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Second Annual New Year, New Rules

December 28, 2011 by

Last year, in response to ESPN the Magazine inexplicably publishing an issue about new rules that included not one NCAA regulation, I came up with six tweaks that would have an outsized impact on college athletics, one for each working bylaw in the NCAA Manual. ESPN’s gimmick is gone, but I kept it. This year I expanded it to seven rules, splitting Bylaw 15 (financial aid) and Bylaw 16 (awards and benefits) which were combined last year. So here is the Second Annual List of New Rules for the New Year.

Bylaw 11 (Athletics Personnel) – Dump the Test
The coaches recruiting certification exam is an annual rite of passage at NCAA institutions. The test used to be 40 questions over 80 minutes and was recently cut down to 30 questions over 60 minutes. It is open book (i.e. the NCAA Manual) and it includes mostly recruiting rules but sometimes rules about eligibility or financial aid as well. Coaches have to score an 80% on the exam. Fail to do so, and a coach may not recruit until he or she passes the exam, which they cannot do for another month.

But the most important function of the test is what surrounds it. Coaches gather for a rules review with the Compliance Office where they go over new legislation, get a refresher in the trickier recruiting rules, and have an opportunity to ask questions. It is that rules review which is more helpful than the actual test itself. The test just provides a convenient reason to get everyone in a room together.

If you read the certification requirement, the recruiting exam is just one required part of being certified to recruited off-campus. Instead, the education session (say four hours for coaches new to college athletics and two hours as continuing education) should be the greater emphasis. And if conferences or institutions wish to continue developing an exam, they can assume the expense to do so.

Bylaw 12 (Amateurism) – Competition with Professionals
Most people at this point are familiar with Proposal 2009–22, which permitted a prospect to compete on professional teams prior to his or her initial enrollment in college. But 2009–22 is just an exception to the more basic rule, that competition on a professional team ends an athlete’s collegiate eligibility. And the definition of a professional team remains very broad, covering any team where even one individual receives compensation above he or her expenses.

Competing with a professional team, at least during vacation periods outside of the traditional season, does not pass the litmus test for an amateurism rule. It does necessarily mean an athlete has received pay. And it is not strong enough evidence that a student-athlete has decided to leave college (unlike hiring an agent or skipping out on class to play on a pro team). Allowing competition with professional teams during the time when outside competition is currently allowed also allows better opportunities to be developed for current athletes (like an NBA college summer league for example).

Bylaw 13 (Recruiting) – Only Kids Get in Free
Much of the talk in recruiting regulation has been about relationships. Coaches need fewer recruiting regulations to build relationships with athletes that combat the influences of the dreaded “third party”. But Bylaw 13.8.1 promotes coaches developing relationships with these third parties by allowing high school coaches, AAU or 7-on–7 coaches, and junior college coaches to receive two free tickets to a regular season home game.

If relationships with prospects are the key to combating third party influence and cutting down on transfer rates, no one connected to a prospect should get a free ticket to a game without bringing the prospect. The regulations on official and/or unofficial visits could be loosened to give a prospect an extra ticket to bring a coach. But the recruiting regulations should allow the entertaining of people who have influence over a prospect if the prospect is nowhere to be found.

Bylaw 14 (Eligibility) – Degree Progress Get Out of Jail Free Card
Fulfilling progress towards degree rules requires a student-athlete keep up with three different regulations:

The first and third requirements are typically duplicative. The six and 18 credits an athlete must earn each semester or academic year keeps them on track to meet the 40/60/80% degree requirements. Except when the percentage of degree gets out of line with the credit hour requirements, which happens when an athlete gets ahead. Then they might be unable to complete the credit hour requirements because they ran out of credits to take, requiring a waiver. Or the credit hour requirements keep them from exploring electives.

Completing a percentage of your degree is the more important rule, so it should trump the credit hour requirements. If an athlete is ahead by a certain percentage and meeting (or beating by some amount) the GPA requirement, they should be exempt from the credit hour requirement. This way student-athletes who went above and beyond early in their academic careers gain more freedom to take what they want later on.

Bylaw 15 (Financial Aid) – End the Recruited/Not Recruited Distinction
Recruiting is a funny word. It has a formal definition that sounds exactly like what you expect a definition to sound like in a legal code:

Recruiting is any solicitation of a prospective student-athlete or a prospective student-athlete’s relatives (or legal guardians) by an institutional staff member or by a representative of the institution’s athletics interests for the purpose of securing the prospective student-athlete’s enrollment and ultimate participation in the institution’s intercollegiate athletics program.

But for practical purposes, that definition is trumped by three other, more technical requirements. There is the definition of a recruited prospect in Bylaw 13. There is the definition of a recruited prospect for men’s basketball camp purposes. And there is the definition a recruited prospect in Bylaw 15. That status attaches when ever a school:

  • Provides an official visit to a prospect;
  • Has in-person, off-campus contact with a prospect; or
  • Makes a written offer of financial aid to a prospect.

