The NCAA should not be immune to criticism. Any organization this big and complicated is going to need frequent corrective action. But while the NCAA is not always right, neither is it always wrong, which brings us to Joe Nocera’s month-long, error-laden and questionably motivated mugging in The New York Times. 

Nocera is a Times business columnist who lately has become obsessed with all things NCAA. The most recent beatdown began with a 5,000-word treatise in The New York Times Magazine in December detailing a pay-for-play plan. At the same time, Nocera wrote a misguided column about the motivations behind Division I’s consideration of an override to the proposed $2,000 miscellaneous expense allowance.

Those pieces contained factual errors, which the NCAA immediately noted to Nocera and his editors. The boldness of asking for a correction apparently angered Nocera, who responded to NCAA staff member Stacey Osburn by saying: “I’ll correct it, but you won’t like it.”

He followed up with a column saying he was mistaken; the NCAA is even worse than he thought. In so doing, he altered the traditional observation that you shouldn’t fight with those who buy ink by the barrel; apparently, you shouldn’t even respond to them.

The NCAA also agitated Nocera by noting his relationship with the communications director for one of the law firms involved in the pending “likeness” litigation against the NCAA. That person is Nocera’s fiancée, but a reader would know that only by wading 4,000 words into Nocera’s Dec. 30 article on pay-for-play.

The conflict-of-interest question was meaty enough that the Poynter Institute (journalism watchdogs) evaluated  whether a problem existed. Nocera and the Times likely took comfort in the Institute’s conclusion that one did not, but a reasonable person could see it otherwise. Put another way, if a Times columnist were engaged to Barack Obama’s press secretary, would that relationship be an issue if she trashed Mitt Romney nonstop for a month?

So, where does Nocera’s crusade stand now?

For starters, Nocera has become a cyber chatterbox, blogging relentlessly on the NCAA. One blog provided parsed words and phrases on the NCAA’s Ryan Boatright eligibility announcement to position the NCAA as the most malevolent force imaginable. He also used the blog to create a contest for readers to submit the NCAA’s worst rule. In making his point, he claimed the NCAA penalized a track student-athlete for taking her baby to a meet on the road. In fact, the issue related to the school covering expenses for her boyfriend, who is the child’s father. He subsequently assailed the NCAA’s Osburn for somehow violating privacy laws by attempting to correct the record, even though she did not name any students in her response.

Yesterday, Nocera took on CBS’ Seth Davis, calling him NCAA President Mark Emmert’s “favorite lapdog reporter,” although Nocera struck through “lapdog,” whatever that means.

At what point does somebody with the power to make it stop say this has gotten out of control? The NCAA is not perfect, but there’s plenty of room between being perfect and being the goon squad that Nocera projects.

The NCAA is not alone in dealing with Nocera’s complexities. He experienced a previous conflict-of-interest episode, also involving the fiancée, that was problematic enough for a rebuke. Last August, he was forced to apologize to Tea Party members for calling them terrorists.

Again, remember that we’re talking about the New York Times, not Deadspin. These days, sadly, it’s hard to tell the difference.

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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.

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A new round of Division I conference realignment conjecture has moved everybody to Defcon 2, and the allegations against the Miami (Florida) football program are troubling, to say the least.

The commentary has been white hot, with almost every principal getting lit up in one place or another. The unfortunate proximity to last week’s presidential retreat, with all of its promise, has been noted.

So it was good, in the midst of all this, to find a calm, reasonable assessment of the current state of affairs.

Duke professor Charles Clotfelter, please take a bow.

“Rule-breaking in college sports is often viewed strictly in moral terms, as a reflection of defective character,” Clotfelter wrote in Tuesday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But it would be a mistake to ignore the powerful influence of the universities themselves and the incentives they create by attaching such importance to athletic success.

“Cheating won’t be solved just by tighter rules and better enforcement. A century of big-time college sports tells us that much.

“Real change won’t happen until university trustees, not just presidents, show they value the academic mission more than winning games.”

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Media reaction to last week’s Division I Presidential Retreat was generally favorable, especially if you grade on a curve to allow for the sportswriter Grinch factor.

