In the news: March 15

The Barkley Experience. Tighten your seat belt. The Charles Barkley roller-coaster is leaving the platform.

The outspoken analyst formally begins his gig as an analyst for the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship tonight as the First Four gets underway on truTV in Dayton, Ohio.

Media spectators are beginning to line the track to see if Barkley has a cataclysmic off-message derailment.

Sports Illustrated media critic Richard Deitch posed “twelve burning media questions going into NCAA tournament” on Tuesday, and three of them dealt directly with Barkley. To wit:

  • Charles Barkley is an outspoken guy. Will he criticize the NCAA during the tournament?
  • So Barkley has some issues with the NCAA. What do his bosses say about that?
  • Give us an example of a Barkley rant on college basketball.

The answers were (1) yes, (2) he’s educable and (3) well, you’ll have to click on the story to read the rant.

Leading up to the tournament, Barkley appeared Monday with David Letterman. He was on message, more or less.

What can you say? Barkley can be funny and interesting, and you’re certainly going to get what’s on his mind.

Enjoy the ride, Sir Charles.

In the news: March 14

Way Outside the Lines. Tom Farrey and Paula Lavigne of ESPN went after the NCAA in an “Outside the Lines” piece over the weekend.

Selling the NCAA (ESPN)

This is a terrible piece of journalism. I’ve made it a point in this space not to shill for the NCAA and have praised work that does not necessarily favor college sports. This project, however, should embarrass ESPN.

The linchpin is the supposed revelation that 60 institutions generate revenues from expenses from their athletics programs, as opposed to the 14 that the NCAA claims. The extrapolation is that NCAA purposefully uses the smaller number to make a phony case that there’s not enough money to pay student-athletes.

What the authors refuse to accept is that the programs beyond the 14 have surplus revenues because they have received money from their overall institutions to balance the books.

One need only look at the ranking of net surpluses that accompanies the story to conclude that the authors’ methodology needs rethinking. With all due respect to Akron, there is no way that program is generating a “profit” with average home football attendance of 10,185 (next-to-last in Division I’s Football Bowl Subdivision). That’s not a slam on the Akron program. The institution’s leadership has its reasons for classifying at the elite level, and it is willing to pay a price to stay there.

But nobody should believe that Akron turned a $546,185 “profit” (tucked between Utah and South Carolina on the ESPN list) without a significant subsidy from the school.

The story is based entirely on that kind of data analysis, along with the observations of antitrust economist Andrew Schwarz and former West Coast Conference Commissioner and NCAA staff member Mike Gilleran (the authors also throw in an archived brickbat from film-maker Spike Lee, who called the NCAA “pimps” in a January rant).

Gilleran says he doesn’t care if student-athletes receive money from third parties. Since Gilleran might have had something interesting to say on that point, I wish the producers would have given him a chance to amplify. The few seconds they gave him made his observations seem superficial.

As for Schwarz, the gist of his position is that there’s plenty of money for colleges to pay student-athletes in the traditional sense. He doesn’t buy the explanation that money from revenue sports goes to support nonrevenue sports, essentially declaring the practice racist.

There is so much room for legitimate discussions about how money and college sports interact. You hate to see the opportunity squandered on junk like ESPN’s “Selling the NCAA.”

(If you want to learn more about the revenues and expenses of college sports, here is the definitive NCAA report.)

In the news: March 11

Ohio State aftermath. There didn’t appear to be anything new today in the case involving the Ohio State football program and coach Jim Tressel, but that didn’t mean that media analysis stopped.

First, there was a piece from Wall Street Journal reporter Darren Everson, who postulated that keeping hanky-panky secret in college football might be an exercise in futility.

The sport that can’t keep a secret (Wall Street Journal)

Everson cited the number of participants, their visibility and the ubiquity of mass media as factors that contribute to transparency.

He also noted that the NCAA appears to be getting better at ferreting out information.

