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Multi-Year Scholarships and Oversigning Limits Go Hand-In-Hand

February 16, 2012 by

To say that oversigning is a major issue in college football is incorrect. Roster management is the issue, with oversigning being just one facet of the larger controversy. It would be absurdly easy to eliminate oversigning with no improvement in student-athlete welfare.

All sports have roster management challenges. The other headcount sports have to manage relatively small scholarship limits in gigantic, full scholarship chunks. Equivalency sports have the complexity of varying amounts of aid and a renewal process that includes increases and decreases as well as renewals and nonrenewals. Men’s sports have roster maximums, women’s sports may have roster minimums. And baseball combines all of them, with NCAA limits on counters, equivalencies, roster size, and minimum scholarship amounts, plus how MLB’s liberal draft policies create uncertainty once a player is a junior.

The challenges of roster management become a controversy in football for three reasons. First and most obvious is that football garners the most attention. Second, the physical nature of the game and the large roster size make depth as important as top talent for some teams, magnifying what happens to each and every scholarship player. And third, football’s initial counter rule means the roster of incoming players comes under the same pressures as the student-athletes already on the team, during a recruiting and signing process that is becoming more popular with fans.

In responding to Tennessee head football coach Derek Dooley’s criticism of the SEC’s (and next year NCAA’s) new limit of 25 signees, David Wunderlich proposed just that: eliminate the limit on initial counters and adopt a Big Ten-style oversigning rule based on the 85 overall counter limit. That would give coaches greater flexibility by removing one limit and basing any signing limit on the more fundamental of football’s two scholarship limits. The problem is that in the current environment, the Big Ten’s rule does not scale.

If you were to ask when an athletic scholarship naturally ends, there are two correct answers. One is that scholarships end when the period of award is over, which for a long time has been a maximum of one year. But student-athletes have the opportunity to appeal any time their scholarship is reduced, non-renewed, or cancelled until they exhaust their eligibility. If a football player redshirts, graduates in four years, then walks in to quit the team, he still must be offered the opportunity to appeal the cancellation of his scholarship.

Key to the Big Ten’s oversigning limit is evaluating why scholarships are ending and judging whether schools should be able to replace that student-athlete with a new recruit. The stability and homogeneousness of the Big Ten’s membership has made this workable. Whether it remains workable in a larger conference with more fluid and diverse membership is questionable. And the idea of the NCAA running such an office sounds like a trap for the Association.

Without this evaluation, the oversigning limit is meaningless because a coach can simply clear out enough scholarships for whatever size class he wants by nonrenewing more current players before signing day. Those student-athletes might even be given the opportunity to earn back their scholarship during spring practice, creating the same situation we are trying to eliminate, where 90 current and prospective student-athletes might be competing for 85 scholarships. The only win for student-athlete welfare is that the scholarships are not renewed prior to signing day, so student-athletes could seek out a new school.

But if Proposal 2011–97 survives the ongoing override vote and multi-year scholarships become an option, the need for an evaluation of why a scholarship ended by a conference would be reduced if not eliminated. If four- or five-year agreements are the standard, then they are close enough to the end of the right to an appeal that they become more useful. If different lengths of scholarships are offered, athletes offered only one or two years of aid are on notice that their scholarship offers no guarantees beyond those couple of years.

Proposal 2010–74, the Big Ten’s failed baseball oversigning proposal, offers a guide for a potential rule. That proposal would have prevented baseball teams from oversigning by more than one equivalency spread over two individuals. But because it was designed for the limited time between MLB’s draft and signing deadline, the limit was set as written offers to prospects plus executed agreements with current student-athletes for the following year. As a result, the rule would have had little effect during the fall and part of the spring signing periods.

But with multi-year scholarships, football teams would have some agreements already executed for following years. If four-year or longer scholarships are the norm, then most agreements will already cover the next year. The rule might look something like this:

15.5.1.10.1 Executed Financial Aid Awards and Written Offers Exceeding Maximum Allowable Awards – Football.  In football, for an ensuing academic year, the combination of executed athletically related financial aid awards and outstanding written offers of athletically related financial aid (per Bylaw 15.3.2.3) to prospective student-athletes and student-athletes shall not exceed the maximum number of permissible awards (see Bylaw 15.5.6.1).

I would add the following as an additional limitation:

15.5.1.10.1.1 Cancellation of Multi-Year Agreements. An institution must count agreements that have been cancelled against the limit in Bylaw 15.5.1.10.1 until the student-athlete has exhausted or waived all appeal opportunities under Bylaw 15.3.2.4.

To clear roster space, a coach would have to find a permissible reason to cancel a scholarship during the period of award and complete the appeal process all prior to signing day. Adding in an exception if a coach grants permission to contact every Division I institution (an “unconditional release”) or pairing this oversigning limit with a transfer rule that granted a great deal of freedom to a student-athlete whose scholarship was cancelled would complicate matters, but would also discourage more roster turnover.

As much as roster management generally and oversigning in particular are seen as a numbers game, the controversy lies in individual cases. The Big Ten’s current rule does a good job of addressing the individuals potentially impacted when a school oversigns. If multi-year scholarships survive, there will be less need for conferences to examine the decisions on individual scholarships. Whether a scholarship ends prior to a student graduating or exhausting his eligibility will be based more on the scholarship he accepted or meeting the more objective requirements of the agreement.

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 $2,000 Tail Wagging a $30 Million Dog

February 13, 2012 by

Size is always relative. For example, right now Apple could be called the only big business in the technology sector. That’s not to say that Microsoft and Google are small, but when one company has a larger market capitalization that both its main competitors and almost $100 billion in the bank, the rest of the industry has so little weight to throw around they must come up with new ways to compete.