Dennis Dodds of CBSSports.com was positively effusive. During the proceedings, he Tweeted the following:

dennisdoddcbs Dennis Dodd

The NCAA presidents have moved more in the last two days, then they have in the last 60 years. Seriously.

dennisdoddcbs Dennis Dodd

We’ll have to see what actually gets through the meat grinder, but this is huge.

dennisdoddcbs Dennis Dodd

Wonder what Walter Byers is thinking right now?

dennisdoddcbs Dennis Dodd

…This is beyond politics. NCAA suits have never mentioned some of these words before — ever.

dennisdoddcbs Dennis Dodd

Kudos to NCAA CEOs. If they put in half the stuff they just talked about it will be major.

(I think I can help with the Byers question. The NCAA’s original executive director is living in Kansas on the family ranch and, from what I hear, generally regards college sports as a closed chapter in his life. He still stays in touch with a tight group of former associates, but I doubt if he was tracking much on last week’s events.)

As you might imagine, the NCAA staff monitors what’s written about college sports, and it appears that most of the coverage of the retreat was either neutral or positive. In general, commentators believed the presidents were charting the course for a fresh approach and that they demonstrated a will to succeed.

One notable outlier was Pete Thamel of the New York Times. He was determined to write that (a) commissioners are running the show in Division I sports and (b) that the retreat was cheapened because Big Ten and Southeastern Conference Commissioners Jim Delany and Mike Slive didn’t attend. The fact that those conferences were represented at the retreat by 10 presidents did nothing to sway Thamel.

Here was the exchange between Thamel and Emmert at Thursday’s post-Board of Directors news conference:

Thamel: “There’s a perception out there, Mark, fair or not, that Jim Delany and Mike Slive were able to strong-arm their guys through and get eligible, and in the case of Ohio State it really backfired and provided a black eye for both the NCAA, I think, and Ohio State. Can you address that perception (a) Mark and (b) talk about the power of conference commissioners right now in college sports with them being billionaire negotiators and fireman compliance guys and is there a concern that those gentlemen, er, conference commissioners in particular have become too powerful?”

Emmert: “I think, Pete, you’ve seen in the past week or two conference commissioners being active partners in trying to address some of the issues we’re describing right now. My experience with all those individuals and their presidents is they’re very like-minded about addressing the serious integrity issues in intercollegiate athletics. The notion that they are exercising undue influence in our decision-making in the NCAA office is just plain wrong. People who want to believe that are going to believe it, but I know the facts, and that’s just contrary to the realities of the day.”

Thamel: “(Delany and Slive) are considered, Mark, as two of the most powerful guys in college sports. Why weren’t they at these meetings the last two days?”

Emmert: “This was a presidential meeting. This was a meeting about the people who are actually in charge of the NCAA. Conference commissioners work for presidents, not the other way around.”

Thamel: (The recording is garbled, but the question related to how Big 12 Conference Commissioner Dan Beebe and other non-presidents attended the retreat.)

Emmert: “Yeah, well, we had representation from each of the major divisions within Division I. So we had commissioners and ADs from the automatic-qualifier BCS conferences, the six conferences there, we had representation from the non-automatic qualifier BCS’s – those five conferences – one from the FCS’s and from the non-football conferences. So, we asked those individuals to identify a commissioner or an AD that they wanted to have in the room, so for among the BCS automatic qualifiers that was Dan Beebe of the Big 12.”

Here’s what came out of that exchange in Thamel’s story in Friday’s New York Times:

“Two key people who did not attend the meetings were Mike Slive, the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, and his counterpart in the Big Ten, Jim Delany. Few would dispute that they are the most powerful men in college sports. Although the presidents of Hope College and Molloy College [they attended, representing Divisions II and III] might have provided keen insight into the future of college athletics, they are not exactly the rainmakers.

“That is because conference commissioners have become ever more powerful in the past decade. Their duties include being chief negotiators of billion dollar television contracts, administrators of coach and player punishment, and compliance firemen.”

“Slive and Delany are as much a part of the problem as they are a part of the solution. Since Mark A. Emmert became president of the NCAA last year, he has been pummeled in a blur of controversies, highlighted by the cases of two quarterbacks: Cam Newton, whose father shopped him to Mississippi State before Newton enrolled at Auburn, and Terrelle Pryor, who sold memorabilia while at Ohio State.