Once a prospect becomes recruited, how they count in financial aid limits changes. For example, if they are a football or basketball player, they may not receive any institutional financial aid without counting against the team’s limits. However, a coach can evaluate a prospect numerous times, call them as much as the rules allow, and offer them free tickets to any home event on an unlimited number of unofficial visits. Those activities would definitely meet the NCAA’s more fundamental definition.

If the distinction is meaningful, the technical definitions of a recruited student-athlete need to match the NCAA’s core definition. That would mean a definition that looks like the men’s basketball camp definition, which means an athlete would need to show up on campus with essentially no prior contact with the athletics department. And if the distinction is not meaningful anymore, it should be removed in favor of a rule which more precisely addresses using the financial aid office to get around scholarship limits.

Bylaw 16 (Awards and Benefits) – Let Student-Athletes Catch a Game
When athletes are on the road or required to stay over a break, schools are allowed to keep them occupied. Entertainment is allowed during both road trips and vacation breaks during the season. There is one meaningful difference though: during a vacation break, that entertainment cannot be tickets to a professional sports contest. That means no NBA games for athletes during winter break, or no baseball games for baseball players after school gets out in the summer.

There are already enough controls on entertainment generally (within a certain distance) and controls on professional sports tickets during road games (must come from the institution) to prevent it from being abused during these relatively short times when athletes are stuck on an empty campus. And while it is an advantage to schools near professional teams, the fact that tickets cannot be used in the recruiting process or given during the academic year limits that advantage.

Bylaw 17 (Playing and Practice Seasons) – Basketball Alumni Games
In sports other than football and basketball, alumni contests are a common occurrence. They typically occur during the exhibition season (like during fall baseball) or as a preseason meet before the championship season starts. They are exempt from the limit on the total number of games, and the NCAA recently began allowing athletes to participate in an alumni game and still redshirt that year.

Basketball’s preseason is a bit of a mess right now. One problem was well known: the strict limits on which athletes could play in exhibition games and still redshirt. Another did not pop up until this year as a result of the NBA lockout. NBA players wanted to workout with their old college teams and even play against them, but the NCAA does not exempt alumni games in basketball from the maximum number of competitions or first permissible start date like exhibitions against lower division opponents or closed-door scrimmages.

A framework is there though. Basketball teams get two games that do not count between the first day of practice and the first real game. What those two games can be should expand and whether they count as using a season of competition should be simplified. But an excellent start would be to allow schools that have alumni willing to suit up to use an alumni game as one of their two exhibitions.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: , ,

Just A Little Bit Longer

December 20, 2011 by

Back in the summer and early fall, there was a great deal of consternation about why it seemed so many men’s basketball prospects were being declared nonqualifiers. The biggest reason is that nontraditional courses had to meet a much higher bar that before. That left fewer “quick fixes” available to athletes who were just short of being qualifiers.

Now a new trend has started, one foreshadowed back in the fall. Instead of reclassifying to the following academic year, some men’s basketball prospects are completing the initial eligibility requirements during the fall semester and enrolling in the spring. This makes them eligible to start playing and practicing once the fall semester or quarter ends.

This is allowed because while men’s basketball has rules against midyear transfers competing right away, there is no such rule for incoming freshmen. As an example, here is Bylaw 14.5.4.2.3, which covers a midyear transfer from a junior college by a student-athlete who was not a qualifier:

Bylaw 14.5.4.2.3 – Baseball and Basketball – Midyear Enrollee.
In baseball and basketball, a student who was not a qualifier (per Bylaw 14.3.1.1) who satisfies the provisions of Bylaw 14.5.4.2, but initially enrolls at a certifying institution as a full-time student after the conclusion of the institution’s first term of the academic year, shall not be eligible for competition until the ensuing academic year.

There are similar rules for a junior college transfer who was a qualifier, a 4–2–4 transfer, and a transfer from a four-year college who qualifies for an exception to the one-year residence requirement. The only missing situation is an incoming freshman.

A prospect who fails to qualify is, according to the NCAA’s definition, not yet ready to handle the rigors of both college academics and Division I competition. Even though these prospects eventually completed the requirements, they required extra time and in some cases a different environment (i.e. prep school). It is a population that definitely needs extra attention and resources.

But by coming in as midyear enrollees, these prospects seem to have increased the degree of difficulty. Instead of acclimating to college before the basketball season tips off, they jump straight into midseason basketball activities, then are expected to add a full academic load on top of that. Midyear enrollees also have a tougher adjustment to college without many of the same orientation activities that happen in the fall. Not to mention that professors generally assume that most freshmen have a semester of college under their belt in the spring.

A similar issue is being debated in football surrounding spring enrollees. To enroll in the spring, prospects must complete the initial eligibility requirements in seven rather than eight semesters. But some spring enrollees are not on track to be qualifers after eight semesters when they start their senior year. That raises the question of whether it is academically sound to go from behind to ahead in a shortened time frame.

