Results from almost all precincts are in, and it looks like there’s a strong consensus that Tuesday’s NCAA Enforcement Experience succeeded in creating a greater understanding of the issues surrounding a typical Division I infractions case.

The purpose never was to “convert” media members into somehow advocating for the NCAA system. Rather, it was to provide a look behind the curtain so they could better understand how a serious case might play out from beginning to end. Along the way, the media members on hand were given unprecedented access to enforcement staff and Committee on Infractions staff members.

Not surprisingly, this resulted in a lot of commentary. It’s probably dangerous to compress thoughts from 24 different writers into one distillation, but what the heck: The overall takeaway was that the enforcement process is generally well-executed by capable, properly motivated people; the concern is with the overall structure and process. Writers also voiced a plea for more consistency with penalties.

“Understanding something and agreeing with it are two different things,” wrote Stewart Mandell of Sports Illustrated. “Nothing I saw Tuesday changed my opinion that the entire enforcement process could use a drastic overhaul; that it’s saddled by inconsistencies and inefficiency; and that it’s too unnecessarily complicated for fans to ever truly understand.”

Fair enough. I’ll go a step further and say Mandell shouldn’t limit the criticism to enforcement. Usually the complexities come from efforts to ensure fairness. Sometimes they come from necessary political compromises. Once in a while, a bad idea simply gets on the books and stays there. But there’s not much point in fretting about whether excessive complexity exists. The important question is how change can occur.

Rules enforcement is something that the NCAA must get right. The challenge has always been big, but modern times have made it harder than ever. Technology has changed the landscape, and so has all the money surrounding sports of all kinds. At its core, however, the purpose of the enforcement program has never changed: It’s all about fairness. If the rules are not equitably enforced, the competition is not fair.

Anyway, kudos to the NCAA enforcement staff and to the Division I Committee on Infractions for their excellent effort – and for providing a forum about how rules enforcement can be improved.

*     *     *

Here’s an overview of what several writers put together from Tuesday’s Enforcement Experience:

Enforcement Experience offers rare inside look at NCAA infractions (Stewart Mandell, Sports Illustrated)

Biggest lessons learned at NCAA’s Enforcement Experience (Seth Davis, Sports Illustrated)

‘Enforcement Experience’ a revealing peek at NCAA’s heavy burden (George Schroeder, Eugene Register-Guard)

Heat on new NCAA president Emmert to get tough (Dan Wetzel, Yahoo Sports)

NCAA offers inside look at enforcement, investigation process (Steve Yanda, Washington Post)

Mark Emmert isn’t backing down (Eamonn Brennan, ESPN)

Nothing simple about catching cheaters (Pat Forde, ESPN)

Taking a peek behind the rules curtain (Kyle Veazey, Jackson Clarion Ledger)

NCAA attempts to properly handle third-party recruitment (Jon Solomon, Birmingham News)

NCAA opens up on enforcement (David Moltz, Inside Higher Ed)

NCAA looks to debunk myths about enforcement investigations (Libby Sander, Chronicle of Higher Education)

NCAA needs more schooling on sports, not media (Mike DeCourcy, Sporting News)

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A new blog called BusinessofCollegeSports.com does a good job of filling a void in the world of college sports financial analysis.

So much college athletics financial analysis these days is agenda-based, with writers too often seeking to marginalize or even demonize those who have different perspectives.

However, Kristi Dosh, who bills herself as the SportsBizMiss, approaches her subject matter in an open, analytical and reasonable manner. Take today’s missive on the Bowl Championship Series, for example:

“Is the BCS fair?” she asks. “I think there’s an argument to be made on both sides, but honestly I don’t really care. I enjoy reading and listening to debate on both sides of the BCS argument, but I mentally shut down when I hear the words ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’. Didn’t your mother tell you life isn’t fair?”

From there, she makes a nifty parallel between her own nonpaid role as a sports blogger for Forbes.com and the circumstances surrounding BCS non-AQ schools.

Dosh covers the rest of the college sports waterfront, writing about everything from student activity fees to how much nonrevenue sports actually cost. As a practicing attorney, Dosh knows her way around resources and is skilled at accumulating and displaying information that generally informs rather than inflames. All the while, she keeps the reading experience eclectic and enjoyable.

