Blog Archives: September 2009

[Ashlen]

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

[Ashlen]

Sonny Vaccaro on the mission of colleges
09/01/2009 

Sonny Vaccaro, the famed shoe company representative that has played a major role in the professionalization of high school and college sports, was interviewed by Henry Abbott of ESPN.com’s TrueHoop blog regarding the Derrick Rose scandal at Memphis.  Vaccaro relayed an interesting story to Abbott:

In any case, Vaccaro tells an interesting story that rings wholly true.

He says he recently spoke to a woman who is the mother of one of the best high-school players in the nation. Her family has been meeting with all kinds of college coaches who are recruiting her son.

The meta-point of this moment, of course, is that this is when the world of college comes courting this mother. Whatever the NCAA has to offer, now is its moment. Here is the pitch from the world of chemistry, literature, mathematics, poetry, and growing up in a supportive environment and making lifelong friends before entering the harsh professional world of the NBA.

And what do these people have to say to her? Vaccaro says that she complains that every single coach she has talked to really only has one point: They can get her son to the NBA.

You see the irony there? If you're a top player, you can get yourself to the NBA. Or the D-League or the Euroleague or any number of private trainers and the like can get you there.  College basketball is supposed to feature college. All those late night study sessions, and writing papers and getting smarter and more worldly.

And according to this account of events, it's not even part of the pitch.

Thanks to the NBA’s one-and-done rule, it is now not unheard of for top level basketball players, like Brandon Jennings, to go to Europe instead of college until they are NBA eligible.  Not surprisingly, Sonny Vaccaro is one of the leading voices pushing young talent to cash in on opportunities as quickly as possible.  Is it hard to question Vaccaro’s opinion given what the coaches are emphasizing?  It is not surprising at all that there is no focus on academics.  Without academics, college is just an unpaid (not counting under the table payments) basketball league.  Perhaps the college basketball route is still the best route for developing basketball talent, but the money and personal enrichment opportunities of European basketball might be a great equalizer.  It is pretty sad that going professional overseas, or perhaps even in a minor domestic professional league, offers better personal enrichment than the playboy atmosphere of big-time college basketball.   

Vaccaro also made another interesting statement:

I had heard a theory that the NCAA came down on hard on Memphis in part because it was embarrassing to have Memphis -- an outsider as a major college sports powerhouse -- holding the record for most wins in a season. (The power and income of college sports tends to emanate from the Bowl Championship Series schools.)

Vaccaro, a noted NCAA antagonist, sees that as entirely possible.

"They seem to be what makes the whole thing run, the Bowl Championship Series schools. I would think that the lesser schools get the punishments ... The whole thing starts with the B.C.S. schools. There is no multimillion dollar empire without the B.C.S. schools. It just goes without saying," Vaccaro says, "that some schools are almost immune to this kind of punishment."

He brought up one of the NCAA's most famous and egregious tales of a violation -- the 2006 Reggie Bush incident at the University of Southern California.

"Go back to Memphis, go back to Derrick Rose. Nothing has happened to Southern Cal football yet? It's very ironic that we're sidestepping this here. That's very interesting. ... Southern Cal football is one of the biggest entities in college sports. Just interesting. ... You have a lot of clout when you're a B.C.S. school."

Vaccaro and Abbott are putting forth some serious allegations, but the reaction is natural given that smaller programs are getting punished while big programs like USC and Duke are seemingly getting away with serious violations.  Sure, the bigger programs have better lawyers advising administrators and coaches as to what to say to investigators and what not to say, but I am sure the NCAA does not want to bite the hands that feed them.  As Vaccaro points out, college sports would not be nearly as commercially successful as they are if a school like Memphis was the most popular school.

[Ashlen]

Michigan’s practice time dilemma
09/01/2009

The college sports world has been rocked by another high-profile scandal.  The Detroit Free Press reported this week that the University of Michigan football team has violated maximum practice time rules:

The NCAA, which governs college athletics, has strict limits on how much time coaches can require players to spend on their sport. But Rodriguez’s team has routinely broken the rules since he took over in January 2008, people inside the program told the Free Press.

Numerous players on the 2008 and 2009 teams said the program far exceeded limits intended to protect athletes from coaching excesses and to ensure fair competition.