Luckily, the NCAA members do not need to rely on what seems right. If the trend continues, there will eventually be a large enough set of data to determine if nonqualifiers who are get eligible and enroll in the spring graduate, stay eligible, and are retained at a significantly lower rate. At that point, it is just a question of what type of rule might fix it. Something like this perhaps:

Bylaw 14.3.1.1.3 – Men’s Basketball – Midyear Enrollee (DRAFT).
In men’s basketball, a student-athlete is not eligible for competition until the following academic year if:

  1. The student-athlete was not a qualifier based on his academic record as of the first day of classes for the certifying institution’s first term of the academic year; and
  2. The student-athlete enrolls at the certifying institution following the completion of the first term.

(Note: This rule does not exist and is not being discussed anywhere but in this post.)

Obviously there are many possible tweaks. Including more sports, including qualifiers, fiddling with dates, etc. A rule like that would create a strong incentive to go to prep school for a whole year, while not preventing an athlete from enrolling if that is ultimately his choice and a scholarship is available (although new conference nonqualifier rules could do just that).

That is all down the road though. There is never a problem until there is a problem, and right now there is only a potential problem. Something to keep an eye on, and maybe down the road something that requires a response.

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: , ,

Funding Reform

December 15, 2011 by

Unfunded mandates are always controversial. When one government requires another government to spend money it may not have, there is bound to be tension. Proposal 2011–96, which allows schools to provide up to $2,000 beyond the current grant-in-aid limits, is not an unfunded mandate. The key word is allows. The proposal requires schools to do nothing, just permits them to.

But many schools are struggling to see a choice. 2011–96 (and 2011–97, the multi-year grant proposal) allow, in the views of many administrators and coaches in Division I, something so powerful that it must be provided. The fear with competitive equity is not that winning is easier for some schools than others because of money. The fear is that winning will become impossible for some schools based on money. Increased money to student-athletes is expected to be one of the things with that sort of competitive impact. That fear has been turned into enough override requests to suspend 2011–96 at least until the Board of Directors takes another look at the proposal.

The simplest way to address the issues with an unfunded mandate is often to fund it. However, that is often impossible since funding the program (i.e. raising taxes) is often as unpopular as the program might be necessary. But in this case, the Board of Directors could kill not just two but six birds with one stone. Because the mechanism for funding a large grant-in-aid increase is the creation of an FBS football playoff.

Not just any playoff. This would be an NCAA Division I FBS Football Tournament. That means a selection committee. It probably means an RPI of some kind. It could mean a large bracket, although it does not have to. But most importantly, it means the revenue from such a tournament would be distributed by the NCAA.

Only about 40% of the revenue the NCAA distributes to Division I schools is distributed based on competitive success (i.e. winning games in the men’s basketball tournament). The rest is distributed equally (sometimes with strings attached) or based on the number of scholarships a school offers or how many student-athletes receive Pell Grants. Not to mention that the Division I revenue distribution takes up only 60% of the NCAA’s total operating revenue, with the rest spent on the NCAA’s championships, membership services, distributions to Divisions II and III and administrative expenses.

If an FBS tournament generated similar revenue to the Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, there would be to match or even exceed existing Bowl Championship Series payouts while leaving plenty left over to fund the additional scholarship costs. In fact, it would be able to fund the most expensive version of that proposal, where the expense allowance is equal to the full cost-of-attendance and student-athletes on partial scholarships receive an equivalent portion of the stipend.

A funded scholarship increase could potentially solve the following problems:

  • Criticism that the increased aid is not to the full cost-of-attendance. The allowance could more easily be increased to that number without imposing additional costs on cash-strapped universities. Plus mandated reporting through the NCAA’s revenue distribution system allays concerns that the cost-of-attendance calculation might be manipulated.
  • Title IX concerns. If the proposal is broadened to include partial scholarship athletes, then the proportion of aid available to men and women does not change, and football’s 85 full scholarship no longer create a significant Title IX hurdle.
  • Creation of a football playoff. No need for explanation here.
  • Competitive equity impact. In the short term, there is no competitive equity impact, since the scholarship increase is funded for everyone.
  • A new model of competitive equity. In the long term, the existence of an NCAA tournament in football and greater targeted funding of specific costs makes the Board of Directors’ new approach to competitive equity more palatable. In all sports schools would compete against their conference peers to get into a national tournament where they get their shot against the rest of the country.

It also makes a football playoff significantly more likely. Instead of the weighted voting of the Legislative Council, FBS schools would receive one vote each. FBS specific legislation requires 25 requests to start the override process, 50 to suspend legislation, and 75 votes against a proposal if it ultimately comes to that. At that point, the only way an FBS football playoff would not occur would be if a significant majority of schools did not want one.

