Which path will the NCAA choose?

Major Victory for the Reform Movement

February 1, 2012

As you may know, since 1998 I have been advocating a return to the multi-year athletic scholarship rule that was ended in 1973 by the NCAA. Based on the near absence of reporting in the mainstream media of a major rules change you probably don’t know that today, for the first time since February 1972, an NCAA member institution is allowed to offer a 4-year athletic scholarship to a new “student-athlete.”

Several thoughts come to mind. First, back in October when the NCAA decided to allow a member to offer a multi-year athletic scholarship there was very little media coverage of the decision. That’s because at the same time the NCAA also decided to allow members to award a $2,000 per stipend to athletes to make up for some costs of attending school that the stand scholarship didn’t cover.

Of course, the decision that involved money, cold hard cash on the barrel-head, got all the attention. Predictably, so many member institutions said they couldn’t afford these stipends that the NCAA recanted and said they’d reconsider things in 2012.

Not so, the multi-year scholarship. Even though many members declared that a multi-year scholarship would take away a head coach’s perogative to shed himself of players who couldn’t cut the mustard on the playing field, not enough members objected and the change in rule stood.

Today, in a story first appearing in the Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer, it was affirmed that 8 of the 11 members of the Big Ten decided to offer today’s new football signing class 4-year scholarships. Only Indiana, Purdue, and Minnesota stuck with the 1-year scholarship.

In my opinion, this is a major victory for the NCAA reform movement and for the young men who are generating hundreds of millions in cash receipts for their schools’ athletic departments. Every player, not just the stars, makes NCAA FCS football possible. Every team needs stars but they also need backups and scout team players. Under NCAA rule 15.3.3.1, until today’s signing class at these 8 schools, any football player who sacrificed for his team could have his football scholarship non-renewed at the end of any academic year without cause. This enabled coaches to shed themselves of players who were hurt or who were just not as talented as the recruiter expected them to be.

All of this was happening while most NCAA football fans assumed that the players had scholarships that were good for 4-5 years unless the player got into serious trouble (such as with drugs, alcohol, or team rule violations). And my personal research and interaction with more than 150 student-athletes indicates that 70% of all parents of FBS players and their parents thought they were signing multi-year scholarships when they committed out of high school.

With the multi-year option now available it’s time to shift focus onto other ways that FBS football coaches exploit young men for personal gain. One issue down; many to go!

Big Decision:
Return to Amateurism or
The Free Market?

November 1, 2011

I believe college presidents are coming upon an unavoidable fork in the road vis a vis college sports. Circumstances are going to require them to choose between a) an unfettered free market approach to paying players or b) a comprehensive and radical return to an amateur sports model that will use sports to enhance the academic and research missions of the university.

Let me explain. Back in 1975-76 my old grad school classmates included Jeremy Foley and Todd Turner, guys who have made long careers out of running Division 1 athletic departments at places like Florida, Vanderbilt, and NC State. While they were selling tickets and learning the NCAA’s rulebook, I was learning to be a turnaround manager in the application software business.

Whenever we’d get together I’d hear stories about choosing and monitoring coaches, trying to fill the stadium, improving facilities, and keeping players eligible. These guys’ biggest worry was always their budgets. They were always short of money.

By the 1990s they finally figured out that if they’d let the TV guys have a bigger role in decisionmaking–you know, little things like scheduling, who goes to bowl games, what kind of uniforms to wear–the TV guys would pay them a lot more money. And their money worries would be over. Besides, those guys at ESPN are lots of fun!

But my old pals learned one of the tough maxims of business: without careful planning expenses always expand to consume all available revenues. They also learned tough lesson #2: Weak bosses always get overtaken by circumstances.

Before you could say Thursday Night Football the amateur executives running Division 1′s athletic departments had spent every penny they had for as far as the eye can see into the future. Need a bigger stadium? Borrow $900 million based on your future TV revenue growth. Need a better head coach? Pay $4 million plus and you can have anyone you want. $500,000 a year for an offensive coordinator seem a little high? Hey, you can’t take it with you and you gotta spend money to make money.

But no matter how many tickets they sold or how many jerseys, parking spaces, hot dogs, and Cokes, there was always that big ol’ elephant in the room nobody wanted to talk about: “Our entire business model depends on paying 90% of our employees with something other than cash. If they ever demand cash all bets are off . . . everybody out of the pool!”

For 20 years I’ve been telling the Jeremy Foleys and John Swoffords of the world that if your business depends on paying your people with bottlecaps or shiny trinkets you don’t have a legitimate business model!

Frankly, with more than 40% of the players never getting a degree, and 60% if you just look at the African-American players, it’s a wonder the players have waited so long to demand fair pay. They see their coaches making big bucks and driving nice (free) cars, and they’re saying “Whassup?” They don’t see assistant coaches working for “an opportunity”, they see the coaches getting a real paycheck. And they want a paycheck too.