“Emmert basically inherited these problems, but he has also perpetuated them. The Auburn and Ohio State situations were made worse because of the actions of Slive and Delany, and the feeble reactions of the NCAA.”

I’m a big fan of the New York Times, but what kind of Alice in Wonderland world is it when a reporter essentially quotes his own question rather than the response he was provided? A highly truncated version of Emmert’s response finally showed up several paragraphs later, after Thamel got everything off his chest.

Nobody’s asking anybody to pump sunshine about the many problems that currently face college sports, but is it too much to ask for reporters to keep an open mind?

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Some thoughts on the Division I Presidential Retreat, which begins today in Indianapolis:

• Divisions I and II have developed excellent quantitative measures of graduation outcomes, but the qualitative information is harder to come by. The principle of institutional autonomy dictates that each member school is responsible for policing its own curriculum, but it’s hard to get around commonly held attitudes that certain athletes are routed to easy majors and accommodating professors. If the criticism is true, then the problem needs to be addressed; if it’s not true, then there’s a collective responsibility to demonstrate that the educational experience of student-athletes reasonably mirrors that of other students (emphasis on “reasonably”).
• I understand the frustration of the largest programs and how they view efforts to legislate a “level playing field.” They do have a multitude of advantages, including resources, and if they can create a better experience for their student-athletes, more power to them. That said, the other side of the blade is a winnowing effect on the number of programs that can keep up. It’s not necessarily a problem now, but what will things look like 10 or 20 years from now – especially if the economy continues to falter? There’s a balance to be found here.
• A simpler rules book is among the most promising objectives of this meeting, but meaningful change in this area will require collective acceptance that every rule cannot be sharpened or interpreted to perfection. Considering the competitive, financial and legal complexities of the real world, that’s a big ask. Still, few improvements would serve the Association as well as streamlined rules that could be better explained and defended.

One additional observation: There is a sad juxtaposition occurring with this meeting. Former Indiana University President John Ryan, the original chair of the NCAA President Commission, died Saturday. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Friday on what would have been his 82nd birthday.

Ryan was a great leader, both for the NCAA and IU. The NCAA was making presidential leadership out of whole cloth when Ryan assumed his Presidents Commission role in 1984. He took on the task with energy, knowledge and collegiality − and ultimately left a big mark on the Association.

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Way back when, we were all taught that two negatives make a positive. Let’s test the theory with Frank Deford and Jay Bilas.

In Tuesday’s weekly commentary on National Public Radio, Deford nestled in on familiar ground by zinging the NCAA, this time for the approaching Division I Presidential Retreat.

“Next week, at some place in Indianapolis where time has been instructed to stand still, Mark Emmert, president of the NCAA, will convene what is being called, without irony, a ‘retreat,’ ” said Deford.

Deford is all about erudition, so we had better pause for a trip to the dictionary:

retreat n  4. A group withdrawal for prayer, meditation or study.

Yep, that seems correct. Now, on to the substance of his complaint.

“The NCAA claims that amateurism equates to purity,” he said. “That is a canard; there is simply no proof of that. Otherwise we would have amateur musicians, painters and writers, and art would flourish pristine as never before.”

Just where does the NCAA equate amateurism with purity? We hear much about the oversized Division I Manual, but a search of its 432 pages does not reveal a single use of the word “purity.”

I’m not aware of anybody who attaches a special haughtiness to the collegiate model of athletics. Most of us who work in the field daily believe it’s a good and workable approach, even if adjustments are required from time to time. But as for a belief that amateurism equals purity, I’m throwing the straw-man flag on Frank Deford.

The second negative is Jay Bilas. This morning, he was all a-Twitter about the Deford commentary. “I’m sure heads in the NCAA office are exploding like in the movie ‘Scanners’ over this one,” Tweeted Bilas.

I regret if this blog somehow fuels that notion. I can reveal, however, in two meeting-packed days at the NCAA national office, the name “Frank Deford” has not been mentioned once in my presence.

I’ve paired Bilas and Deford in this space together before, but the linkage bears repeating. They are both smart guys, but they underachieve on their commentary about college sports because they are so predictable.

As an example, here’s a Bilas Tweet from over the weekend: “NCAA thin skin and circular logic: http://t.co/FkksZAZ Just because rule is passed by member schools doesn’t make it right or reasonable.”