Dosh has been writing on sports issues for Forbes.com for a while now, but the BusinessofCollegeSports.com blog has been around only a month. I recently exchanged emails with her about why she chose to blog exclusively about college sports, and here’s what she said:

“As a sports fan, I’m most passionate about baseball. Accordingly, I assumed that was the sport I wrote about most frequently as a contributor to SportsMoney on Forbes.com. Imagine my surprise when I tallied up how many posts I’d written about each sport over the past year and found college sports outnumbered baseball 3:1! It was then the idea for BusinessofCollegeSports.com was born.

“I started BusinessofCollegeSports.com just one short month ago. Between my passion for analyzing the business of college sports and the incredible number of hits, tweets and emails my college pieces had been receiving on SportsMoney, I knew there was a market for this kind of coverage and no one out there providing it. There are several sports business analysts who do a great job covering college sports when there is something newsworthy, but I couldn’t find anyone whose sole focus was the business of college sports.

“The response to the website from fans and other members of the sports media has confirmed my belief that there was a high level of interest in these topics, and that I was embarking on territory untouched by others.

“I post something new on BusinessofCollegeSports.com every weekday, and I have zero concern that I will ever run out of material. I wake up every morning excited to write about something in the world of college sports.

“For me, the business of college sports is more fascinating than any other area of the sports world because college athletics are run like a business, but the athletes are not employees and hold no bargaining power. This creates a number of circumstances unique in athletic competition. Add in the fact that college sports exist within the academic arena and a whole new set of issues and debates appear. I can’t imagine finding more material anywhere else in the world of sports!”

I doubt if the NCAA and Dosh will be foursquare on every issue, but that’s OK. The objective should be better understanding through reasonable debate. As far as I’m concerned, BusinessofCollegeSports.com contributes to that end.

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An interesting article Wednesday in Inside Higher Ed detailed the increasing frustration that athletics administrators are feeling in their efforts to comply with Title IX.

David Moltz’s story, “Pick Your Poison,” detailed the difficulties that athletics administrators say they face in trying to meet any of the three prongs of the Office for Civil Rights’ athletics compliance test.

The difficulties with the first two prongs are clear-cut:

• It’s becoming harder for programs sponsoring football to demonstrate that female athletics participation is proportional since the percentage of overall female undergraduate students continues to rise.
• Demonstrating continuing expansion of opportunities for women is becoming more difficult since Title IX has now been law for 40 years.

So, most of the discussion at an NCAA Gender-Equity Forum centered on compliance with the third prong, which is accommodating the interests and abilities of the under-represented gender. Moltz described the discussion as follows:

“Attendees peppered (OCR Title IX team leader Jacqueline) Michaels with questions specific to their institutions − some asking if their new student survey had a high enough response rate to demonstrate a lack of interest in new women’s sports, others asking if they should be forced to add a women’s team first for which they had no existing resources simply because it had more interest than one that would be easier and more fiscally responsible to start. One athletics official, a man who did not identify himself to the panelists, bluntly asked if there were ‘really still’ three viable tests anymore, because he said he could not name an institution that had successfully proven that it had met the third test — which he criticized as ‘illusory.’

“Michaels and (attorney Janet) Judge responded by noting that they have seen a number of institutions pass the third test since last year’s change made it more complicated to do so (the Obama administration overturned a Bush-era policy that counted failure to respond to a survey about sports offerings as a demonstration of no interest). Pressured for a specific number, Michaels could not offer one, noting that she still believes a solid majority of new institutions being investigated will show Title IX compliance by passing this third test.

“While they asked questions of Michaels, attendees also expressed hesitance to seek further guidance from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights when confused about whether their institutions are successfully passing a test to comply with Title IX. One athletics official, a woman who did not identify herself to the panelists, asked Michaels if asking the federal agency for help with Title IX issues would ‘open the door for a proactive investigation’ of her institution. Though Michaels could not entirely ease the minds of attendees, she noted that it was ‘unlikely’ that such a request for help would result in a government investigation of an institution.

“ ‘If you want to contact our office anonymously, you can do that if that makes you more comfortable,” Michaels said. ‘It’s not a ‘gotcha’ situation.’

