Big-time college athletics—the revenue-earning sports of football and basketball at the major universities—have been more memorable lately for illicit activities than for anything happening on the gridiron or hardwood. Headlines have been filled with free hookers and televisions for players at the University of Miami, a revered coach ignoring child molestation allegations at Penn State, illegal contacts with agents and unearned grades at UNC-Chapel Hill, and so on.
With all the major scandals erupting lately, many people are clamoring for reform. But until the reformers can unite behind some bold moves that will actually bring about a cleansing transformation, they will not be able to take on the entrenched interests that like things the way they are. Those interests are extremely powerful; not only is big-time college sports a multi-billion dollar industry that fills lots of coffers, they also instill intense emotional loyalties among alumni and sports fans in general.
An event at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Stone Center auditorium on Tuesday, February 28, entitled “Big-Time College Sports: What Needs to Change?” illustrated the fractured and impotent state of the reform movement. A couple of the biggest names in the reform movement put their heads together with an incisive local observer of college athletics for a panel discussion. Yet, despite their accumulated knowledge and insight, no consensus was reached about how to proceed, other than that the time for reform has come.
The lack of focus was apparent right from the start, as the person chosen to moderate the panel, author Will Blythe, described himself as a “crazed lunatic” when it comes to college sports. His best known book embraces the excesses of the Duke-UNC rivalry: To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry.
The trio of panelists—former UNC system president Bill Friday, writer Taylor Branch, and Duke University economics professor Charles Clotfelter—came to the event with widely divergent perspectives and solutions. There were no signs that their opinions changed during the course of the evening.
Furthermore, there was no mention of one of college sports’ most corrupting elements—the admission and matriculation of athletes who are incapable or uninterested in performing college-level academic work. Without including this unpleasant fact, no truly candid discussion can occur and no reform can be effective.
Locally, at least, the panel’s biggest star was William Friday. His perspective on collegiate sports can be called traditional amateur idealism. In this outlook, athletics are viewed as a means to promote the health and virtue of the athletes; they should exist to enhance the academic experience, not as a glitzy, big-dollar entertainment industry unto themselves. For five decades or more, Friday has sought to keep big-time sports’ corrupting influence from sullying the academy. In 1961, he cancelled the Dixie Classic, a popular college basketball holiday tournament, after discovery of a point-shaving scandal the previous year.
But, most of Friday’s efforts seem to have gone for naught. Friday cited an alarming statistic—out of the 122 Division I schools that form the core of “big-time college sports,” 58 have received sanctions from the governing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), in the last decade.
Despite this lack of success, Friday at age 91 is ever hopeful that the collegiate establishment will achieve the amateur ideal. He said that new regulations adopted by the NCAA will have some real effect. “Things like these cause change,” he insisted. The regulations include banishment from post-season playoffs for as long as three years, fines as high as five percent of the total athletic budget, and a loss of up to one-half of a team’s scholarships.
Taylor Branch represented the opposite pole to Friday’s traditionalism. Tinkering with the existing system won’t work, according to Branch; he seeks fundamental change. And not only does he reject amateur idealism, he calls for an end to the entire “phony” amateur apparatus of college sports, including the NCAA. “Reforms that help schools keep all the money only magnify the hypocrisy,” he said.
The central problem, according to Branch, is that the NCAA and the universities impose amateur status on the college athletes. Because of that amateur status, they are legally denied the basic right to gain from their labor, talent, and fame, even though it is their talent and fame that provide huge financial gains for everybody else involved in big-time college sports. “Players bring the value [to intercollegiate sports],” he said—over a million dollars for each NBA-draft-quality basketball player.
Furthermore, the inequity of denying players their rightful rewards corrupts the university itself, according to Branch.
Charles Clotfelter is more of an observer than a reformer.” It’s not that I don’t want reform,” he said. “It’s just going to be a lot harder than anybody thinks.” In his recently published book, Big-Time Sports in American Universities, he makes a case that sports are a “core function” of the American campus, not a peripheral activity. He stated that sports are more than just a commercial enterprise, but have great cultural importance as well, with benefits such as creating greater racial cohesion by showing the cooperation of teammates of different backgrounds.
Trustees are the key to reform, according to Clotfelter. The problem is that they are college athletics’ biggest boosters. He said that college presidents are unlikely to upset the status quo, since they are also hired by the trustees and cannot get the job without promising to support the athletic program.
At another point, Clotfelter added that “it is unlikely anything will get done unless there is external pressure, such as a court case.”
Still, he offered a few “modest proposals” that might help reduce college sports excesses: no more late night games in the middle week; no more television advertisements for alcohol for NCAA games; and restoring the restriction on freshman eligibility for varsity games.
Clotfelter also suggested a more fundamental idea that would have huge ramifications if adopted. Since big-time college sports are a commercial enterprise, he said they should lose the tax-free status afforded universities. But that is hardly going to get much traction in academia anytime soon—such a reform must come from outside the Ivory Tower.
Clotfelter’s proposal that freshmen be ineligible for varsity play would likely have some real benefits. It would at least end the mockery of the current “one-and-done” custom of basketball players. Under current National Basketball Association rules, players cannot turn pro right out of high school. Typically, they play one year of college ball to enhance their professional standing. Because they don’t have to worry about academic eligibility for the following year, they can pretty much ignore their classes without any repercussions and enter the NBA draft at the end of the year.
Yet even eliminating freshman eligibility seems like a drastic move for the NCAA to take at this point. For now, the most one can hope for seems to be the recent reforms lauded by Friday. However, they look more like another set of band-aids intended to make the problem go away temporarily, rather than the decisive blow in the fight to end big-time college sports’ corruption. Without bold action, Friday’s amateur ideal is likely gone for good. Big-time college sports are now an entertainment-based commercial enterprise with no real connections to higher education other than money and tradition.
Yet, even though a return to idealistic amateurism is unlikely, Branch’s simplistic pursuit of ending the players’ amateur status also misses the mark. The level of competition necessary to bring in the huge TV revenues and fill the stadium sky-boxes requires the best athletes coming out of high school, whether or not they are capable of serious college-level academics. The minority of such athletes who are good students are rewarded with the opportunity to earn a valuable degree.
The rest, who cannot or will not benefit from a college education, are the ones being exploited to the degree Branch describes. Football, in particular, favors large, rough, aggressive young men; many have also become accustomed from an early age to special treatment and favors due to their physical prowess. Paying them might reduce the number of picayune infractions that land players and programs in trouble, such as players getting paid so that their parents can travel to see them play, but it will exacerbate many other problems. For instance, how is giving them money going to keep them out of the nightclubs and parties where many of the problems occur?
With no agreement among the panelists, Will Blythe’s cynical acceptance of college sports as they are seemed to be the night’s winner. He point-blank asked Friday whether his idealistic approach had not become an “anachronism,” and he praised Clotfelter for writing a book that “detours around the usual moralizing on the topic.” While suggestions for reform abound, it is most likely that an end to big-time college sports’ ethical problems will not occur until outside events stop the circus.