Several players chronicled a practice schedule that would be in violation of NCAA rules.  Some observers believe that players recruited under Michigan’s old coach, Lloyd Carr, are upset that the current coach, Rich Rodriguez, increased the practice load and might be looking to get back at him by fabricating stories.  I suppose this could be true, but I would not be surprised at all if the allegations are true.

In fact, it would not be surprising if the practice time rules are broken all the time all over the country in all sports.  Many college sports observers have discussed situations where coaches hold so-called voluntary practice sessions where attendance is monitored.  Players that do not show up for the voluntary practices may lose playing time or even their scholarship. 

I do not anticipate a lot of national outrage over the situation at Michigan.  Most media reports question the impact the increased workload will have on the player’s physical health.  Many observers probably believe that working hard isn’t a bad thing.  There is a lot of truth to that statement.  Also, it does not appear that the rules were massively broken to the point that athletes practiced all day every day.   

The big concern, in my opinion, is the academic impact of this situation.  Intercollegiate athletics should be an extracurricular activity.  It would be a major academic problem if athletes spend so much time practicing and playing that they cannot find time to sufficiently study and take useful courses.  This is true of both mandatory and truly voluntary practices.

Most athletes will want to work hard at their sport even without coaxing.  However, it is important for coaches or other officials to help the athletes balance their lives.  Unfortunately, this does not happen very often because of the high-stakes nature of big-time college athletics.  The NCAA could enforce the rules more strictly (at worst, Michigan will probably only face probation and a loss of a few scholarships), but some coaches and athletes will still push the limits.  Instead, there needs to be an institutional culture that pushes athletes and everyone else on campus to maintain some sort of balance in their lives.

[Ashlen]

Disrespect on Respect Weekend
09/08/2009

The NCAA and the American Football Coaches Association hoped that this year’s college football kickoff weekend would set a new benchmark for respect and sportsmanship.  Among other things, players during this past weekend’s games were to shake hands before the game.  As a hockey fan, I believe the post-playoff series handshake between two teams is one of the most poignant moments in sports.  Perhaps this could have some of the same effect.

Instead, this weekend will be remembered by many as the week where Oregon’s LeGarrette Blount punched Boise State’s Byron Hout after the game.  What was supposed to be a great weekend for sportsmanship turned out quite differently just because of one punch.  Perhaps the media gave the punch too much coverage, but it was still a pretty senseless act. 

Jordan Schelling from The Badger Herald, a student newspaper at Wisconsin-Madison, wrote an article discussing the irony of respect weekend.  In addition to the Oregon-Boise St. punch, Schelling discussed an incident this weekend at Wisconsin where two men’s basketball players were arrested for underage drinking and burglary of items from Wisconsin dorm rooms.  Schelling posited a few reasons why the basketball players would disrespect people’s property including questioning whether athletes should be as spoiled as they are. 

Schelling believed that the basketball players let their coach, Bo Ryan, down.  The same could be said about Blount and Oregon’s coach.  Still, at least in the case of Blount, I wonder if the coaches let the players down.  I don’t think one needs to tell college aged students not to steal, but the teaching of sportsmanship is an important facet of coaching at any level.  Perhaps the Oregon coaches emphasized this and things just got out of control.  Things like that can happen.  Still, the NCAA and AFCA need to realize that as nice as symbolic gestures are, the real way to ensure there is respect is to preach sportsmanship often and explain why sportsmanship and respect is important.  Just telling athletes, or anyone, that respect is important isn’t going to get the job done.  Oregon’s season-long suspension of Blount does send a message, but considering that Blount would be in jail if he did that outside the stadium, perhaps a better system needs to be in place to prevent such incidents.     

[Ashlen]

Jemele Hill on the Michigan practice controversy
09/11/2009

ESPN.com's controversial commentator Jemele Hill recently offered her opinion about the allegations that the University of Michigan football team violated practice time regulations:

So I guess that means a lot of us are completely comfortable with the idea of a college football program operating like a pro one -- even if it's possible that it's at the expense of education.

When in doubt, blame the whistle-blowers -- that's the American way. Of course, it's fair to suggest that those players who went to the newspaper with their complaints about Rodriguez did so out of some twisted sense of retribution, but that doesn't change the fact that the reaction to the Rodriguez scandal only fosters and encourages this win-at-all cost culture.