“The deluge of scandals over the past year is, in large part, the result of increasing enforcement by the NCAA,” Everson wrote. “Despite massive criticism for how it has (or hasn’t) meted out punishment in several high-profile cases recently − including the controversy surrounding Auburn quarterback Cam Newton − the NCAA has publicly committed to steeping up its efforts. ‘We’re not shying away from it,’ said Rachel Newman Baker, the NCAA’s director of agent, gambling and amateurism activities.

“Beyond enforcement, however, there’s a growing consensus throughout college football that the NCAA is simply doing a better job of collecting information. ‘In the past, the NCAA was often criticized for not knowing what’s going on in the real world,’ Baker said. ‘I think we’ve got a pretty good idea. Coaches and players are starting to realize that as well.’ ”

Ivan Maisel of ESPN also weighed in.

Tressel penalty a test case for NCAA (Ivan Maisel, ESPN)

“It’s hard to see the logic in the NCAA sitting the Ohio State players five games for their actions and giving their coach only two games for not being truthful about the case,” wrote Maisel. “At the very least, the NCAA has got to move the suspensions to conference games.

“So we wait. We wait to see if the NCAA really has learned to love the coaching suspension. We wait to see if the NCAA increases not only the suspension but the $250,000 fine that Ohio State assessed Tressel…

“Ohio State did no favors for Tressel with its penalties. By not coming down hard enough, the university ignited a public debate that will last until the NCAA announces whether it agrees with the penalties. Ohio State did no favors for the NCAA, either. Tressel has become a public test for the NCAA’s enforcement process, a test that the public believes the NCAA failed in the Cam Newton case.

“The NCAA has the opportunity to put some teeth in a simple tenet. If you don’t live by the rules, you sit on the bench. It’s a message that all coaches and players understand.”

Keeping track. Division I track coaches turned introspective this week, examining what might be done to improve their indoor national championship.

Track coaches envy attention for NCAA tournament (Associated Press)

The gist is that conference meets are great, high-energy affairs but that the national meet has become something of an anticlimax.

They’ve got their eyes on approaches that would enhance team competition and make the event better for television.

One of the more aggressive thoughts comes from Arkansas coach Chris Buckman, who believes that classification needs to be part of the discussion.

 “I think football has the right model,” Bucknam said. “They have a BCS, a I-A and a I-AA (championship). I think that’s something that needs to be thought about because we so reflect football in a lot of different ways. One of them is the strength of our conferences, and you just can’t try to put 300-plus teams into one shoe. It’s not working for us. That’s a concept that needs to be considered.”

Well, not exactly … A Denver Post story Friday discussed the financial ramifications of Northern Colorado’s first trip to the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship.

Newfound NCAA status has more value in future (Denver Post)

Northern Colorado officials make the case that even though the tournament will not be a financial bonanza, the championships experience is important for the institution and its supporters.

That’s fine, but the story does contain one paragraph that needs clarification. (This isn’t to quibble with the writer’s otherwise good article but rather to clarify widespread misunderstandings about how NCAA money applies.)

“UNC will earn $100,000,” the story said, “not close to what it will likely spend on travel for its team, support staff, band and cheerleaders to go to a far-off site. If the Bears pull an upset, however, they’ll get another $100,000 for their second game.”

First, the NCAA pays travel and per diem expenses for team travel to championships, so the university would not be responsible for that expense. Second, teams do not receive round-by-round financial rewards for winning in the NCAA tournament.

Those interested in how NCAA revenue applies can learn more from an NCAA Champion magazine article last spring. The particular numbers have changed since the article appeared, but the principles are the same.

Caught Being Good: Baylor runner Logan Roberts

Logan Roberts (right) runs at the Bear Twilight Invitational for Baylor University.

Logan Roberts doesn’t run away from responsibility.

A distance runner for the Bears track and field and cross country team, Roberts serves as Big 12 Conference Student-Athlete Advisory Committee co-chair and is the conference’s representative on the Division I SAAC.