There’s a constant refrain that athletics is and/or should be big business. Except the entirety of college sports is barely as big as the NFL’s TV contracts. More importantly, an athletic department is often attached to a university with a budget that might be so much larger that athletics could be lumped in under “Miscellaneous”. Texas’ $150 million in athletics revenue looks impressive until measured against the university’s $2.2 billion operating budget.

The newest idea to provide up to $2,000 in additional financial aid to student-athletes is another example of how athletic departments still do not have nearly the financial weight that a university does. The new proposal is based on financial need, with student-athletes only being eligible for the grant if their athletic scholarship, other grants and scholarships, and Expected Family Contribution is less than the cost of attendance.

Still missing from the new concept is part of the original proposal which was normally overlooked by the public: an almost total deregulation of non-athletics aid. In equivalency sports, once a student-athlete receives any athletics aid at all and becomes a counter, all financial aid he or she is receiving from the institution is also included when determining how much the student-athlete counts against team financial aid limits, subject to some exceptions.

This is not the first time this idea has come up. In 2009 and 2010, Division I discussed the idea as part of a comprehensive review of the financial aid rules. The cabinet decided not to move forward with the concept, instead going ahead with more limited deregulation of state and federal financial aid.

When you look at the financial muscle of a university, it is easy to see why schools are wary of removing all regulations in this area. Stanford recently completed a $6.2 billion fundraising campaign which created $250 million in new need-based financial aid. That’s three times Stanford’s total athletics budget. If Stanford’s student-athletes received a proportional amount of this new financial aid (they represent 12% of the student population), $30 million in additional financial aid would flow to athletes, almost twice what Stanford spends on athletic scholarships.

It is reasonable to ask why having more money in your athletic department is considered a fair advantage but having a bigger and better financial aid office across campus is a threat to competitive equity. The impact though is not debatable. Look at the success of the Ivy League, which neatly bypasses non-athletics aid limits by not giving athletic scholarships (something to consider in the debate over whether they should start). Ivy student-athletes are free to accept all the financial aid they can get their hands on, and as the Ancient Eight expands aid available to the middle class, results are translating to the fields, courts, rinks, and pools.

If major deregulation of these limits ever happens, coaches would not need to bully financial aid offices for it to be a gamechanger. Financial need and academic merit would become just as important as athletic talent, if not more so. Coaches whose recruiting lines up with the institution’s larger efforts to attract students would be at a tremendous advantage. And if a mega booster gives $20 million to endow scholarships that might help the baseball team, is that so bad if the vast majority of the aid just goes to needy students in general?

None of this will happen though unless institutions realize and accept the true size of an athletic department, especially financially. When classes are cancelled to accommodate the crowd for a home game, it might seem like athletics dominates the university. Expanding athletics aid by $2,000 even just for needy students is a significant addition to an athletics budget. When it comes to finances though, it’s clear who is the tail and who is the dog. What’s not clear is who should be wagging whom.

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 COA Q&A

September 29, 2011 by

It appears no recent NCAA rule change has caught the imagination of the public quite like a possible increase of scholarship limits to cover unitemized expenses in the cost of attending a school. While a new reform movement is underway, cost of attendance is an old friend. Cost of attendance scholarships were last formally proposed in 2002 (Proposal 2002–83-B), but were defeated in favor of allowing athletes to receive other financial aid to cover the gap between a full grant-in-aid and cost of attendance (Proposal 2002–83-A).

Prior to now, it was hard to come up with on opinion of cost of attendance scholarships because we had no idea what the proposal would be. It could have been a relatively minor change to address revenue sports. Or it could have been an exotic proposal for only full scholarship athletes that would have dramatically changed recruiting in equivalency sports. Without knowing what the proposal was among 5–7 options, all you could do was be in favor of the idea in principle or not.

After the presidential retreat, the Board of Directors appointed working groups to address certain issues. In October, the BoD will hear recommendations from the group focused on student-athlete well being. A member of that group, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, let slip what the group was working on. On that note, here’s a Q&A on where the issue stands.

Q: What is the proposal?

A: The proposal is to increase the limit on athletic scholarships from tuition, fees, room, board, and books to the lesser of the cost of attendance or the current limit plus $2,000. In equivalency sports, the amount of the $2,000 would be prorated. The proposal would also be on a conference basis, meaning that a conference would likely need to adopt a conference rule to authorize its members to use the increased scholarship limits.

Q: Are there still some unknowns?

A: Yes. One question is how much freedom coaches in equivalency sports would have. The amount is prorated, but there is no indication if coaches have to give it to athletes. Two examples to compare:

  • A full grant-in-aid is $20,000. A women’s soccer student-athlete receives a $10,000 scholarship. The student-athlete receives an additional $1,000 per year under the new proposal.
  • A full grant-in-aid is $20,000. A women’s soccer student-athlete receives a $10,000 scholarship. The student-athlete receives no additional aid, but the coach has an additional $30,000 (15 x $2,000) to give to other athletes.

Another question is whether athletes will always get cash. A full scholarship football player would get $2,000 unless he has parking tickets or overdue books on his account. But does our women’s soccer athlete above get $1,000 cash, or just another $1,000 toward tuition?

Q: How much would it cost?

Because the proposal covers all sports, cost depends on how many sports an institution sponsors. Stanford’s associate AD of business strategy and revenue enhancement estimated it would cost the school $750,000. Stanford runs the largest athletic department in the country, so that number might be considered to be something of a maximum.