“After the session, Michaels said she was ‘surprised’ to hear that many institution officials are nervous about asking for guidance from the Office for Civil Rights. The office, she said, is ‘trying to do more outreach’ to overcome such anxieties. Judge noted that she was ‘bothered,’ but not entirely surprised, by the anxiety of some of the college officials in attendance. Still, she commended Michaels’s efforts to elucidate what many find a confusing process.”

Last week, Pittsburg State officials shared their experiences with a random Title IX audit with a group of Division II presidents and commissioners. In no way did the Pittsburg State contingent challenge the motives, abilities or professionalism of the review team. However, they did observe that the review was very much by the book. The government personnel involved were not especially familiar with athletics structure, policy or purpose. Their primary counsel of Pitt State administrators to anybody involved with a Title IX review was this: Be patient.

This all does have some Catch-22 elements to it. The law is the law, but it can lead some programs into corners: Cut their revenue programs, or cut men’s nonrevenue programs in order to make the numbers work. Maybe counsel from the government would help, but athletics administrators appear apprehensive about that approach for fear of causing more problems.

None of that portends a resolution for this four-decade-old problem. Maybe everybody involved would be better served by focusing on reasonable compromises rather than victory.

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Gerald Gurney’s appeal for higher minimum requirements for Division I student-athletes is seductive, but is it right?

Gurney, senior associate athletic director for academics and student life and an assistant professor of adult and higher education at the University of Oklahoma, has made it his personal cause to call attention to what he believes to be insufficient Division I initial-eligibility standards. After making the case in the March 10 edition of Inside Higher Ed, he was back with a warmed-over version of the same thing this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Gurney noted that the NCAA has strengthened and relaxed academic standards for the last 50 years. That much is true. The effort to find the fairest and most effective approach has been a process. The answers weren’t clear in the 1960s and 1970s as rules were liberalized, and they weren’t always clear in the 1980s and 1990s as rules were made more conservative.

The last wholesale change was in 1992 when Division I approved Prop 16, which substantially strengthened the provisions of 1983’s Prop 48. The major change since then has been to strengthen the requirement by adding more core courses. Those interested in more information on this subject may want to read my story from the winter 2008 issue of NCAA Champion magazine.

Despite the long-term trend of stronger requirements, Gurney is almost singularly focused on the elimination of the standardized-test cut score. That change was made after the NCAA was sued for the disparate effect that Prop 16 standards had on minorities and after NCAA researchers, experts from member institutions, representatives from the testing companies and paid consultants concluded that the test-score cut was not scientifically defensible.

Only one year of data on the overall (that is, graduation) success of those admitted after the elimination of the cut score  are available, so it is premature to pronounce their success or failure. Still, the outcomes for the 2003 cohort in the Graduation Success Rate are promising when considered in the light of the twin goals of academic reform − which were to maximize graduation rates while minimizing adverse impacts on low-income and minority student-athletes. Specifically, looking at the 2003 GSR cohort, there were 400 more African-American student-athletes and 300 more African-American graduates than were in the 2002 cohort (or any previous cohort since the advent of Prop 16). The single-year GSRs for African-American student-athletes in the high-profile sports increased significantly from 2002 to 2003 – by three points in men’s basketball and five points in football. 

Ultimately, Gurney’s pitch grossly misrepresents the purpose of the NCAA requirements in this area. They are nothing more than a nationally agreed-to minimum standard at which prospects are considered to be capable of doing college-level work. They must fit every Division I member – all the way from Harvard to the most economically disadvantaged, open-admission institution.

Despite the absence of any evidence that the post-cut-score cohort has adversely affected graduation rates (and some evidence to the contrary) and despite considerable evidence that high school grade-point averages are a far more reliable predictor of college success, Gurney continues to pound away. “Those students possess inadequate skills to manage college academics, creating a greater need for academic-support services at institutions already struggling with strained budgets, staffs, and faculties,” he wrote in the Chronicle.

Emphasizing the financial angle, he adds: “My own university spends more than $2 million annually for academic services for athletes, employing learning specialists, reading specialists, and tutors to ensure their success in the classroom.”

There is, of course, an answer to this: Institutions can be as selective as they like in their admissions. Just because the minimum standards permit a kid with a 450 SAT and a 4.0 GPA to be eligible doesn’t mean that a school has to take him. In fact, many places don’t.

Division I has chosen to keep opportunity open for as many young people as possible, but it has firmed up accountability through the Academic Performance Program. The new reality is that if institutions want to take chances, they need to follow through.