At the campus level, the Baylor SAAC has been involved in several projects, including Mission Waco programming for inner-city youth. Roberts said he and his fellow student-athletes know that they have a duty and a responsibility to the Waco community, and want to use their platform to make a positive impact on the kids.

“We play sports with them and if they need help with homework we help them with that,” said Roberts, a perennial Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll and Dean’s List recipient who is majoring in Health Science/Pre-Physical Therapy. “But most of the times they want to play and hang out with the kids they see on TV, the football players and the basketball players.”

Logan Roberts.

The experience has helped the student-athletes feel like they have a purpose, Roberts said.

“They end up having a bigger impact on us than we do on them,” he said. ”That’s really how we feel because they’re inspiring kids that just need a little direction, and we want to help them out with that.”

The Big 12 Conference has a partnership with Special Olympics, so Baylor has hosted Special Olympics events, usually in the form of clinics. Working with the Heart of Texas Special Olympics group, the student-athletes man stations representing different sports.

“It really puts it in perspective that what we do is more than just going out there and racing or competing on the basketball court or baseball field,” he said.

As a high school student, Roberts was involved with his church youth group. He went on mission trips to Guatemala and France and also helped with hurricane relief in Florida.

“Just because somebody speaks a different language doesn’t mean you can’t have a positive impact on them,” he said. “The language barrier is something that makes us unique, but the purpose is the same, to help out our friends and neighbors and countries that are less fortunate.”

The North Carolina native said the experiences had a huge impact on his life, and made him determined to stay involved with community service projects in college. He became involved with the Baylor SAAC as a sophomore and immersed himself in the committee’s campus activities.

For more information on NCAA SAAC groups, click here.

Media Investigations Are Helping Compliance

“Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.”
- Felix Frankfurter, former Supreme Court Justice

For a long time, the high watermark of NCAA investigation was the federal authorities. When the feds began sniffing around allegation of NCAA wrongdoing, it felt like only a matter of time before the case would be blown wide open. While it was over three years before the University of Southern California would appear before the Committee on Infractions, the fact that federal investigators were poking around the case as part of an extortion investigation made it seem more likely the original Reggie Bush report would result in NCAA sanctions.

Those two articles are just some of the many signs that there’s a new sheriff in town. Yahoo! Sports has proven to be stunningly, almost supernaturally good at uncovering NCAA violations by some of the biggest athletic departments in the country. They are the poster child, but they aren’t alone. While not in the field of compliance, Chip Brown of Orangebloods.com was in front of every move the Big 12 made during this summer’s conference reshuffling.

It’s only natural for compliance officers to have mixed feelings about the Yahoo! Sports team, and it’s hard to begrudge those that are hostile. When a reporter finds out about a potential violation before the compliance office does, it looks bad. There’s plenty of good reasons for it though. Maybe a source that wouldn’t speak to the compliance office will talk to a reporter. A compliance office has little reason to audit a coach’s emails due to the relatively loose rules, but a journalist might have a tip.

There’s also the feeling that the NCAA is “outsourcing” its enforcement responsibilities to the media. This means that larger schools are perceived to be targets because they bring more eyeballs and ad dollars. It also means that public schools, subject to open records laws, are at a disadvantage to private schools, who generally get to keep their documents under wraps.

As foolish as a compliance office might look, sometimes they are ahead of the media. While Yahoo! Sports gets the credit for being the first to report allegations that Ohio State head football coach Jim Tressel knew of his student-athletes receipt of extra benefits long before the violation was reported, the university had been on the case for almost two months at that point and was preparing a self-report of the violation.

Ultimately the team at Yahoo! Sports is a force of good in college athletics. The uncovering of violations and the sanctioning of offenders helps fix what is broken (sub. req’d) no matter who starts the process. We know that the NCAA and its members haven’t punted enforcement to the media and many talented and dedicated people are working from the inside. Outside help shouldn’t be turned away.