Dear reader, take this to the bank: big time college sports is changing fast and there is no going back. The NCAA’s newest honcho Mark Emmert has agreed that players deserve a cash stipend and multi-year contracts. He’s placed the NCAA’s foot directly on the slippery slope that leads to a free labor market for players.

Emmert’s figure of $2,000 per year is merely the starting point. I can’t wait to hear him explain how it is that every player should be paid the same amount. Do you suppose he’ll compare it to the way ADs pay their assistant coaches? Oops!

I believe college presidents are coming upon an unavoidable fork in the road vis a vis college sports. Circumstances are going to require them to choose between a) an unfettered free market approach to paying players or b) a comprehensive and radical return to an amateur sports model that will use sports to enhance the academic and research missions of the university. If they go amateur then they’ll use real students as players, do away with athletic scholarships, end out-of-state recruiting, and pay coaches according to the scale of the school’s academics.

No more million dollar coaches . . . no more having 6 different uniforms . . . no more admitting high school kids who can’t pass college classes . . . no more playing games on weekday nights for the fun of ESPN’s viewers.

If they don’t choose this amateur path, labor litigators and the players will force them into recognizing the players are employees with all the rights to work where they please for whatever salary they can command. Where will the money come from? Lower coaches salaries and fewer uniforms.

NCAA admits players have been exploited!

October 29, 2011

Have you read the latest mental meanderings of NCAA president Mark Emmert? In the last 48 hours he has admitted on the record that the NCAA has been wrong for the last 40 years in its policies about 1) no cash stipends for players and 2) no multi-year scholarships.

If you believe Emmert and his cronies, it just occurred to them that Division 1 players aren’t getting a fair deal. They suggest a player deserves $2,000-3,000 per year to offset living expenses and a 4-5 year scholarship instead of the currently mandated 1 year scholarship. To read their words you’d think someone else had made the old rules and the NCAA was riding to the players’ rescue. But the truth is that the NCAA itself outlawed cash stipends and multi-year scholarships for players way back in 1973.

Why, after all these years of pretending to protect the integrity of their “amateur sports” business model, has the NCAA decided things aren’t fair to the players? Emmert and his highly paid NCAA staff feel the earth shaking under their feet and realize it’s the sound of the players marching to demand a fair deal. Players who have figured out that they work for sports franchises that are paying big bucks to coaches and athletic department hacks.

What exactly does a player get for working at his/her sport 40+ hours a week? (And don’t even try to say they spend less than that!) To quote the recruiters, they get an “opportunity” to get a college education . . . so long as things don’t interfere with practice, weightlifting, conditioning, and traveling to and from games. An opportunity to get an education that will benefit them the rest of their lives.

But what about the 40% of the players whose opportunity fails to deliver a college degree? What do they have at the end of 4-5 years? Work experience? No. A savings account? No. Contacts that will help them get a job? No. When their scholarship ends they get nothing. Not even a bus ticket home.

By the way, what does this gold-plated scholarship cost the university? A bed in a dorm that would be empty if the players were not sleeping there. The cost of the food the player consumed in the cafeteria. The use of books that have to be returned. In other words, the cost of the scholarship to the university is practically nothing.

But what does the athletic department get in exchange? Hundreds of free workers to put on the spectacles that generate billions of dollars.

Today’s players know their primary role on campus is NOT that of student; it’s to play the games that generate the TV money required to keep Division 1 athletic departments from going bankrupt after the ridiculous spending athletic directors have been doing for the last 20 years.

In my anecdotal research on this topic from talking to players and their parents, if a school were allowed to offer a player $15.00 per hour instead of today’s tuition, room & board athletic scholarship, more than half of the players would take the money and worry about college later. The players read about head coaches making $5 million per year and assistant coaches making $200,000-$1,000,000 and ask, “Where’s our share?”

Write this down. Emmert has now admitted that the players need to be compensated with cash. The only questions are 1) how much? and 2) why should every player get the same wages since not every coach gets the same wage?

The NCAA has just placed its foot on the slippery slope and there’s no going back. Major changes are coming. Stay tuned!

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Must read this linked story re: NCAA corruption!

September 23, 2011

If you never read another story about the NCAA, how and why it got started, how it controls amateur sports for its own benefit, and how it depends on free labor to make its profit, you must read this story: The Shame of College Sports.

The lynchpin of the NCAA’s existence is its ability to maintain the fiction that players aren’t employees; rather, they are students. If the players were employees they would be entitled to negotiate their compensation like every other employee in the USA and they’d be covered by worker’s compensation insurance, the right to overtime pay, etc.