To figure out a rough estimate of cost, we need to figure out the average athletic department. The NCAA’s membership report has the average number of men’s and women’s sports sponsored by FBS, FCS, and non-football institutions. The NCAA’s sport sponsorship and participation report lists which sports are sponsored by the most institutions. So combining the two, we can figure out an “average” athletic department and estimate the costs based on scholarship limits. And those costs are:

  • FBS: $504,400
  • FCS: $436,400
  • Non-Football: $282,400

Obvious in those figures is the effect of football. An FBS football team can expect an increased scholarship bill of up to $170,000 while an FCS program should set aside $126,000. The range for athletic departments that fully fund all their teams would probably be somewhere between $200,000 and $750,000.

Q: What about four-year scholarships?

A: The same working group is also working on a multi-year scholarship proposal. Swarbrick’s comments suggest that four-year scholarships are on the same fast track as the cost of attendance proposal.

Q: What is the next step?

A: The Board of Directors will take up both proposals in October. Most likely is that the Board will forward proposals to the membership for a vote in January. Given the widespread support from both presidents and athletic directors, passage seems likely. The BoD could choose to skip the Legislative Council and adopt the proposals as emergency or noncontroversial legislation. That seems unlikely since the proposal is not one of minimal impact and more debate could improve the proposal. And given the proposal would most likely apply to the next round of scholarships (2012–13) at the earliest, undue hardship is not likely if adoption occurs in January vs. October.

Q: What do you think of the cost of attendance proposal?

A: The reason cost of attendance was not adopted sooner is the wide variations in the gap between cost of attendance and a full grant-in-aid. The National College Players Association calculated gaps of $200 to almost $11,000. The number also represents an amount of cash that athletes will receive and is thought to be subject to manipulation, although that would have far-reaching consequences for all other students at the institution.

A person’s opinion on this proposal is telling as to their attitude toward the NCAA. Ultimately the proposal means more financial aid for student-athletes. This is a good thing. Division I should continually work to provide as much financial aid for as many athletes as possible, so this is just one step in a process that should never end.

College athletics will not be perfected overnight. If that is the measure of NCAA reform, the NCAA is set up for failure. This proposal moves Division I closer to providing the proper amount of financial support for athletes. It does not go all the way, but it is a big step closer. To reject the proposal as inadequate and evidence of the NCAA’s corruption or apathy is to hold the NCAA and its members to an impossibly high standard.

Q: What about the multi-year scholarship idea?

A: It is harder to have an opinion on the multi-year scholarship proposal since there are so few details. There is one reason for pessimism though and it is this quote from Swarbrick:

“The process for nonrenewal of an annual grant probably would look just like the process for terminating a four-year grant.”

That means that a scholarship could be cancelled between years for any reason, just like a scholarship could be nonrenewed for any reason. Multi-year scholarships only work if cancellation is subject to at least the same conditions as canceling a scholarship during the year now. That can only be done for one of five reasons:

  1. The student-athlete renders him- or herself ineligible for competition;
  2. The student-athlete is guilty of gross misconduct;
  3. The student-athlete lies to the university;
  4. The student-athlete quits the team; or
  5. The student-athlete violates a non-athletic, non-medical condition in the scholarship agreement.

Unless these conditions are kept for multi-year scholarships, the change is mostly administrative. Scholarships would not need to be renewed from year to year, but could be cancelled in between academic years. It would be a net loss for student-athlete welfare, since currently the actual contract an athlete or prospect signs must be for one year only.

Four years is also a bit of a red herring. After one year, five years, six years, or until graduation make the most sense. The five-year clock is the most important eligibility rule in Division I, and six years is the federal standard for earning a bachelor’s degree. But four years is no less arbitrary than $2,000 and under the right circumstances would be as much an improvement for student-athletes, so I will not complain about four vs. five vs. six.

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: , ,

NCPA Presents Good Question, Hints At More Radical Change

September 14, 2011 by

The struggle over whether to pay college athletes is relatively simple. Or at least, it is compared to the struggle over what to pay college athletes. Proposals to allow a greater degree of compensation to college athletes are a dime a dozen and it is easy to find objections to a specific proposal. This is actually a positive. It means the NCAA is getting enough right that it is hard to change and please a substantial majority of people.

The recently released study by the National College Players Association and Drexel University’s Department of Sports Management is one of the most detailed and well-executed pay-for-play proposals in recent memory. It offers a detailed plan that addresses multiple issues. It offers a plan to see these reforms turned into actual change. And it offers no shortage of data in support of the proposal.

However, the NCPA paints a very different vision for Division I athletics that most college athletes, fans, and administrators are used to. In making a series of assumptions, the NCPA study embraces a cynicism that is hard to go along with even given the quality of the proposal and the data to support it. If the NCPA wants its proposal to be taken seriously by stakeholders in the NCAA and the rest of college athletics, it must address these issues.

Major League Pay in the Minor Leagues

One of the tried and true criticisms of the NCAA is that the association is operating minor leagues for the NFL and NBA, either through implict acceptance or outright conspiracy. Which is why I find it confusing that alternate revenue models default to collectively bargained revenue sharing agreements that are only common in the major leagues. I’ve covered this issue before, but if any pay-for-play system developed in college athletics, it seems more likely it would resemble minor league or developmental pay, rather than major league pay.

Calling a collectively bargained revenue split “the free market” is also something of a misnomer, especially when citing a number that was simply offered one side in a negotiation. A collective bargaining agreement restricts the free market in order to make it a more competitive market. In a free market, the Miami Heat might have paid the Big Three more and had a different and better compensated supporting cast.

Finally, the study does not address a very important exception to the NBA and NFL revenue splits. High school seniors–and in the NFL college freshmen and sophomores–are offered 0% of the revenue. No matter what the NCAA is offering, it is better than nothing. Absent evidence that the NCAA wanted this situation and helped bring it about, that discrepancy must be addressed before anointing the results of a CBA process as fairer than the NCAA legislative process where student-athletes do have a voice, whether you belief it is sufficient or not.