Plus the team at Yahoo! Sports is just like us compliance folk. How did the string of agent extra benefit violations this summer come to pass? Through the cultivating of sources by the Agents, Gambling, and Amateurism staff. Journalists aren’t getting this done with subpoena power and criminal charges. They aren’t using any tool that a compliance office doesn’t have at their disposal.

Instead of reacting to Dan Wetzel, Charles Robinson, Jason King, and the many others as threats, see them as a challenge. So avoid the feelings of schadenfreude when another school is in the media’s sights. And when the call comes to your school, accept that it will be good for college athletics in the long run and take the medicine, as bitter as it may taste.

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.

In the news: March 10

The art of the possible. Bradley R.H. Bethel, an assistant learning specialist from Ohio State, provided a strong piece for Inside Higher Ed in response to a Feb. 7 piece from Oklahoma’s Gerald Gurney.

The wrong approach on NCAA rules (Bradley R.H. Bethel, Inside Higher Ed)

Recognizing that there’s not necessarily a right or wrong on this issue, the Bethel piece seems more persuasive than Gurney’s.

Illustrating his point through an academically disadvantaged student-athlete that he calls  “Mark,” Bethel makes the point that remedial support can provide life-changing results for young people willing to do the work.

“ ‘Mark’ will probably never be a Rhodes Scholar,” Bethel wrote. “He is not likely to attend graduate school and probably will not earn Latin honors as an undergraduate. However, as our few months together have shown, he is far more capable than his ACT score indicates. Because of his hard work and my colleagues’ and my commitment to his learning, Mark has a chance to earn a college degree. He is on the verge of success, yet he is one of the athletes Gerald Gurney would have denied NCAA admission because Mark’s ACT score was too low.”

Determining where the provision of opportunity ends and exploitation begins is difficult. But Bethel’s article offers a compassionate and socially constructive perspective, based on the belief that individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds often outperform their standardized test scores once they are placed in a stronger academic setting.

He also notes, correctly in my mind, that the goal here is not necessarily to produce high-end scholars but rather to develop certain young people’s ability to attain a quality middle-class lifestyle.

“My fellow learning specialists and I are committed to our athletes’ learning, and we are trained and prepared to work with any athlete who comes through our doors, no matter how deficient his or her skills may be,” wrote Bethel, who does have quibbles about Division I’s progress-toward-degree requirements. “Not all of them are success stories, but every year across the country, hundreds, maybe thousands, of athletes become the first in their families to earn a college degree.”

Keeping up with the Jones story. Wednesday’s ineligibility ruling on Baylor basketball player Perry Jones III set of a spate of national reaction, including a terse response from Baylor AD Ian McCaw. Here’s a sample of op-ed material:

Was this really called for, NCAA? (Richard Justice, Houston Chronicle)

Baylor’s Jones declared ineligible, another Cam? (Dennis Dodd, CBSSports.com)

By midday Thursday, NCAA.org posted information challenging Baylor’s version of the story.

For the Record: Baylor University reinstatement decision (NCAA.org)

In the news: March 9

Ohio State controversy. Ohio State suspended football coach Jim Tressel for two games next season after it was revealed that he knew last April about potential NCAA violations involving several of his players but did not share the information with Ohio State authorities until December.

Suffice to say that the media reaction has not been favorable:

Ohio State suspends Tressel for 2 games (New York Times)

Ohio State mess latest example of college athletics gone wild (Dennis Dodd, CBSSports.com)

Ohio State doesn’t much give a damn about your outrage (Ray Ratto, CBSSports.com)

Don’t buy Tressel’s, Ohio State’s defense for coach’s violation (Stewart Mandell, Sports Illustrated)

Jim Tressel’s success leads to missteps (Matt Hayes, Sporting News)

Tressel gets two-game suspension, $250K fine for rules violation (Sports Illustrated)

No trouble spotting hypocrisy in college sports (Paul Newberry, The Associated Press)

Real. Uncomfortable. Genes. OK, this is just creepy.