How many people have you heard say, “If you pay the players you’ll destroy college sports.” But I ask you, have you ever heard of Curt Flood? He was the St. Louis Cardinals center fielder who in 1969 refused to accept a trade. He sued major league baseball and even though he lost the case, his suit mobilized the rest of the players and eventually free agency was established in professional sports.

At the time Flood’s case was being tried EVERY expert said, “If you give a player the rights of employees you’ll destroy baseball.” Well, here we are 40+ years later and EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF BASEBALL IS BETTER THAN IT WAS BEFORE FREE AGENCY. Every so-called expert was wrong about free agency.  And they are wrong about paying college players.

What does baseball free agency and paying college players have in common? Both are cases where the system’s extraordinary profits were threatened by a change designed to benefit players.

RTN Relocates to Atlanta!

July 19, 2011

I’m happy to announce that we have relocated our operation to suburban Atlanta where I can be close to my daughter and my (soon to be born) granddaughter! If you need to call me during this hectic relocation period my new cell number is 770-265-2551.

The NCAA reform movement is experiencing some important new developments these days so please stay in touch. I’ll document our progress as things happen. Stay tuned!

Major Breakthrough for Players’ Rights!

June 10, 2011

In a major breakthrough for what I call Truth in Recruiting, the Connecticut House of Representatives has unanimously passed House Bill #5415, a state law that requires Connecticut colleges and universities to disclosure crucial facts about the scholarship it is offering to prospective student-athletes. Bill #5415, which is law effective January 1, 2012, instantly makes Connecticut the most player-friendly state in the USA.

Under the new law, any institution with an intercollegiate athletic program that recruits student athletes by soliciting them to apply to, enroll in, or  attend the institution for the purpose of participating in intercollegiate athletics must provide on the front page of its official athletic website a hyperlink to a page entitled “Student Athletes’ Right to Know.” This web page address must be included in any written materials provided by recruiters to prospective student athletes.

The “Student Athletes’ Right to Know” web page must include:

1) the school’s most recent cost of attendance for the full academic year and summer school session(s), as published by its financial aid office, and the portion of that cost that is not covered by the scholarship due to the annual limit set by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA);

2) the institution’s policy on providing scholarships for summer school sessions;

3) the average monthly full scholarship payment received by all student athletes who live on campus during the academic year and off campus during summer school session;

4) the institution’s policy on signing more recruited student athletes than there are available scholarships and how that affects scholarship opportunities for recruited and current student athletes.

5) the National Letter of Intent (NLI) details, including:

a) it is a binding one year agreement under which the institution provides financial aid in exchange for the prospective student athlete’s agreement to attend the institution for one academic year;

b) it must be accompanied by an institutional financial aid agreement;

c) signing an NLI and not enrolling at the institution for a full academic year may subject a student athlete to specific penalties, including loss of a season of eligibility and a mandatory residence requirement.

The website must also state that, per NCAA rules, a verbal commitment is not binding on either the student athlete or the institution.

Bill #5415 requires the website to contain the school’s policy regarding the renewal or nonrenewal of athletic scholarships, specifically as it applies to (1) a temporary or permanent sports-related injury suffered by a student athlete in good standing, (2) a coaching change, and (3) athletic performance that is below expectations.

The website must also contain the NCAA’s policy regarding scholarship duration.

The web page must include NCAA and the school’s policies concerning whether the school may refuse to grant a release to a student athlete who wishes to transfer.

With regard to sports related medical expenses, the institution’s website must include the following information:

1. The NCAA’s policy regarding whether athletic programs must pay for such expenses and the institution’s policy concerning whether it will pay for such expenses, including deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance, or any expenses that exceed maximum insurance coverage limits;

2. The school’s policy concerning who must pay for required sports-related insurance premiums for student athletes without insurance coverage;

3. How long a school will pay for sports-related medical expenses after a student athlete’s athletic eligibility expires;

4. Whether an athletic program’s medical policy covers services provided by a physician not associated with the program, including the provision of a second opinion for a sports-related injury.

I believe this new Connecticut law takes a major step in requiring college sports recruiters to disclose many of the facts about athletic scholarships that parents of players use to choose the best school for their son. We hope other states will follow Connecticut’s lead. The next major step will be to pass an amendment to Bill #5415 that requires the same level of disclosure on academic performance and academic policies by schools.

Way to go Connecticut!

In an AP story published today NCAA president Mark Emmert described how he would like his enforcement division beefed up and penalties made harsher. As usual, he uses the language of PhDs which is nearly impossible for regular people to understand. “This is my own opinion, but I do worry we have too much of a bivariate model. I personally would like to see whether we can have two, three or five different sort of categories and maybe that would make the cases go a little more expeditiously.”