The True Value of Being a Student-Athlete

The NCPA study takes pains to focus the conversation on the immediate status of student-athletes. This prevents the pay-for-play debate from moving into the realm of the value of an education or the dollar figure that should be attached to instruction from coaches. It makes for a much simpler and more practical debate.

The study takes the value of room and board, essentially the living expenses provided to student-athletes, and measures it against the national poverty line. The study generally finds a full scholarship wanting. However, the study did not take into account the additional financial aid or benefits that are available to student-athletes, not counting the portion of the NCAA’s revenue distribution earmarked for student-athletes (that is a seperate issue).

In addition to room and board, student-athletes receive a number of other benefits. While institutions cannot provide clothing at their discretion, what is available to student-athletes for “practice or competition” is interpreted rather broadly. When a student-athlete is on the road or starting the night before a home game, meals can be provided. Not to mention that a full-grant in aid covers the academic year (typically 8–9 months) while the poverty line is based on the entire year and the other months (semester and summer break) can be covered by another source (vacation period expenses or summer aid).

On top of that, there is additional aid. Federal grants, state grants, scholarships, and need-based aid. All of this helps fill the gap between a full grant-in-aid and the cost of attendance. Admittedly, the best organization to undertake a comprehensive study of what full scholarship student-athletes are paying out of pocket taking into account this additional “income” is the NCAA. And while the NCAA should make that study a priority (and likely will given that the membership is currently debating this issue), that does not mean these sources of financial aid and basic necessities for student-athletes can be ignored.

The Cure Cannot Be As Bad As The Disease

One source of assistance for student-athletes in meeting the gap between the full grant-in-aid and cost of attendance is the Student Assistance Fund. The study is dismissive of the SAF, claiming it is an element of control over student-athletes.

It is entirely reasonable to say the SAF is not enough, and could not be enough no matter how well-funded. It is also reasonable to disagree with the SAF regulations, which allow the money to spent on student-athletes in ways other than providing direct benefits to individual athletes. It is even reasonable to suggest that institutions should direct more of the SAF money to revenue-sport athletes, although I vehemently disagree with that position.

It is not reasonable to not give the NCAA and its members credit for the SAF. If the scholarship gap is a practical problem, millions of dollars that can go to student-athletes to fill that gap cannot be discredited or worse vilified. It puts the NCAA in an impossible Catch–22. Provide the money and the NCAA is a “welfare state” using the money to control student-athletes. Don’t provide the money and the NCAA is hoarding revenue that student-athletes helped earn. Outside income is either a philosophical issue separate from the scholarship gap or the scholarship gap is not a practical student-athlete welfare issue. It cannot be both.

Defunding Non-Revenue Sports

I have to start by giving credit where credit is due. Most arguments for NCAA reform fail right off the bat because they have not considered basic questions about what college athletics should look like. How many schools should be in the top level of college athletics? How many sports should they sponsor? How many athletes should be competing on the same level for the same rewards?

The NCPA has thought about these questions. While it is not explicit, the focus on the scholarship gap suggests the NCPA does not mind a smaller Division I. While I may be reading too much into this and other NCPA studies, it seems reasonable to say the organization believes institutions in Division I should be able to fully finance their student-athlete’s educations. What is explicit is how many sports institutions should be sponsoring at the highest level, in this case men’s basketball, football, and just enough women’s sports to meet the school’s legal obligation under Title IX.

Saying institutions should only invest in non-revenue sports what is legally required or the bare minimum necessary to field a team is asking the NCAA and its members to embrace a cynical view of intercollegiate athletics. That college sports should be run as a profit-maximizing enterprise and under-performing business units shuttered or defunded.

That claim requires more than simply a statement that concludes non-revenue sports are lavish excesses. To justify taking money away from programs where coaches rarely make millions and where new money is often spent improving the student-athlete experience, you need an explanation of why only football and men’s basketball players deserve a well-funded, elite athletic experience.

Small Reforms, Massive Tweaks

The NCPA’s report is one of the better and more detailed studies of economic issues facing student-athletes. It has shortcomings but those do not detract from the larger point. Colleges could provide more to their student-athletes within the principles the NCAA has established. Of the reforms offered, the NCAA has committed to exploring all but two: deregulation of athletically related income and Congressional action (which if the current reform movement bears fruit would not be necessary).

As soon as non-revenue sports are presented as a source of funding for these reforms, this ceases to be about fixing one system and becomes a call for a new system. One where expanding opportunities for women, training Olympic athletes, and providing educational opportunities for more athletes is seen as a negative. It is no longer about holding the NCAA accountable for the association’s own mission. It is about fundamentally changing college athletics. When the two are confused, no honest or productive conversation about reform can occur.

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: , ,

Mike Slive Sets Ambitious Reform Agenda

July 21, 2011 by

Last year when it seemed like the Pac-10 would expand all the way to the Great Plains and break apart the Big XII, college athletics was at a crossroads. Ultimately college athletics decided not to take the road that would have lead to massive changes in the structure of conferences. Instead, the great conference shake-up never occurred.

Now in 2011, a similar set of forces seem to be gathering. With a presidential retreat upcoming, SEC commissioner Mike Slive has added to the debate with an agenda for reform he hopes will become the blueprint for change in the NCAA over the next year or so. The sweeping agenda focuses on financial aid to athletes, initial eligibility, recruiting, and the enforcement process. And were it all to be implemented, it is no incremental change.

Full Cost of Attendance Scholarships

This debate has been bubbling for months now, and Mr. Slive did not introduce a specific plan. He did add one element to the debate, suggesting that money be added to the Student-Athlete Opportunity Fund, which has previously been used to cover some of these costs. The SAOF could be the mechanism used by the NCAA to maintain some degree of competitive equity and assist as many institutions as possible in meeting the increased costs.