Not to mention the obvious hypocrisies. The people who are calling the Michigan players soft and whiny are likely the same ones who stand on a soapbox and extol the virtues of college football players making education a high priority.

[...]

If left to their own devices, college coaches would run their programs like the New England Patriots, and most of their players -- who are so infatuated with the NFL dream and desperate to please their coaches -- would leave college without having learned a thing.


[...]

Speaking of which: I interviewed former Florida State safety Myron Rolle in January, and I was stunned to learn that his defensive coordinator, Mickey Andrews, sometimes criticized him for spending too much time on his books and not enough time prepping for the football field.

Rolle was a third team All-American and second team All-ACC, but he delayed entering the NFL draft until 2010 so he could spend a year at Oxford as part of the Rhodes Scholarship. He passed up millions because he wanted to further his dream of being a neurosurgeon.

There has been a lot of backlash from college football fans, not all of whom are Michigan supporters, that the coaches and players should violate the rules in order to make a better football team.  As I said last week, players often will want to practice as much as possible to get better at their sports.  It is not just coaches that are leading to these violations that are sure to be widespread in all sports.  Athletes, at least in theory, are at college to get an education.  They need to balance sport, academics, and life in general.  Specifically, athletes should have enough time to take the classes they want to take, go to class, and have time to study for class.  Time for sport can be made after those conditions are met.

Hill's anecdote about Myron Rolle is interesting.  Rolle is a world class athlete and scholar.  I'm glad to see that Rolle is taking advantage of the academic opportunities afford to him.  I'm sure he'll derive a lot of satisfaction if and when he decides to go to the NFL, but I really hope he achieves his dream of being a neurosurgeon.  Rolle seems motivated to achieve his goal no matter what gets in the way, however other young athletes need good encouragement.  Hopefully their coaches and other university staff and faculty will help athletes maintain focus, balance, and a sense of reality off the playing field.

[Ashlen]

A youth sports concept that pays off educationally
09/13/2009

The Peterborough Examiner’s Don Barrie published a very interesting piece yesterday discussing how fewer elite Canadian junior hockey players are choosing to play NCAA hockey.  In Barrie’s opinion, part of the reason why this is the case is because of politics and nationalism on the NCAA’s part:

Soon, Canadians dominated NCAA hockey. The NCAA didn't like us northerners dominating a NCAA sport.

Their solution was as simple as it was idiotic: Declare major junior hockey professional.

Because the Canadian players receive room and board and a few dollars for incidentals, no more than any NCAA scholarship athlete receives; in fact a lot less than some of the best ones are given, they were ineligible for the pure, amateur U. S. college sports.

The NCAA went as far as saying if a potential scholarship athlete plays in a league with pros, they are ineligible. Again this is directly aimed at CHA players competing against juniors who have returned after signing a pro contract.

Amazingly this rule does not apply to the NCAA college boys who play for the U. S. at the world junior championships where many of the players in that tournament, including the American team, have pro contracts.

Another factor that is keeping Canadian athletes north of the border is that it may still be cheaper for Canadian hockey players to go to college than it is for NCAA scholarship hockey players:

The other facts sometimes lost are the NCAA scholarships themselves. They cover tuition, board and books which ranges from $10,000 to $50,000, depending on the university and courses.

Few athletic scholarships are full rides, meaning all costs covered. Schools usually piece them out, giving athletes part of a scholarship. All are also renewable annually, meaning a scholarship can be withdrawn if the position can be filled by a better player. A partial scholarship to a U. S. college can end up costing a Canadian athlete more than full tuition and room and board at any Canadian school.

Moreover, scholarship policies in place at major Canadian junior hockey leagues like the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) may prove to be more generous than NCAA scholarships: 

OHL teams offer education packages to all their players. Players receive the cost of a year's tuition and books equivalent to the cost to attend the university nearest to their home for each year they play. Each OHL team is allowed to add room and board for up to seven players over a four-year period. The [Peterborough] Petes offer full rides to their first-round picks.

If a player later signs a NHL or AHL hockey contract, the package is negated. Players signing minor pro deals can activate their education package if they withdraw from pro within 18 months of leaving junior.

All these packages are registered with the league and can not be manipulated.

This year the Petes project each annual package will cost the club a minimum of $7,000 per player. They expect to pay out about $40,000 this year to former players, currently attending university or college across Canada.