If this sounds too good to be true, it is admittedly a little oversimplified. It would be hard to tie the existing financial aid proposal to an FBS-only playoff proposal, so you would have two separate proposals. Everything would go back to another override process where the success of one proposal hinges on the success of the other and with only a subset of schools voting on one of the proposals. But the idea solves too many problems to not get at least a “what if” when the Board of Directors meets in January to continue the path to reform.

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: , , , ,

A billion here, a billion there

December 13, 2011 by

Note to The Chronicle of Higher Education: If you’re going to go with a sensational headline, please get it right.

In a Dec. 11 story, the nation’s leading chronicler of higher education assembled eight writers to address this topic: “What in the hell has happened to college sports? And what should we do about it?”

The subhead says “No wonder they call it big-time sports/College athletics programs pull in about $106-billion in revenue annually. But the challenges facing college sports may outweigh any dollar amount.”

To challenge the Chronicle is to appear defensive, especially when they are in red-meat mode, as shown by the “what in the hell” language. So it is with considerable trepidation that I offer the actual figure for college athletics revenue: It is somewhere between $11 and $12 billion, or about $95 billion less than the figure cited. If you count only generated revenues (ticket sales, TV contracts, etc.), the number is quite a bit less.

Putting that doozy aside, here is the guidance from the panel of experts:

Frank Deford: “Bust the Amateur Myth”

William C. Friday: “Get Out of Show Business”

Harry Edwards: “Share the Wealth”

Tom McMillen: “Eliminate the Profit Motive”

Nancy Hogshead Makar: “Tie Money to Values”

Oscar Robertson: “Don’t Treat Players Like Gladiators”

Len Elmore: “Exempt the NCAA from Antitrust”

Astute readers will immediately see two things. First, most of the writers have written the same stuff in various places many times before; there’s not much new here. Second, the collection is so conflicted as to be useless. Some want to get rid of the excess money; some want the money to go to those who are thought to generate it. Some want to get rid of show business; others want to get rid of academic pretense.

The most common suggestion from the group of eight may be to give college sports an antitrust exemption. That’s fine, but it’s also beyond the NCAA’s control. I’m not aware of a groundswell in Congress to create an antitrust exemption, and I can only imagine the histrionics that would accompany any such effort.

But back to the $106 billion. The number isn’t treated anywhere in the Chronicle package, so it’s not clear where they came up with it. The NCAA has researched the topic of overall revenue, and here’s the relevant question and answer on NCAA.org:

“Is NCAA revenue different from money generated by member conferences and institutions?

“Yes. The most recent estimate from the NCAA research staff is that college athletics programs annually generate about $6.1 billion from ticket sales, radio and television receipts, alumni contributions, guarantees, royalties and NCAA distributions. Another $5.3 billion is considered allocated revenue, which comes from student fees allocated to athletics, direct and indirect institutional support, and direct government support.”

The $106 billion figure would seem to be prima facie wrong since it would require about $100 million in annual athletics revenue for every NCAA Division I, II and III member (more than 1,000 colleges and universities). If only it were so. The most recent NCAA study identified only 11 programs exceeding $100 million in revenue.

One hopes that this error doesn’t take on a life of its own as it’s perpetuated by other media.

The Chronicle of Higher Education subsequently changed the headline to $10.6 billion.

About Dave Pickle

Filed Under: Feature, NCAA Insider

How A Ban Can Be Deregulation

December 9, 2011 by

One of the under-the-radar issues still bubbling along in the NCAA is Proposal 2009–100-A. The proposal (2009–100 for simplicity’s sake, the “B” version is long gone) bans Division I institutions from hosting most nonscholastic boys basketball competitions and camps. The proposal, which was adopted last year, is currently receiving comment from each individual member school, after which the schools will vote. A five-eighths majority is required to overturn the new rule.

The rule got more public over the last couple of weeks when more people learned how far the definition of “nonscholastic” actually stretched. A number of events, like this one, had to be moved from Division I arenas. While they were between high school teams, they were sponsored by nonscholastic organizations, like visitors bureaus and event promoters. The reason the ban extends so far is to both prevent third parties (whoever they may be) from turning into event promoters to cash in from a college recruiting their prospects, and so Division I schools are not contributing directly to having even more basketball games during the high school season.

Banning these events, many of which have been around for a long time and are completely on the up-and-up, is seen by many as an example of the type of regulation that the NCAA needs to get rid of. “Deregulation” is a common cry. Why waste time on who holds an event in the school’s arena, the argument goes, when there are more pressing issues.

The reason is that Proposal 2009–100 is trying to save compliance offices time rather than increasing their burden. When the Division I Board of Directors issued its interpretation back in October 2009, the Board touched specifically on boys basketball camps:

It is not permissible for a men’s basketball staff member or a representative of the institution’s athletics interests to be involved in any way in the operation or planning of a men’s basketball nonscholastic event on its campus.