Multi-Year Scholarships

If scholarships were required to be awarded until a student-athlete graduates or exhaust his or her eligibility, it would have a significant impact on recruiting. With standards in place for canceling a student-athlete’s aid, issues like oversigning and running athletes off would be greatly reduced.

But if institutions are simply given the option to award athletics aid for multiple years at a time, recruiting would be revolutionized. Every sport, including football and basketball, would become more like an equivalency sport. Think of a scholarship as four or five total years, with the ability to offer quarters or fifths of that total scholarship. Football coaches will be sitting down with baseball coaches to get a handle on the new environment.

Degree Completion Awards

The ability to award any amount of aid for any amount of time to student-athletes working to finish their degree seems like a big advantage to richer programs. But the competitive impact is likely to be minimal. How many 18 year-olds are thinking about coming back for a sixth or seventh year of school? Many in football and men’s basketball don’t expect to be in school for four years in the first place. An easy piece of deregulation and a big win for student-athlete welfare.

Better Assistance for Future Professional Athletes

Currently the NCAA has a few ways to allow student-athletes with professional ambitions to get advice, but they are tightly regulated, and combine with league regulations on contact with student-athletes to limit the amount of information flowing to student-athletes. Alongside working with the leagues, the NCAA could deregulate Professional Sports Counseling Panels, which currently have limits on how many athletics staff members may be involved. Or go one step further, and require the panel to operate regularly as an element of institutional control.

Raise Minimum GPA for Initial Eligibility to 2.5

This was touted as the most noteworthy of Mr. Slive’s reforms, but it is a tweak compared to the next proposal. Raising the required GPA to 2.5 simply reinforces the NCAA’s position that the core course GPA is the best predictor of college success. But legislating how that GPA is obtained could be revolutionary.

Extend Annual Satisfactory Progress to High Schools

This is, by far, the biggest bombshell in Mr. Slive’s address. The problem, outlined by Mr. Slive, is that too many prospective student-athletes, especially in revenue sports, don’t get serious about academics until their junior or senior year. Requiring prospects to earn some number of core courses every year would hopefully cut back on these “mad dashes” that often include academically unsound or outright fraudulent means.

But the infrastructure to guide a prospect through this new environment simply doesn’t exist. High school guidance counselors struggle with the requirements already. And current recruiting rules prohibit any sort of direct contact until a recruit is finished with their sophomore year. To make annual progress work, the NCAA needs to allow and in fact encourage early recruiting.

Return of Partial Qualifiers

Partial qualifiers never went totally away, with partial waivers available for student-athletes who do not qualify. Mr. Slive’s reform package would bring them back as a part of the bylaws.

The key will be getting buy-in from conferences. Initial eligibility became an admissions standard when many conference adopted non-qualifier rules that prevented non-qualifiers from enrolling, forcing them to junior colleges. If the majority of conferences adopt partial qualifier rules preventing them from enrolling, we’re back to the same position we have now, but with tougher requirements.

Deregulate Communication With Recruits

Luckily for Mr. Slive, this is already happening. Although there was the disappointing defeat of Proposal 2010-30, the Athletics Personnel and Recruiting Cabinet will introduce the first state of Mr. Slive’s reform. Two proposals will go before the membership this year. One would end the ban on text messages and the other would eliminate the limit on how often a coach can call a recruit.

But going back to the annual progress requirement, at some point the membership will need to address the issue that 2010-30 could not overcome: when should we start the recruiting process? If initial eligibility starts with freshmen, the answer has to be to start recruiting with freshmen.

Merging Evaluation and Contact Periods

While this seems like basic common sense, it has enormous competitive impact, especially in football. If the spring evaluation period becomes a spring contact period, it effectively means that football coaches will be recruiting two classes at a time.

It also doesn’t eliminate the “bump” violation. Mr. Slive stated the prohibition on contact with a prospect at the site of competition would still exist. Where do most bump violations occur? At the site of competition.

Limiting Third Party Influence

My thoughts on the battle between scholastic and nonscholastic sports are well documented. To recap: nonscholastic sports are going to win. The NCAA membership can either accept that fact and encourage nonscholastic sports to develop with the proper structure and controls, or it can hope that high schools can make up ground already lost.

The NCAA should look beyond AAU and 7-on-7 to the day when elite high school football and men’s basketball student-athletes are no longer even considering their high school team. It’s happened in other sports, and it will spread to the revenue sports whether we like it or not.

More Classes of Violations

Mr. Slive is correct that the current distinction between major and secondary infractions causes the enforcement staff to pigeonhole violations into one or the other. But rather than creating more categories, the categories should be eliminated. At some point, different in each case, the enforcement staff should engage the Committee on Infractions for guidance and a potential hearing.

Some secondary violations should be public. Some major violations should not carry the same stigma as others. As the COI reiterates so often, every violation is different. Those differences should be recognized by eliminating categories and the need to place violations in those categories.

These reforms will be discussed at the presidential retreat. Hopefully we’ll see legislation moving some agenda, either this one or another, next year. Mr. Slive has presented a comprehensive agenda where financial aid, recruiting, and academics are all tied together. To reform a rule book as large and interconnected as the Division I Manual, this is the type of comprehensive thinking that is needed.

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: , , , ,

What Full Cost-of-Attendance Really Means

May 24, 2011 by

Much of the hemming and hawing (to which I contributed) about the Big Ten’s proposal to increase scholarships to the full cost of attendance came from the fact that details of the proposal were scarce. Possibilities ranged from providing a stipend to every single student-athlete, including walk-ons to just providing stipends in football, both equally unlikely extremes. And this was not an issue of a lay public not understanding the issue: there were multiple reasonable proposals with widely different costs and effects on student-athlete welfare and competitive equity.