Multiply that by 20 teams, the OHL offers more scholarships to Canadian players than all the universities combined in the U. S.

More information on the OHL academic policy can be found here.  The idea of America junior sports associations paying higher education scholarships to athletes seems laughable, but the Canadian junior hockey system, minor league hockey system, and NHL major league hockey system may make educational sense.  Amateur players that want to go to college (and still possibly play college hockey) will be economically supported by sporting leagues instead of colleges paying for athletes who may or may not be motivated to attend college.  Players that want to go professional can without the mandatory babysitting periods in place by the NFL and NBA.  This rids universities of some athletes that attend college strictly to play sports.  I’m sure there are some drawbacks to this plan, but it just seems so much more logical than what happens in big-time college football and basketball.

[Ashlen]

Adding sports to help the overall budget
09/13/2009

The Associated Press published an interesting story yesterday about how schools, particularly NCAA Division II and III schools, are adding sports in order to help the general university budget.  The theory is that sports will attract athletes to colleges that the athletes may not have considered otherwise: 

"There is a perception out there from Division I that adding sports just consumes all the money," said Adams State athletic director Larry Mortensen. "But at our level it's just the opposite — generating sports adds revenue. It generates enrollment."

[…]

Pat Coleman, editor and publisher of the D3sports.com network based in Minneapolis, said just five Division III schools have dropped football since 1997, while an AP count found 24 Division III colleges that have either added it in the past decade or plan to soon.

"A school that starts football tends to bring out between 80 and 120 freshman for the first year. You have to look at the bottom line, in Division III, everybody's paying tuition, they're getting whatever they're getting in financial aid, but the school isn't giving scholarships," Coleman said. "So that money goes to the bottom line.

This report corresponds well to previous reports that stated that smaller colleges, particularly liberal arts colleges, are starting sports programs in the hopes of attracting male students to campuses dominated by female students.  Obviously the revenue of added tuition plus sports generated revenue has to be higher than the expense of operating teams for this to make sense.  Schools that add sports for the sake of having sports might be able to do this, but I’m not sure if that is the case for schools that get a case of winning fever. 

I’m glad the AP writers did not shy away from the negative consequences of this move:

Not everyone connected to the school [Pacific University] is supportive [of bringing back football], however. Rebecca Weaver, a 1998 graduate, says she doesn't believe the sport is a good fit for the school, economically or philosophically.

"I guess the question is, do you want students to pick a college based on whether they have a football program?" she said.   

I’m not saying Weaver is right or wrong, but she brings up a good point that is no minor technicality.

[Ashlen]

Make fitness, not winning, a priority for physical education
09/20/2009

Dionne Koller, assistant professor and director of the Center for Sport and the Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law, wrote an article for the Baltimore Sun last week discussing why there are so many cases of childhood inactivity and obesity when there are seemingly so many opportunities for sport in school. Koller posits the professionalized win at all costs mindset of youth sports is causing kids to burnout and give up on athletics:

Consider Title IX and the sports participation opportunities affected by its gender-equity mandate. At the level of college athletics, and increasingly in our high schools, opportunities to play go to those who meet the standard of a varsity athlete. This can mean that the student must be elite, or nearly so, to claim one of the relatively few team slots. Across the country, youth sports culture has evolved to the point where millions of young children sign up to play, only to quit by their adolescent years. According to the data, kids are dropping out of sports as a result of "burnout": pressure to specialize early, train often and adopt a win-at-all-costs attitude. This "professionalization" of youth sports has gotten the attention of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which warns that the training levels required of our children are too much, too soon - even more than most adults could handle.

The result is just what you would expect: Once a kid is burned out, he or she stays that way. They often give up all athletics for good. The rest don't even try.

Programs that emphasize winning over participating, competition that insists on spectator appeal at the expense of academics - these are the current models of youth sports typically offered by our educational institutions. They are wrong; wrong for the lucky few who get to participate, and wrong for all of the others who know that if you aren't in it to win it, you shouldn't even bother.

[...]

We need a policy that emphasizes participation, physical fitness, and - dare I say it - fun. In short, we need to no longer stand by as our society tries solely to develop the next Michael Phelps while continuing to ignore the kids on the couch.