If Proposal 2009–100 survives, monitoring boys basketball events on campus is relatively easy. Who are the teams and who is sponsoring the event? If 2009–100 is ultimately defeated, the monitoring burden goes up significantly since an institution might be called on to prove that their men’s basketball staff was not involved in setting up an AAU tournament on campus. That might mean practices like monitoring phone records and email of coaches to look for communication with event operators, or ensuring that only certain people in the athletic department or university are involved with setting up the event. Pricing and amenities offered to these events may also have to be monitored.

A lot of the deregulation talk recently has focused on removing things from the Division I Manual that are not worth worrying about. But there’s a flip side to “deregulation” that should be seriously considered. Some activities require so much monitoring to be done fairly and ethically that they are not worth the benefit. In that case, it is in the interest of deregulation to ban Division I institutions from wasting their time with the activity so they can focus on more important things.

Do AAU basketball events on campus fall into that category? Enough of Division I thought so at one point to pass the rule, but it remains to be seen if they still feel that way. NIRSA, the National Intramural-Recreation Sport Association certainly feels the extra trouble is worth it, given the significant revenue that recreational sport departments see from AAU events. “Saving people from themselves” is always a tricky proposition. But that does not mean there is only one way to focus athletic departments on what is important.

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog Tagged With: , , ,

Reevaluating the Most Important Rule

December 3, 2011 by

If you ask someone what the most important rule in the NCAA Manual is, you’re likely to get a range of responses. Amateurism, academic eligibility rules, and ethical conduct are likely to be among the most popular. Some might point to rules on scholarship limits or initial eligibility instead.

All of those might be among the most important rules in the NCAA. But in Division I, it is hard to argue with the five-year rule as being the most important. Here is Bylaw 14.2.1 in all its glory:

14.2.1 – Five-Year Rule.
A student-athlete shall complete his or her seasons of participation within five calendar years from the beginning of the semester or quarter in which the student-athlete first registered for a minimum full-time program of studies in a collegiate institution, with time spent in the armed services, on official religious missions or with recognized foreign aid services of the U.S. government being excepted. For international students, service in the armed forces or on an official religious mission of the student’s home country is considered equivalent to such service in the United States.

The basics of the five-year rule state that once you start college, your Division I eligibility is gone after five years. And the only way to stop the march of the five-year rule is to join the military or go on a religious mission. There are some other exceptions for pregnancy and elite international competition. But for the vast majority of student-athletes, once the clock starts, it does not stop until the five years are up.

Combined with other rules like the core-curriculum time limitation and the delayed enrollment rules, the five-year clock establishes Division I eligibility as a privilege that can only be used to its maximum extent by keeping up with the responsibilities that the NCAA imposes on student-athletes. Fail to reach initial eligibility standards, fail to maintain academic eligibility or spend too long chasing professional athletics and your Division I eligibility simply vanishes.

The five-year rule is certainly a harsh rule. Divisions II and III do not have it, opting instead for the more forgiving 10-semester/15-quarter rule. The 10-semester/15-quarter rule can be stopped simply by withdrawing from school or dropping below full time. But even that rule has the same issues as the five-year clock.

Collegiate eligibility is often thought of as being four years of playing and one redshirt year. The reality is that collegiate eligibility is four years of playing that must be completed within five years, leaving one year of cushion for anything that might happen to a student-athlete during their collegiate career. Redshirts, medical hardship waivers, transfer residence, nonqualifier residence, financial difficulties, academic ineligibility and reinstatement conditions all have to share that one year.

If something outside of the control of the student-athlete and the institution takes away two years, the NCAA has a process for fixing that. But if such an event takes away only one year and the student or institution has control of another year (e.g. redshirt, transfer residence, etc.), the student-athlete is normally unable to get the lost year back.

Boil all this down and the fundamental question is whether student-athletes should have a “right to redshirt”. That is, should a student-athlete be able to redshirt at least once for whatever reason, and then receive an extension to their clock if something outside their control occurs?

One option would be for Division I members to adopt this Division II waiver for student-athletes who redshirt during their freshman year. That would cover cases where freshman choose to redshirt or are redshirted by the coaching staff, and solves a recurring issue in clock extension waivers where five year-old medical documentation is need to prove an injury during the first year. It would not allow student-athletes forced to sit out for a year due to transfer the same flexibility though.

It is all a question of costs. The fewer exceptions to the five-year rule there are, the higher the cost to student-athletes when they choose the wrong school or choose to redshirt. A six year is possible, but exceptions would be trickier.

With 400,000 athletes, it would be impossible to have a rule that never creates a single bad result and still have the concept of eligibility that runs out or can be exhausted. The trick is balancing how many athletes run out of time with how many athletes and institutions are manipulating the system or failing to hold up their end of the bargain. The five-year rule gets it mostly right, and just needs tweaks to strike an even better balance.

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog Tagged With:

MLB Agreement Big News For College Baseball

November 23, 2011 by

When the NCAA legislative process is wound into high gear, it’s natural for compliance offices to take notice. Obviously if something changes in the book we use everyday, we need to know that and be ready for it.