But Adam Rittenberg, ESPN’s Big Ten blogger reports that the proposal is fairly specific at this point. It would apply to all athletes on full scholarship, including athletes in equivalency sports. This means it would not be limited just to headcount sports (where generally any student-athlete on scholarship receives a full scholarship) and it would not simply increase team limits in equivalency sports. Had the latter occured, a women’s soccer team, which has 14 scholarships to split amongst a roster of around 30, would have simply been allowed to provide an extra $42,000 in aid (based on a $3,000 cost of attendance gap), without requiring it be used to cover the expenses not currently covered by a full grant-in-aid.

The final remaining question is whether this additional aid would be exempt. If it isn’t exempt, then said women’s soccer team could only provide the same 14 full grant-in-aids, but some student-athletes might count as greater than a full grant-in-aid, a 1.10 scholarship for instance. I’m reading a lot into Chad Hawley’s comment about having the “same scholarship structure” but I believe the aid will be exempt. Otherwise it would mean no additional aid to equivalency sports, which is necessary to bring anything approaching Title IX balance to this proposal. That means a student-athlete receiving a full cost-of-attendance scholarship would still be counted as if they were only receiving tuition, fees, room, board, and books.

Here’s what that would cost, how it would affect student-athlete welfare, how it affects compliance, and what the competitive impact would be.

What It Costs
Costs will be determined by which sports a school sponsors. Headcount sports are easy to calculate since generally student-athletes are on full scholarship and would receive the additional financial aid (national average of $3,000 is used):

  • FBS Football: 85 x $3,000 = $255,000
  • Men’s Basketball: 13 x $3,000 = $39,000
  • Women’s Basketball: 15 x $3,000 = $45,000
  • Women’s Gymnastics: 12 X $3,000 = $36,000
  • Women’s Volleyball: 12 x $3,000 = $36,000
  • Women’s Tennis: 7 x $3,000 = $21,000

For equivalency sports, the cost is not so easy to calculate. Some programs generally do not give give full scholarships, saving money in order to build deeper teams. Other programs use the bulk of their scholarship limit on full grant-in-aids for a few student-athletes, rounding out the roster with walk-ons. Plus, as we’ll see below, different financial aid rules may cause different recruiting tactics and new ways to divy up scholarship money.

How It Affects Student-Athlete Welfare
Generally it’s a major win, but there are caveats. It will mean that star student-athletes will have essentially all of their educational costs covered, with pocket money left over for a trip home or entertainment. If student-athletes are also still allowed to accept other aid, like Pell Grants, the neediest student-athletes may even be able to start helping out their families.

But if the extra cost means schools are forced to cut sports or other student-athlete services, that needs to be taken into account. That cost is significant, but not unreasonable. It’s also limited. Weight rooms and locker rooms will continually get more expensive, but it’s possible to know the actual cost of larger scholarships and it likely won’t get bigger than full cost of attendance.

Finally, if the aid is not exempted for equivalency sports, it will mean a redistribution of wealth from role players to stars. That means some athletes who are currently on scholarship wouldn’t be on scholarship, while some would be offered less than they were previously.

How It Affects Compliance
A few hundred bucks a month is not going to make a great deal of difference for student-athletes who are offered lavish gifts like cars, personal training, jewlery, trips to South Beach, etc. But according to former NFL agent Josh Luchs, many times the benefits used to recruit a student-athlete are fairly modest. If a student-athlete can no longer be swayed by pocket money, agents will be forced to provide bigger benefits to student-athletes. And bigger benefits are easier to catch.

It also changes the moral calculus when it comes to extra benefits. There continues to be a myth of the student-athlete as starving artist. Certainly, there are student-athletes who struggle to get by. But it is much more often the result of the school deciding not to provide things it is permitted to provide, rather than the rules keeping basic necessities out of student-athlete’s hands. With the full cost of attendance covered for revenue sports and star athletes, plus all the existing and legal ways to get cash to a student-athlete, it will no longer be a case of needing to take money from agents or boosters.

How It Affects Competitive Equity
Obviously if a school cannot afford to provide as many full cost-of-attendance scholarships as it wants, it will suffer competitively. How much depends on how short a school falls in this regard. For instance, if a school determines it can afford additional cost for nine basketball student-athletes on both teams, that covers a normal rotation, and the reserves will only receive a full grant-in-aid. A school might be able to remain competitive in that case. But if it cannot afford them at all, it recruits from a significant disadvantage.

More interesting is if we assume that everyone can afford the proposal or that it is paid for by the NCAA. If that’s the case, then it could increase parity by preventing traditional powers from saving on star athletes. Successful programs in equivalency sports can save scholarship by offering almost full grant-in-aids, say $28,500 if a full grant-in-aid is $30,000. Do this enough and it means being able to offer a scholarship to another role player vs. fill the spot with a walk-on.

But if stars are now giving up an additional $3,000, they’ll be less inclined to sign with the better program for less scholarship. That means an up-and-coming program could make a big recruiting coup, or it means that traditional powers will not be able to build the same type of depth they are used to.

It also highlights the value of certain positions. Chad Hawley picked a poor example of a women’s soccer goalie. Goalies in any sport tend to make less than field players, and the NCAA is no exception. In baseball and softball, the competition for top pitchers will heat up, while less of the new money goes to players in the field because they are typically less likely to be on full scholarships.

How Much of a Game Changer Is It?
Realistic versions of this proposal could have radically changed college athletics by drastically increasing how much it cost to compete in any sport. But the version of the proposal we’re likely to see from the Big Ten in the next year or two strikes a middle ground between keeping this change from bankrupting athletic departments and maximizing the additional aid to student-athletes.