Well, sure. But who said that Jay Bilas is uniquely positioned to declare what’s right or reasonable?

So, do these two negatives, Deford and Bilas, somehow multiply to become a positive? It doesn’t seem so. Maybe the answer is elsewhere in mathematics: Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.

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The term “level playing field” has been bandied about lately. Curiously, the expression itself is rather unlevel.

Southern Mississippi football coach Larry Fedora trotted out the words in Sunday’s issue of the Orlando Sentinel. Discussing the prospect of full-cost-of-attendance financial aid packages for Division I, he said: “It just has to be a level, fair playing field.”

Pac-12 Conference Commissioner Larry Scott also employed the concept during Pac-12 media days last week. Addressing how he would feel if NCAA rules changes didn’t reflect the differences between the six Division I power conferences and everybody else, he said: “I think that would represent a tremendous failure of the NCAA if it comes to that. I’d like to think that we are at a crossroads, and at this (Aug. 9-10 presidential) retreat they’’ll recognize one size doesn’t fit all anymore. There really is no such thing as competitive equity or even playing field. Certain schools obviously have more money than others and have better facilities and can pay more for coaches. Yet a lot of rules are based on one size fits all. That’s just something the NCAA leadership is going to have to get over. If that’s the standard by which any policy can get made, then I think it’s destined to be an ineffective organization long term.”

You get the idea. From one perspective, “level playing field” is a time-honored, admirable goal. From another, it’s a harmful illusion.

Even our old friend Ramogi Huma of the National College Players Association recently evoked the phrase: “I don’t think cost of attendance will pass, not at this rate,” he said. “Where will the votes come from? If it’s going to be a proposal to just pay if you can pay, then of course the smaller schools are going to be hesitant because of competitive advantages. But the smaller schools aren’t being honest as well because there isn’t a level playing field right now anyway.”

Clearly, the term depends on what you’re talking about. There are contexts − rules governing actual competition, for instance – where complete equality is not only desirable but essential. But that’s not what we’re discussing here. We’re talking about financial commitment, and though it pains me to write the words, I agree with Huma (ouch!) that the bigs and the littles of Division I do not have much in common.

This is hardly something new, though. The NCAA restructured its form of governance 14 years ago, largely in response to concerns about excessive legislative equity. Division I no longer casts original votes as a group, and various governing bodies are weighted to reflect the division’s power structure. The 11 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences have permanent representation on the 18-member Division I Board of Directors, and six of those are the so-called “equity conferences.”

So I disagree with Huma’s assessment of how smaller conferences or schools are likely, perhaps even eager, to somehow obstruct big changes that the power conferences want. It’s not true practically or politically. That ship sailed years ago.

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Is Jay Paterno the sole voice of reason still talking?

Paterno, a Penn State assistant football coach and the son of coaching icon Joe Paterno, burst on to the commentary scene a month ago with an essay that linked college athletics with higher education. It was actually filled with mainstream, traditional observations about college sports, but the overall media discussion about amateurism has gotten so aggressive that Paterno’s positions now may be regarded as somewhat contrarian.

More recently, he participated in a panel discussion on The Daily about compensating student-athletes. The flavor du jour among pundits is that student-athletes should be compensated, but not with institutional funds. So, this question was put to the group:

The Daily: “What if we just allowed a complete free market? What if T. Boone Pickens, who has given hundreds of millions of dollars to his alma mater, Oklahoma State (hence Boone Pickens Stadium), could spread some of that cash around to players?”

Jay Paterno: “That’s when you get into a very dangerous situation. Who is really calling the shots in terms of your program now? The head coach may want these five guys, but T. Boone Pickens walks in and says, ‘I don’t give a damn. I’m going to buy this quarterback, and he’s a five-star on Rivals.’ Even though the head coach evaluated him and … what you get yourself is a team owner. And the team owner isn’t going to really give a damn if you graduate your kids. He’s going to want to be sitting in University of Phoenix Stadium when they’re playing for the national championship. He’s not going to care if you graduate 30 percent of your guys or 80 percent of your guys.”

Sounds right to me.