Major league collective bargaining negotiations would seem to have a lot less impact on college sports. But the changes made in them can have a big impact. Normally those changes are small in the grand scheme of things. A two-year age limit in the NBA is considered a footnote to a negotiation that centers on revenue splits and free agency mechanics, despite the impact is has on the NBA’s talent pipeline.

By contrast, Major League Baseball’s quick and quiet negotiations made spending on new players who are or might be in college a major issue. After recommended signing bonuses for players failed to curb spending on incoming talent, the union and the owners have agreed to significant penalties for teams who do not follow MLB’s slotting system.

A luxury tax threshold will be set based on a team’s recommended bonuses for the first 10 rounds of the draft. Exceeding the recommended bonuses by even 5% requires payment of a 75% tax. Penalties escalate quickly; teams exceeding the tax threshold by 15% pay a 100% fine and lose two first round draft picks.

In addition, the signing deadline was moved up a full month. Instead of being in mid-August, right before school started, it will be in mid-July, moving around based on the All Star Game.

All of this is a gigantic win for compliance professionals and the NCAA Eligibility Center. With less wiggle room allowed (and small commissions available), agents acting as advisors to players have less incentive to take a hands-on approach to negotiations, meaning fewer violations of Bylaws 12.3.2 and 12.3.2.1. The shorter negotiating window also means amateur status can be settled sooner, reducing the number of Eligibility Center investigations which stretch into the school year.

In the medium-to-long term, it should improve other aspects of the recruiting and initial eligibility process. Baseball should settle into a pattern, like the NBA did, where draft position largely dictates whether a prospect will attend college. This means prospects who are not projected high enough will need to take academics more seriously. A worldwide draft, rumored to be a possibility as soon as 2014 would push even more prospects toward college.

Whether it turns out to be a win for college baseball as a whole remains to be seen. Baseball has struggled to attract athletes, and now large amounts of money available early in an athlete’s career will no longer be available. How much? In 2011, just three teams (Pirates, Royals, and Nationals) spent more than $25 million over slot on draft picks covered by the new regulations. The top three picks received bonuses that were roughly double MLB’s recommendation. Those bonuses alone would have trigged the steepest penalties in the new draft luxury tax system.

The fear is that while more of the best baseball players will likely end up in college, fewer of the best athletes(subscription req’d) will still be playing baseball when it comes time to make the choice.

This is the part where MLB tells talented young amateur athletes – who, by the way, aren’t union members and had zero voice in these negotiations – that baseball is a lousy avenue for them to take, at least financially, and they should probably check out other sports.

Getting more of the best players does not help the game if the talent level of the entire player pool is significantly lower.

The uncertainty also comes from the NCAA’s side of the equation, since no sport is as greatly impacted by the Presidential Retreat reforms as much as baseball. The $2,000 miscellaneous expense allowance may change how coaches distribute their 11.7 scholarships. Length of scholarships will be a key concern, especially for parents of top pitchers. And the new academic requirements will have a noticeable effect in baseball, which has many junior college transfers and has struggled with below average APR scores.

College baseball is just starting to hit its stride as a potential revenue sport. As a spring sport with lots of games, it fills a huge programming need for conference or institutional TV networks. The Division I Baseball Tournament is reported to turn a profit for the NCAA. Attendance is up as well. Despite the struggles, most notably the geographic divide of Southern and Western haves vs. Northern have-nots, the sport is as healthy as any in college athletics. Whether these new changes, the second round to hit baseball in four years fuel more growth or hit the brakes remains to be seen.

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: , ,

Should College Football Be Year-Round?

November 20, 2011 by

Concussions in football are reaching a critical stage. Players, especially in college football, are getting bigger and faster at a rate that helmet technology seems unable to keep up with. Force equals mass times acceleration. Get something big enough moving fast enough and run it into a person, and you generate more force that we can disperse and shield someone’s head from.

Now though, a new problem is coming up. A study has raised the potential that football is becoming so violent that you do not need to suffer a concussion to experience the long term effects:

The scans of the injured player showed as much damage as his teammates who endured routine levels of contact, suggesting to Bazarian and Zhong that extreme hits that made athletes’ vision foggy and eyes starry – telltale signs of concussions – weren’t necessary to cause damage to their brains. Instead, it suggested the hits players endured play-to-play and week-to-week could accumulate and affect the brain’s health. Imagine linemen colliding after each snap, a running back getting bumped while powering through a hole, or linebackers finishing off a play. Those plays – the bedrock of game action – could be adversely affecting a player’s health over time, the results suggested.

The science here is just getting started, but if this research is confirmed and reveals a widespread problem, there would need to be a fundamental change in how football is organized. Rules to prevent head-to-head collisions are of limited value if big hits are only part of the problem. One option would be to remove routine contact from football, but at that point it would be a different sport.