The great unknown is how many programs can afford this and to what degree. And this is program rather than department specific. A school will do whatever it can to find the money for football, men’s basketball, and enough women’s sports to satisfy Title IX. The question is who can then provide this additional money to baseball/softball, soccer, and track and field.

The greatest impact is likely to be felt in Division I’s middle class: FBS schools out of the BCS conferences and the FCS. They will have the largest additional scholarship bills to meet, with comparitively low revenue to meet them. And underrated winners will be non-football departments like Gonzaga and Xavier, with strong revenue but not the massive additional expense of football.

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: , , , ,

Time for Football to Pick a Side

May 19, 2011 by

Since the beginning, major college football has enjoyed a charmed life in the NCAA. It has the freedom to run its championship the way it pleases. It gets to distribute its revenue the way it sees fit. And the FBS membership has the freedom to carve out its own regulatory scheme, ideas that often get translated into the rest of the Division I Manual (e.g.: how football spring practice provided the model for fall softball).

At the same time, bowl subdivision football leans heavily on the NCAA. For starters, football student-athletes are factored into the calculation for distributing revenue like the Student-Athlete Opportunity Fund and Special Assistance Fund. Those two funds are based on how many scholarships you provide and how many Pell Grants your student-athletes receive. Because the marginal value of each scholarship goes up (i.e. the 125th scholarship is worth more than the 25th), starting off with 85 scholarships makes it much easier to carve out a large part of that pie.

In addition, football uses the regulatory resources of the NCAA as much as any other sport, if not more. A football prospect who will require extensive academic and amateurism investigation pays the same $65 as a golf prospect who will sail through the Eligibility Center. The enforcement staff may not have a dedicated unit for football like they do for men’s basketball, but Agents, Gambling and Amateurism and the rest of the general enforcement staff spends more time on football than any other sport.

In exchange for all this, football provides a pittance to the NCAA. The revenue the national office made from football amounted to $420,000, the total of the licensing fees paid by the 35 bowl games. That’s not even enough to cover the NCAA’s estimated $500,000 loss that the Association takes putting on the FCS tournament.

That’s not to say that football doesn’t support college athletics period. A profitable football program does much of the heavy lifting to support the rest of the athletic department. So does men’s basketball, especially outside of the FBS. And there are plenty of sports that take a lot from the NCAA but do not give back. Baseball for instance has sport-specific legislation and uses disproportionate Eligibility Center resources, but it’s championship doesn’t fund the NCAA.

The major difference between football and men’s basketball though is that football does not fund the system as a whole. Only a tiny sliver of revenue from a BCS bowl game leaks out of the FBS, and none of it to the organization tasked with regulating the sport. That same organization shares criticism with the BCS for the faults in college football’s postseason, as evidenced by the Department of Justice’s letter to the NCAA.

Football has had their cake and eaten it too for a long time. Now comes the news that the Big Ten may be leading the charge for bigger cakes, regardless of whether anyone elses bakery can keep up:

“The reality is, if there’s cost of attendance and you can’t afford it, don’t do  it,” [Ohio State AD Gene Smith] told reporters at the meetings. “The teams you’re  trying to beat can’t do it either. Don’t do it because Ohio State’s doing it.  That’s one of the things schools at that level get trapped into thinking.”

Arms races aren’t all the same. Some are just perception. You don’t need a fancy new weight room to field a successful Division I football team. As long as your weight machines aren’t breaking down and there’s enough room for athletes to work out as much as they want, you have what you need. But you need a fancy new weight room to recruit a successful team because everyone else has one.

An arms race for scholarships is different through. If one school is offering you a full ride that ends up costing you, on average, $12,000 over four years and another school is offering to pay every single penny, the choice is pretty clear. Unless there’s a very compelling reason to choose the first school, it is at a distinct disadvantage.

Mr. Smith’s comment though doesn’t apply to football or men’s basketball. Schools can afford to increase their scholarships to full cost of attendance for those sports. Or more accurately, they have to afford to increase their scholarships. But it’s a tough road to limit increased scholarships to just those two sports.

If the NCAA were to legislate that male athletes are permitted to receive larger scholarships and no female athletes are, a Title IX challenge would be filed the following day. It would be difficult even for the NCAA to limit full cost of attendance scholarships to headcount sports, since despite having more headcount sports, women only have a maximum of 47 headcounts vs. 98 for just men’s basketball and football. So equivalency sports almost certainly have to be included, drastically raising the cost. The cost increase is even more drastic for schools without football.

What Mr. Smith has done is reveal the reason behind those massive TV contacts. They are not simply to fill the pockets of administrators or coffers of universities. The point is to win. And not just to win at football and men’s basketball but to win at everything. An extensive and expensive move to cost of attendance scholarships allows schools with major football and basketball revenue to press home that advantage in sports where it’s still possible for smaller schools to focus their energies and compete at a national level. A great example is Portland, who has created national powerhouses in cross country and women’s soccer without big TV contracts or football revenue.

There will never be total competitive equity unless the NCAA passed a rule limiting the total spending of athletic departments. But there are ways to stop it from getting worse or at least stem the tide. And one way is to get football off the fence, one way or another.

One option is for FBS football to agree to a playoff, but not just any playoff. An actual NCAA Championship, run by the NCAA, with revenue distributed by the NCAA according to traditional standards of NCAA revenue distribution. Lots of black, the same field at every site, with blue circles as far as the eye can see. Assuming a college football playoff earned revenue equal to the Division I men’s basketball tournament, it would pay for the jump to full cost of attendance scholarships for all sports, a substantially increased enforcement staff, all while allowing for significantly higher revenue distributed based on success in the championship.

The other option is for FBS football to be kicked out. That is, to remove FBS football from the list of NCAA sports, stop regulating the sport, and stop using football to determine how revenue is distributed. In effect, if football does not want to have actual skin in the game of its own regulation, the NCAA shouldn’t either.