The notion of outside compensation is seductive, but it is surely more complicated than many sportswriters seem to believe. Writing Tuesday in SI.com, Michael Rosenberg offered this: “(The) NCAA Manual devotes 16 pages to amateurism. We can cut it down to one, with one principle: Athletes may not be paid directly with university funds. That’s it. One rule. There is your ‘amateurism.’ This way, universities can spend their booster donations, TV money and sponsorship dollars subsidizing facilities, staff, operating costs and athletic scholarships. College athletics will continue to thrive across dozens of sports. But those who can cash in on their fame and success will be able to do it. If a wealthy South Carolina alum wants to give $50,000 a year to every Gamecock, he can do it.”

What if that alum is a known gambler? What if he owns the local strip club and wants the kid to promote wet T-shirt night? What if a kid strikes a deal with adidas at a Nike school? How about a local gym where steroids are known to be readily accessible? Would that be an acceptable endorsement?

The Bylaw Blog’s John Infante, participating in the same panel discussion with Paterno, seemed to recognize the pitfalls of such an approach, even if he did endorse a pay-for-play model: “I would allow college athletes to earn outside income related to athletics, but with a lot of restrictions. I would still prohibit loans or payments from boosters or agents, so it would have to be legitimate commercial endorsements.”

He even added the possibility of correlating pay to $1,000 times a student-athlete’s grade-point average. My take: Paying your kid for good grades is a bad idea; the same goes for student-athletes.

Let’s go back to Jay Paterno, my lone voice of reason in a summer full of hubbub: “Ultimately what we have to keep in focus is, whether we want to or not, and whether it sounds idealistic or not, the whole idea of college football is that we are part of the university. Where you lose the argument about these guys getting used or not being paid is that you don’t take into account the value of the education. A kid like (Stanford’s) Andrew Luck, he’s getting a $70,000 per year education and the NCAA has limited his football time to 600 hours a year. You do the math, that’s over $100 an hour. Pretty good deal.”

So it is.

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 A recent blog post about testing for sickle-cell trait arrived at a good conclusion, although it may have left a misimpression about how Divisions II and III have addressed the issue to date.

Writing on The Business of College Sports blog (one of the most informative and insightful blogs around), Alicia Jessop of RulingSports.com encouraged Divisions II and III members to approve mandatory testing for sickle-cell trait at the NCAA Convention in January.

Clearly, there’s no problem with that conclusion. My only concern is that the piece was light on background about how the topic has evolved in Divisions II and III − and may have left casual readers with the mistaken belief that testing for sickle-cell trait had not been considered at those levels until now, or that Divisions II and III are necessarily resistant to such legislation.

In fact, Division II developed proposed legislation last year that is similar to the proposal that will be considered in January. The proposal crafted in 2010 would have required Division II institutions to test for sickle-cell trait without any provision for student-athletes to decline the test. Division II, however, held up on a vote to give the overall Association a chance to address the issue more holistically.

In the intervening time, Division I added a provision to its own legislation that requires student-athletes to sign a waiver releasing the institution from liability if they decline to be tested.

As for Division III, the dynamics were a bit different. Members there wanted to approach the topic from a timely, data-driven perspective. With that in mind, those members asked the NCAA’s Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports to gather information on several points:

•  Cost and availability of the test
• The incidence of sickle-cell related illness in Division III
• Whether the significant differences in preseason conditioning standards in Division III obviate the need for mandatory Division III testing

The competitive-safeguards committee surveyed the overall membership to determine the state of affairs regarding testing, counseling, prevalence of the trait and safety practices, among other things.

The survey results and subsequent competitive-safeguards committee recommendation (that testing for sickle-cell trait should be consistent across divisions) bring us back to Divisions II and III Management Council discussions that will occur today and tomorrow.

One other observation: In 2007, all three divisions adopted legislation requiring student-athletes who are beginning their initial season of eligibility to undergo a medical examination before participation in any practice, competition or out-of-season conditioning activities. 

By the way, the Orlando Sentinel carried an extensive package on sickle-cell trait in its Sunday and Monday issues:

Sickle-cell trait: The silent killer

Danger zone: College football culture, sickle cell trait are lethal combination

NCAA has no say in forcing schools to change workouts

All children in the U.S. are tested for sickle-cell trait, but few athletes know they have it

Marquis and Shana Daniels push for more sickle-cell trait education

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