Instead, the challenge should be to look for ways to mitigate this damage caused by regular jostling. One common sense idea would be more rest in between games. But to have more rest, you need either fewer games or a longer season. A slightly longer season would yield another bye week or two, but what if the idea of a football season played in the fall was thrown out in favor of one played over the entire academic year?

A season played over the entire academic year would also mean changing practice limits. 20 hours of athletic activity over six days a week would be quite the grind over an entire academic year. The limits would have to be somewhere between the in-season limits and the offseason limits, something along the lines of 15 hours per week, maximum of 4 hours per day, and two required off days per week. Hopefully a longer season also reduces the pressure on student-athletes to engage in voluntary activity, which adds on another 20 hours for the average FBS student-athlete.

A competition schedule might have teams playing every other week, with the occasional game on back-to-back weeks and/or two weeks off (so half of the teams aren’t one schedule and half on the other). Even with a playoff that adds games beyond the current maximum of 14, there would be periods of extended rest.

A number of ancillary benefits are possible as well. A steady practice schedule that includes fewer hours per week of athletic commitments could help academics. A longer season frees up television slots on the weekend, reducing the number of midweek games. With games every other week, coaches might have better work-life balance and more time to recruit.

Tradition would definitely be thrown out the window and there’s a chance that year-round college football would not be as great a commercial success as it might seem given the public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for the sport. But if we’re serious about the health and welfare of student-athletes, any idea that maintains the core of the sport and reduces long-term damage needs to be explored.

These ideas are a long way off though. First more study is needed to confirm this phenomenon and measure the extent of it. Assuming it is, the NCAA and researches should figure out a way to test different competition and practice schedules to see if it makes a difference. Perhaps a shorter season with a longer offseason is better. Or perhaps the key is to reduce cumulative damage by having longer periods between each game. And if that’s the case, the membership should be prepared to take even the radical step of playing football in the spring.

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: ,

Crime and Punishment

November 11, 2011 by

When bad things happen in athletic departments, the natural inclination is that the NCAA will step in. The NCAA legislates standards for athletic departments and regulates compliance with those standards. When anything goes wrong, either in athletic facilities or with the people involved in college athletics, the first look is often to Indianapolis for the NCAA’s response.

That instinct can be wrong in some cases. The NCAA is an organization based on athletics and education. What the NCAA can do is thus limited. The NCAA can only enforce the bylaws that its members make. As a private organization rather than part of the government, the NCAA’s powers are also limited. And there is the issue of what rules are appropriate for the NCAA to be overseeing.

Sometimes real crimes intersect with NCAA rules. The ability of the NCAA to punish an athletic department for criminal activity that occurs within the athletic department is tied directly to whether NCAA bylaws were violated as part of the crime. But there is a role for the NCAA to have consequences for criminal activity that occurs within an athletic department, and two changes in particular would provide the organization with the necessary tools.

NCAA as Accomplice

Very generally, the membership could make it an NCAA violation for the people NCAA rules cover (athletic department and university employees, student-athletes, boosters, etc.) to use college athletics in the commission of a crime. A simplistic example would be a coach who goes on recruiting trips abroad to bring drugs into the country. The recruiting trips might be permissible, but the activity surrounding the trips is illegal.

The NCAA would need to piggy back on the criminal investigation. But the facts that are proven with the power and processes of a government investigation might show that college athletics became an unwitting accomplice to the crime. At that point, the NCAA has an interest in punishing people and organizations who abuse college athletics without breaking any of the NCAA’s rules.

Clery Act Violations

Campus safety is regulated by the Clery Act, which is actually a section of Title IX. The Clery Act requires that colleges and universities who receive federal funding must compile and report accurate statistics regarding crimes that occur on- or near campus or involving students. The Clery Act also requires that institutions have policies for reporting and responding to accusations of crime on campus, with a special emphasis on sex crimes, violent crime, and hate crimes.

When the Department of Education finds a school guilty of a Clery Act violation, there are already significant penalties, including fines of up to $27,500 per violation and suspension from federal financial aid programs. A single incident can produce multiple violations, such as at Eastern Michigan University, where failure to warn students about a murder that had occurred on campus resulted in a record fine of $357,000.

Part of the NCAA’s mission is to provide for student-athlete welfare. Safety and security of student-athletes and staff is fundamental to that welfare. The membership could create a rule that requires institutions to report Clery Act violations involving the athletic department to the NCAA, which could then impose penalties. This would include failures of athletic department employees to report crimes, crimes against student-athletes, or crimes committed by student-athletes. It is not the criminal act that is being punished, rather it is the failure of the institution to respond to it and protect victims and other student-athletes.

As idyllic as college campuses may seem, they are part of the real world. Real world crimes happen on campuses and involve athletic departments. The NCAA has neither the expertise nor the authority to become another general police force. But when crimes are sufficiently intertwined with college athletics and the NCAA can use the results of investigations by the proper authorities, it makes sense to create consequences for actions that might not violate NCAA bylaws, but which make no one feel good about college athletics.

