know full well that the interest of many people in the University's general welfare is made more robust by their particular interest in basketball and football. But as your chancellor it is my responsibility to you to keep educational objectives in the forefront of all that the University does.

This means to me at least three things.

Academic standards must be kept high for all Vanderbilt students. Vanderbilt athletes have been and will be required to meet our regular standards of academic performance.

Intercollegiate athletics must not receive so much emphasis in the University's affairs as to divert the University from its primary educational mission of instruction. As basketball and football have evolved in the United States over the past half century, they have become primarily spectator sports for nonstudents, as opposed to participant sports for students. On some campuses, preoccupation with intercollegiate athletics has at times become so pervasive that it has deflected the attention of students, faculty, trustees, and friends from the principal purposes for which the institution was created in the first place. This will not happen at Vanderbilt.

It seems to me manifest, moreover, that an institution like ours—with severely limited financial means compared with other universities of comparable academic standing in the United States—should not divert its resources from primary educational purposes to support spectator sports merely to entertain itself or its friends. Vanderbilt has not done this in the past and we shall not do so in the future. . . .

[…]

In later years I sometimes spoke among administrative colleagues, trustees, and other friends of a fourth function of a university that goes along with the traditional three, teaching, research, and public service. Public entertainment was the fourth function I mentioned. That is demanded of all publicly supported institutions and most independent ones. Why not, I asked, acknowledge that reality at Vanderbilt and take one of two approaches? We could create an explicit curriculum in intercollegiate athletics, with a Bachelor of Athletics degree to be awarded, when earned. Some precedent for that existed in physical education programs around the country.  Alternately, we could join others in sponsoring acknowledgedly professional teams, like the commercial teams in many sports in cities across the nation and around the world. Players could be, but need not be, students. The first approach was routinely deemed outside Vanderbilt's tradition. The charitable among those who heard the second thought the Chancellor surely had a peculiar sense of humor (pp. 31-32).

[Ashlen]

Ignoring bad ethics in recruiting
07/29/2009 
 
In May, I commented on a Charlotte Observer story written by Ken Tysiac discussing how some AAU coaches are forcing college coaches to buy their recruiting services in order for the college coach to recruit players on the AAU coaches’ team.  This week, Pete Thamel of the New York Times published a story discussing how AAU coaches and teams are forcing college coaches to buy expensive packets of information including recruiting information when they come to watch a game even when the coaches do not want the packets.  Everything I said in May holds true in this case.

The interesting part of Thamel’s article is a statement from Kevin Stallings, the Vanderbilt men’s basketball coach, regarding coaches staying mum about questionable behavior:

“That’s exactly what’s wrong with our business,” Stallings said. “There’s a mentality where coaches want to cover themselves and not get out there and say what’s right and call out the people that are wrong.

“That’s precisely why things are the way they are. That’s why we have culture issues in our game. It’s a darn shame. The people who could have influence and do have a voice, they choose not to use it because it doesn’t help them. They don’t want anything unsettling their smooth little boat ride.”

Stallings brings up a good point.  College coaches are afraid of alienating themselves from AAU and high school coaches because those coaches may control a recruit that the college coach wants.  Thus, they are willing to put up with nonsense.  There are many things wrong with this mentality.  For one thing, college coaches are supporting a plantation type environment when they give into AAU coaches that are attempting to hold their athletes hostage by restricting their ability to be recruited.  It seems that many, if not most, coaches are willing to do this if it lands them access to the recruits they want. 

Additionally, universities, particularly public institutions, are under intense pressure to spend their money responsibly.  It is not responsible to spend money recruiting players in a system that is so blatantly corrupt.  $250 dollars here and there adds up and can put a major strain on smaller programs.  Collectively, coaches have the ability to act together to boycott rogue AAU and high school coaches in order to maintain fiscal responsibility and keep the athletes’ rights in order.  Unfortunately, many coaches are too selfish to do this and are willing to play a corrupt game.  Of course, that is expected in the highly competitive world of college athletics.