Let’s hope he doesn’t talk this way on purpose.

There is one topic Emmert is willing to speak clearly about: compensating players for their work. Here’s what he said: “What are you going to pay them? Are you going to pay the quarterback the same as the guy who sits on the bench? Are you going to pay a gymnast the same as a men’s basketball player? There is a model for that, it’s called professional sports, and I love them. But that’s not what college sports is about.”

Note to Dr. Emmert. There’s a simple system that answers all of the questions you ask. This system has been working quite nicely for hundreds of years all over the globe. It has enabled the USA to be the most powerful economic engine for generating wealth in the history of the world. It’s called free market economics.

Dr. Emmert, here’s all you have to do. Lift your arbitrary ban on free market labor practices in the NCAA. Acknowledge that the players are employees of the athletic department. That’s all you have to do. Instantly the players will sell their services for whatever the market will pay and the employers will pay whatever they are willing and capable of paying.

Would a women’s field hockey player get the same money as an FBS QB? Of course not. Would a punter get the same money as the star point guard? Of course not. But, you see, Dr. Emmert, you don’t have to make these decisions. The free market will make them. Each school will know how much it has to spend on players and it will pay for what it needs and/or wants.

Is there money available to pay the players? Absolutely. That’s how the free market works. Assuming the presidents of the institutions are doing their jobs, the athletic departments won’t spend money they don’t have.

In the free market each AD will pursue his/her own human capital strategy. No two strategies will be exactly alike. And no one will force an AD to use one strategy over another. If one AD thinks paying the head coach is the key to success he’ll do that. But ADs who believe having the best players is the key will shift salaries accordingly. Would a head football coach get $4 million if it keeps the school from hiring great players? I doubt it.

One of the hidden benefits to the free market system is the elimination of a huge fairness issue. If the NCAA lifts its artificial prohibition of free market economics, players will be paid under the exact same system as NCAA coaches and athletic directors: whatever they are worth to a given employer.

We all know that Emmert is not a dunce. He knows full well that everyone in the NCAA business model is paid according to free market principles. ADs, assistant ADs, head coaches, position coaches, trainers, and maintenance personnel. Even Emmert himself. Everyone except the players.

Let’s be clear. Emmert and the people who parrot his company line are intentionally misstating the situation to protect their decision to continue using the cartel business model. The current system maximizes the power of NCAA executives. They are in charge and they love it.

Denying employee status to players is objective #1 at the NCAA. The Ed O’Bannon case is the most serious threat the NCAA has ever faced. If the courts force NCAA members to recognize that players are employees the flood of money generated by the players will have to be shared with the players. The free market system is the only way to do this equitably.

While watching Ohio State and Alabama bid for the services of the next Cam Newton is Emmert’s worst nightmare, the real issue is watching the schools bid for the 98% of the players whose names we will never know. Without mainstream players, the 2nd team and the scout team players, the revenue producing sports of football and men’s basketball cannot exist. The invisible hand of the free market system will direct 80% of the wages to 98% of the players. And that’s all good.

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Recently I made a speech to 20 or so well-heeled boosters of the University of South Carolina and Clemson. These people came to hear me talk about the way 17 year old kids from very modest backgrounds are seduced by grown men who make nice salaries and who are evaluated by their bosses, in large part, on how many elite high school football players they can convince to come to their school. In my talk I included a description of many of the techniques used by these salaried recruiters to keep enough kids eligible to stock the scout team, the practice drills, and to occasionally play in a football game.

My approach is to ask a random person in the room to define a term such as “oversigning” or “clustering” or “remedial education” in the context of NCAA football. Very rarely does anyone get it right; usually no one is even close.

College football fans and boosters should all agree that wealthy powerful people should not get their kicks from a spectacle that is only possible by exploiting kids. Refusing to pay kids even minimum wage to supplement their scholarship is wrong. Many of these are kids can barely afford to buy clothes to wear to class. This while the head coach is making $4 million per year. So what do those kids have to show for 5 years of helping the school field a winning team? Don’t you dare say they get a free education. Half of them don’t. And the coaches know they won’t. Don’t dare say they get a chance to make it to the NFL. 98% of them don’t. And the coaches know it.

I believe each of us has a voluntary, not compulsory, responsibility to help the least of us. Too many of the kids we watch play college football have just one set of skills — skills that don’t translate into a quality life after football. If we tolerate the exploitation of these kids for our own gratification so we can say “we” about the Buckeyes or the Trojans or the Crimson Tide or the Tigers, then shame on us. Their blood, sweat, and tears let us vicariously enjoy the success of our favorite team; we should repay them by insisting that the institution does everything possible (not just the minimum effort required by the NCAA’s rules) to help those kids prepare for life after football.