I think Koller and the American Academy of Pediatrics are fundamentally correct. School sports often emphasize winning rather than ensuring that kids are learning how to exercise properly by finding physical activities that each child would enjoy. This very well might be through organized forms of sport, but it could very well be through individual or non-competitive exercise activities. Physical educators must get past the false notion that competitive sport is the only path to lifelong fitness for all people.

To some extent, organized school sports may emphasize unhealthy lifestyles just to help the team win. A player might be pushed to train excessively or to gain too much weight to play a certain position like the offensive line in football. The acceptable justification for school sports is that it promotes physical fitness. Schools need to live up to that justification or scrap their programs. Of course, that seems less and less likely to happen now that school districts are signing revenue generating television deals.  We will see schools engaging in the business of winning and building ratings grabbing personalities rather than focusing on physical and non-physical education. 

[Ashlen]

Do BCS conference schools get less punishment than non-BCS schools?
09/22/2009

Former NCAA legal consultant Michael L. Buckner calculated that non-BCS conference schools, particularly historically black colleges and universities, get longer probation sentences than BCS conference schools:

Buckner's study claims that from Jan. 1, 2005, to Sept. 2, 2009, the NCAA Committee on Infractions issued:

An average probation penalty of 2.58 years to schools in the six BCS automatic-qualifier leagues (Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-10 and Southeastern) compared with 2.74 years for the rest of Division I.

An average penalty of 2.58 years to schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly Division I-A, compared with 2.86 years for the rest of Division I.

An average penalty of 3.83 years to HBCUs, compared with an average of 2.54 years for the rest of Division I, excluding HBCUs.

Buckner admits that his figures were not calculated scientifically, but I do not think it is a stretch to say that big-time schools got off easier than schools with less prestige.  Hopefully there will be a scientific study comparing punishment and probation terms for BCS and non-BCS schools. 

If Buckner’s numbers are correct, what would cause such a disparity?  Is this a case of the NCAA helping the schools that generate the most revenue?  I think that explanation has to be considered.  It benefits the NCAA, though bigger television and sponsorship deals, to have the teams with the biggest followings be competitive.  If the NCAA collectively makes enough power teams upset, the NCAA would probably fear the power teams taking their games elsewhere.   

However, I don’t think that is the only possible explanation.  The bigger schools probably have bigger legal teams to prevent getting in trouble to begin with.  Smaller schools, like HBCUs, might be afraid of the Infractions Committee and will divulge all the information they have.  Bigger schools, on the other hand, are advised to stay quiet because they know the NCAA does not have subpoena power.  The NCAA may be more afraid of a lengthy appeals process with a big revenue school than with a small revenue school.     

[Ashlen]

Intramural fight at Kansas
09/27/2009

Last week, men's basketball and football players at the University of Kansas had two separate fights on the Lawrence campus. At least one player, basketball player Tyshawn Taylor, suffered minor injuries from the fracases. Reports indicate that there have been tensions between players from the two teams for five years that finally exploded on the public scene last week. The basketball program has historically been successful on the court, but the football team has become nationally competitive over the last few years. This has caused tension between the squads as each wants to be the most popular team on campus in order to, as one player put it, get women.

The Kansas City Star's Jason Whitlock believes that these fights are reflective of the hip hop culture that is popular amongst the players. Whitlock even decoded a message regarding the fight left by Taylor on his social networking site that featured lyrics from a rap song. The comments are about as appropriate on a college campus as a person wearing a wife beater at a formal dinner would be.

Whitlock may have a point. There should be a lot of discussion regarding his point. Still, one has to look at the institution's role in this situation. It certainly isn't unusual for young men to fight over women, but the long-term anger between the groups does resemble gang behavior. Perhaps this ugly situation would not have come up if the athletes were better integrated with the student body and regular academic life. That might have given them a greater sense of community and responsibility.

Perhaps the coaches and administers have legitimately tried to calm the squads, but their nonchalant attitude after the fights seems to indicate that was probably not the case. The fact that the fighting athletes were taken away from the crime scene in an athletics department van is evidence of that. Regular students or citizens probably would have been taken away from the scene in a police van. Good citizenship may not help a team win games, but it is an important skill in the game of life. Kansas as proven that they can do the all-in-all useless task of building athletic winners. Congratulations. Now Kansas needs to take on the all important task of building winners for life.