A company that markets genetic tests claims it can help parents learn early if their kid was born to be an elite athlete.

Genetic test claims to predict child’s athletic potential (Tampa Bay Online)

Doctors, relying on heavy doses of common sense, say that hundreds of factors enter into athletics success beyond things like speed, strength and size that may (or may not) be revealed through a gene test.

But even if the tests were 100 percent accurate, what parent could possibly feel good about using such a service?

That point is moot because the tests are nowhere near 100 percent accurate.

“This is recreational genetics with a real serious potential for harm,” said Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, a medical ethicist and pediatrician at the University of Chicago. “People are going to think, ‘If my kid has this, I’m going to have to push real hard. If my kid doesn’t have it, I’m going to give up before I start.

“(Parents should) let kids follow their dreams. While parents have the authority to make health care decisions about their children, this type of genetic testing is elective at best and should actively involve the children in the decision-making process.”

Wise words indeed from Dr. Ross.

In the news: March 7

Second job. Michael Smith of Sports Business Daily put together an interesting story on the commitment that is required for members of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee.

Seat on selection committee a hoops junkie’s dream (Sports Business Daily)

Incoming members prepare their TVs for extended duty (Sports Business Daily)

These committee members are not widely known to the public, and people typically don’t consider that they all have demanding “real” jobs (mostly athletics directors and conference commissioners). Yet, they still make time – lots of it − over the entire season to make sure that the best teams are selected for the tournament.

Committee chair Gene Smith, the AD at Ohio State, said the demands sometimes call for tough choices.

“For me as an AD, I’ve got 36 sports and I try to have a presence at many of them,” Smith told the Sports Business Daily. “I end up missing a lot of those events because I’ve got to be back home watching games. There’s a lot of studying to be done. Some Saturdays, I’ll watch bits and pieces of anywhere from 12 to 20 games.”

For what it’s worth, the NCAA depends on people like Smith to give generously of their time. The basketball committee assignment is an extreme one, but many other committees take up a lot of time and effort.

What got into John Feinstein last week? He started out talking about the suspension of Radford coach Brad Greenberg, slipped into a news conference with Division I Men’s Basketball Committee chair Gene Smith and finally settled in for a diatribe against the annual NCAA basketball mock-selection exercise.

The NCAA’s version of justice is puzzling (John Feinstein, Washington Post)

This had all the makings of somebody who was stumped for a column idea and threw everything into a verbal blender.

“Of course the NCAA likes to claim that ‘transparency’ is important,’” Feinstein wrote as he entered the mock-selection part of his trilogy. “That’s why, after many reporters wondered for years what actually goes on in the selection process, some genius in Indianapolis came up with the idea a few years back to invite ‘selected’ media members to participate in a mock selection of the tournament field.

“This was a classic NCAA move. Rather than allow a member of the media into the room when the selections were actually being made, they allowed the media to come out and pretend to be committee members.”

This led, invariably, to a plea that reporters should be able to sit in on the actual selections.

The right for a private organization to conduct deliberative processes out of public view is legitimate. Reporters can be so myopic in this regard, never considering that their own employers place strict limits on their own transparency (as is their right). Can you remember the last time the Washington Post permitted New York Times to sit in on its editorial planning meetings? In Feinstein’s world, readers would be entitled to hear the debate among the various editors for what stories get the most play.

Well-reasoned criticism is one thing. What Feinstein was offering was something else.

In the news: March 4

Go pro in something other than sports. A career in professional sports is a long shot. That’s what we’ve been saying all along!

Odds of high school players going pro: A look at the data (J.M. Soden, Yahoo Sports)

Wrote J.M. Soden: “You may have seen the NCAA commercials that claim just about all of their student-athletes will be turning pro in something other than sports. It’s not just a catchy slogan, but also a reality. With players leaving school early at alarming rates, the NCAA is trying to educate young athletes on the importance of an education.”