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog Tagged With:

Club and Division I Are a Difference in Kind, Not Degree

November 3, 2011 by

To the extent that anyone argues, without qualification, that there is not enough money to pay any athletes in college, they are wrong. Some set of schools could pay some set of athletes some amount of money above and beyond the cost of attending the school. The issue is that there is not enough money at the moment to pay even just football and men’s basketball players a significant wage and do everything else that college athletic departments currently do.

All of that other stuff has value. Coaching salaries are a typical target of pay-for-play advocates. If athletes were paid, the theory goes, coaching salaries would go down. But if they did, the best coaches might go coach somewhere else, lowering the qualify of coaching athletes receive. That is just one of many trade-offs, like whether college athletic departments should provide opportunities to a large number of athletes or compensation to a smaller group.

George Dohrmann’s pay-for-play plan then is less ground-breaking for making the numbers work than it is for making the tough choices. Fewer, smaller athletic departments in Division I would, all else being equal, free up enough revenue to provide a meaningful amount of money above the current scholarship ($12,000 in Dohrmann’s example). That comes though at the expense of many non-revenue programs.

Mainly I don’t support Dohrmann’s plan because I disagree with the trade-offs that are made. I generally believe it’s more fair and more appropriate for a university to spread resources and revenue on more athletes rather than fewer. In many ways this is the heart of the current struggle over the future of college athletics, and it is a question upon which reasonable people can differ.

But there is one flaw in Dohrmann’s plan and it comes in the treatment of club sports. Club sports are a sidebar to the article, but if you were politicking to have this plan adopted, they would be central to building support. Allowing nonrevenue teams to fall by the wayside is acceptable, the argument goes, because there is a club sports system that will pick them up. And that on a club team, athletes will receive most of the benefits they would have gotten as a Division I student-athlete.

Take these quotes in favor of the club sports model:

“We work hard and we play hard, and there is that same sense of teamwork and camaraderie.” … “We have gained a lot more life skills having had to work for everything, by not having anything handed to us. And isn’t that what college is all about?”

Those quotes come alongside claims that varsity athletes and club sport athletes are more similar then they are different. And in many ways, they are. There is often a similar time-commitment, athletes are representing the university, and many of the athletes could have been Division II, Division III or NAIA athletes, even Division I in some cases.

The tone of those quotes and the entire piece highlight the differences between club and varsity sports. That difference is explained by Jay Coakley’s power/performance and participation/pleasure models. Elements of the power and performance model are:

  • The use of strength, speed, and power to push human limits and aggressively dominate opponents in the quest for victories and championships
  • The idea that excellence is proved through competitive success and achieved through intense dedication and hard work, combined with making sacrifices, risking one’s personal well-being, and playing in pain
  • The importance of setting records, defining the body as a machine, and using technology to control and monitor the body
  • Selection systems based on physical skills and competitive success
  • Hierarchical authority structures, in which athletes are subordinate to coaches and coaches are subordinate to owners and administrators
  • Antagonism to the point that opponents are defined as enemies

By contrast, the pleasure and participation model focuses on:

  • Active participation revolving around a combination of types of connections-connections between people, between mind and body, and physical activity and the environment
  • An ethic of personal expression, enjoyment, growth, good health, and mutual concern and support for teammates and opponents
  • Empowerment (not power) created by experiencing the body as a source of pleasure and well-being
  • Inclusive participation based on an accommodation of differences in physical skills
  • Democratic decision-making structures characterized by cooperation, the sharing of power, and give-and-take relationships between coaches and athletes
  • Interpersonal support around the idea of competing with, not against, others; opponents are not enemies but those who test each other

One of these sounds like Division I athletics and one sounds like club sports. Neither is good or bad, nor is one better than the other. But they are different things, run in most universities by different departments. There are counterexamples, like BYU’s club men’s soccer team which plays in the highly competitive Premier Development League. If you ask the US Soccer Federation, they might say BYU’s club team is playing at a level higher than Division I.

So aside from the tangible loses, like the national competition, university funding, academic support, and financial aid, dropping teams to club status means asking them to embrace different values and set different goals. It is so different that it should not be considered an alternative to varsity Division I athletics. Those teams are lost. That loss can be mitigated or it can be accepted, but it cannot be explained away with club sports.

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office.

About John Infante

The opinions expressed on this blog are the author’s and the author’s alone, and are not endorsed by the NCAA or any NCAA member institution or conference. This blog is not a substitute for a compliance office. If you’re a coach, do not attempt to contact the author looking for a second opinion. If you’re a parent, don’t attempt to contact the author looking for a first opinion. Compliance professionals are by their nature helpful people generally dedicated to getting to the truth. Coaches should have a bit of faith in their own, and parents should talk to one directly.

Filed Under: Bylaw Blog, Feature Tagged With: , ,
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