That may involve a complex evaluation of costs (time and money) and risks.  They can manage those matters as they see fit, but institutional personnel should not blame the NCAA when their schools choose to get aggressive.

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So many commentators recently have used their corporate-powered megaphones to frame the case for pay-for-play that readers might wonder if another perspective existed. At last, however, some pushback has appeared.

The entire Division I Men’s Basketball Championship seemed to become a giant hook from which writers could hang their the-system-is-corrupt, why-don’t-you-just-pay-the-players observations. The latest came from ESPN.com’s Jemele Hill, a commentator who has demonstrated a flair for hyperbole over the years. On Tuesday, she called for student-athletes to boycott competition at some point.

“If college athletes want to see wholesale changes, someone needs to step up and be Norma Rae,” wrote Hill. “…Instead of allowing coaches and middlemen to use them for short-term gains, college athletes should unite to break the system that is oppressing them.”

Is the NCAA the textile mill owner to Norma Rae’s student-athlete?

I say no, but you would probably expect that coming from an NCAA employee.

Let’s go to some other sources.

First, there’s The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait, who provided a strong counter in “The Incoherent Case For Paying Student-Athletes.” Chait was especially effective in challenging the concept of “mandatory amateurism.”

“First of all, there’s no ‘mandatory amateurism,’ ” wrote Chait. “There’s nothing stopping anybody from starting a football or basketball minor league that attracts talented 18 year olds, paying its players, and then having some of those players go on to make greater sums in the NFL or the NBA. Why doesn’t such a league exist? Because there’s no demand for it.”

Responding to fellow writer Matthew Yglesias, Chait continued:

“The truth is that most college athletics programs lose money and are subsidized by the university. A handful of very successful programs, mostly football and men’s basketball, do make money, but they use that money to fund money-losing athletics programs, and therefore avoid (or minimize) having to get subsidies from the rest of the university.

“I’ve never been clear on exactly what Yglesias is proposing. Is he saying that only athletes in revenue-generating sports should be paid? Or is he saying that all college athletes should be paid? If it’s the latter − and Yglesias focuses his argument entirely on the merits of paying student-athletes at revenue-generating sports − I don’t know what his reason is. The women’s cross country team at Connecticut works just as hard as the men’s basketball team. The difference between the two are: (1) The men’s basketball team gets to play on television and be famous; (2) the proceeds from the television contract subsidize sports like women’s cross country, and (3) the men’s basketball players have a higher chance to become professional athletes.”

On Monday, The Washington Times included a column from Deron Snyder with the following observations:

“The NCAA administers 88 championships in 23 sports, but let’s be honest. All this talk is really about football and men’s basketball, the ‘revenue’ sports that foot the athletic department’s bills at most schools. (But be careful if you’re the one who tells UConn’s women’s basketball players that they won’t get a check while the football players will.)

“Fine, you say? Just men’s hoops and football, because between the tournament and the BCS bowls, there should be plenty of loot left for the athletes?

“OK. But even if you elect to forsake non-revenue sports (what, other athletes don’t work as hard or need money as much as point guards and tailbacks?) every school isn’t a Texas or Ohio State, with athletic departments that produce nine-figure incomes easier than media guides. Do you really pay the basketball and football players at Texas, but not Texas Southern? Don’t the players at Ohio State and Ohio University have more similarities than differences?

“If you insist on proceeding, more problems persist. Kemba Walker and the last man on UConn’s bench commit equal time and effort during the week. Auburn’s third-string tackle is part of the team as much as Cam Newton. Would you really pay some teammates and not others, or pay stars and reserves an equal wage? That’s goes against the American way. And would refunds be in order if a program goes into the red?”

The public got into the act at the Indianapolis Star. Reader Roger Howard took on the paper’s editorial board, which had recently editorialized for a light version of pay for play. Wrote Howard: “Why pay student-athletes who do something they love and not student government leaders who also selflessly devote time and energy in helping create and maintain meaningful campus life experiences?”

You get the idea. Commentators who want to professionalize college sports have routinely oversimplified the issue, often linking the enterprise with “sweatshops,” “indentured servitude” and even “slavery.”

The system definitely has its excesses and some adjustments are needed. But these overheated comparisons simply aren’t credible. It’s good to see thoughtful challenges starting to emerge.

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