He goes on to describe best-case scenarios (baseball at 0.44 percent turning pro) and worst cases (men’s and women’s basketball, 0.03 percent – much of it overseas).

It’s an excellent reminder.

One observation bears some amplification: “Even if high school athletes are unlikely to reach the professional ranks, an athletic scholarship can provide an excellent chance for a high quality education at little or no cost.”

That’s true for those who actually receive athletically related financial aid, but those opportunities are rather limited in their own right. Further, financial aid in most sports is not an all-expense-paid proposition.

The best approach: Study hard and make good grades.

Basketball from a different angle. Just when you thought you had figured out the real-world basics of basketball, along comes the Duke engineering school to complicate your life.

Circular evolution in the NCAA tournament (Eamonn Brennan, ESPN)

“The emergence of hierarchical design is illustrated with the rankings of university basketball programs,” wrote Duke professor Adrian Bejan. “Although basketball rankings have the same character as the university rankings, there is no correlation between the two rankings. Academic excellence and basketball excellence are two different architectures on the same area, like the flow of humanity (demography) and the flow of water (river basins). Together, they show how the evolution of sports allows us to witness biological evolution in our life time.”

The paper is entitled “The Natural Design of Heirarchy: Basketball Vs. Academics.”

And you thought bracketology was complicated.

Basketball coaches and $$$. Tom Van Riper of Forbes looked at what factors might lead to high salaries for basketball coaches.

The highest-paid college basketball coaches (Tom Van Riper, Forbes)

It’s interesting enough, even if it does describe the familiar area of supply and demand.

As with all stories like this, a little discussion of sustainability would be welcome. “More” and “bigger” aren’t likely to be the long-term answers to college athletics funding questions.

Limits on Limits

Parkinson’s Law is widely reprinted adage that dates back to 1955 and states:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

NCAA critics will no doubt take great pleasure in the inspiration for Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s quote: the fact that bureaucracy employment in the 1950′s was expanding 5%-7% a year regardless of other factors.

The quote has new meaning in the NCAA after two more institutions were cited for major violations that involved excessive phone calls and/or text messaging with recruits. The phone call rules are the poster child for needless NCAA regulations. They generate an enormous amount of work for compliance offices. They tie up the enforcement staff and Committee on Infractions in major violations for relatively benign conduct. And the content of the phone calls is often much less suspect than the phone calls a college coach may make to a street agent or handler.

I don’t buy the fact that technological change alone has made the phone call rules obsolete. The move from one phone per family to cell phones for every person makes it easier, not harder, for coaches to contact prospects. Prior to ubiquitous cell phones for teenagers, prospects couldn’t be contacted easily at school and could simply leave the house to avoid the ringing phone. Until products like Google Voice allow prospects to control who can even make the phone ring, it’s still a burden for them to filter constant phone calls.

But there are other, better reasons for getting rid of the limit on the frequency of phone calls. Across all sports, the vast majority of prospects commit prior to their senior year. Phone call rules often prevent coaches from advising committed prospects. And while coaches are limited to call a prospects once or twice a week, all the parties the NCAA is seeking to drive out of the recruiting process have no such limit.

More fundamentally, we need a new thinking about limits. Limits may be increasing the amount of some activities just as much as they are preventing that increase. If you’re only allowed to call a prospect once a week, there’s a compulsion to use that one phone call. There’s also a drive to figure out how to stretch that one phone call into two voice mails and a phone call. And there’s the temptation that if you make two phone calls, you’ve had twice as much contact as someone who follows the rules.

College athletics is often about keeping up with the Joneses. In any area where the NCAA has set a limit, be it phone calls, coaching staff size, or evaluations, the Joneses can only reach a set maximum. Perhaps having no limits in some areas will cause coaches and athletic departments to think more about what they need rather than what someone else has.

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.

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