Could it happen? That largely depends on who would vote on a proposal to remove FBS football. But remember that if you pit the BCS AQ conferences vs. the rest of Division I, the “have nots” control a sizeable 33-18 majority on the Legislative Council. So if the rest of Division I, including some FBS conferences, decide that removing football (at least temporarily) from the NCAA is in their best interests, they have more than enough votes to do it.

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: , , ,

NCAA Rules That Could Have Been

April 18, 2011 by

The NCAA Division I Manual takes a lot of criticism for being a large and unwieldy beast full of esoteric and confusing rules. The size is a bit overstated, and much more complicated legal codes can be found. But the best way to defend what’s in the Manual is to point out what isn’t in the Manual.

Every year, about a hundred or so proposals are offered. Many tend to be adopted. And most are approved without much debate or controversy. But between the tendency of NCAA committees to go wherever the data points them and 31 conferences with their own ideas, sometimes proposals can go off the reservation. So here’s the 10 craziest NCAA rules of the last decade that never made it over the hump into the Manual.

#10: 2008-27

In women’s lacrosse, to specify that an institution’s athletics department staff member shall not arrange lodging for a prospective student-athlete on an unofficial visit in an enrolled student-athlete’s residence (e.g., dormitory room, apartment) until August 1 following the prospective student-athlete’s junior year in high school.

2008 began a series of innovative recruiting proposals that lead to a through review of the entire recruiting model that started in 2009 and continues to this day. Part of the impetus for that review was a series of proposals by the Ivy League in women’s lacrosse designed to test different recruiting reforms. The proposal even expressly stated that the concepts could be a pilot program in women’s lacrosse, then expanded to other sports.

The most specific among them was 2008-27, which sought to eliminate the unofficial official visit, where a junior prospect stays overnight, gets free tickets to games, but pays for her own food, transportation, and entertainment. All of the sport-specific legislation was defeated, although many of the concepts were combined in another proposal on the list the following year.

#9: 2010-76

In women’s basketball, to reduce the annual limit on the number of counters at each institution from 15 to 13.

The most recent proposal on the list, offered by the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, sought to reduce women’s basketball’s scholarships to the same level as men’s basketball.

The proposal is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it is the only reduction in financial aid for a sport that has been proposed since 2000. Even men’s sports have gotten proposals seeking to increasing scholarship limits. And secondly was the MAAC’s “use it or lose it” rationale, pointing out that the average number of women’s basketball scholarships used was 13.08.

#8: 2007-23-A

In tennis, to specify that, prior to full-time collegiate enrollment, an individual may accept prize money based on his or her place finish or performance in open athletics events, not to exceed $10,000 per calendar year; further, to specify that once the individual has reached the $10,000 limit, he or she may receive additional prize money on a per event basis, provided such prize money does not exceed his or her actual and necessary expenses for participation in the event.

Division I has always struggled with regulating the amateur activities of prospective student-athletes, who often don’t know the rules but who are equally likely to be attempting to manipulate them. No where is that no prevalent or more highly regulated than tennis. But in 2007, tennis almost went off the deep end of deregulation.

2007-23-A would have allowed for a tennis prospect to pocket $10,000 per year in prize money and then continue to accept prize money, provided it was only for actual and necessary expenses in each event. The rationale was that tennis is exceedingly expensive to play at the elite level, and the $10,000 per year often just covers unitemized expenses. Sponsored by the Ivy League, both 2007-23-A and an alternative allowing $10,000 total were both defeated.

#7: 2003-69

To eliminate the requirement that each Division I member institution, at least once every 10 years, complete an institutional self-study, verified and evaluated through external peer review.

Certification is built into the fabric of Division I athletics at this point. Every 10 years a school studies itself, submits itself to a peer review, evaluates its progress over the last decade, and offers a plan for growing over the next 10 years.

Following the first cycle of certification and as the second cycle ramped up, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference decided the exercise had reached its conclusion. Claiming second cycle certification had produced “few tangible benefits,” the MAAC proposed to do away with continued certification of athletic departments, and proposed ongoing review of topical areas conducted by conferences. After drawing a sharp rebuke from the Committee on Athletic Certification, the MAAC withdrew the proposal.

#6: 2005-162

To specify that an individual who officially registers, enrolls and attends classes at one of the three national service academy official preparatory schools (i.e., Army, Navy, Air Force) prior to initial full-time collegiate enrollment shall not be subject to the contact limitations in Bylaw 13 and shall be considered a student-athlete for purposes of contact by athletics staff members at other Division I institutions.

Proposed by the Patriot League, home of Navy and Army, 2005-162 would have essentially turned into student-athletes anyone who enrolled at one of the official military prep schools. That means recruiting restrictions would not have applied, and anyone from another school seeking to recruit this prospects would have had to get permission to contact these high schoolers.

The rationale was that the United States Military was already investing substantial resources in these prospects, and thus they should be treated like student-athletes. While our service academies get a number of breaks in the NCAA legislation, a de facto farm system went too far and was seen as too much of a competitive advantage. Thus it was defeated.

#5: 2009-28-A

In women’s soccer, to revise or establish restrictions related to contacts, telephone calls official and unofficial visits, offers of financial aid and involvement in nonscholastic-based soccer programs, as specified.

There has been a lot of talk of recruiting models and comprehensive recruiting reform. But no single proposal capture an entire recruiting model quite like 2009-28-A. “As specified” meant no contact prior to August 1 before a prospect’s senior year in high school. That meant no unofficial visits, no phone calls made or received, no off-campus contacts, and no club coaching by college coaches, although official visits were moved up to August 1, allowing them to be taken before school started for prospects.

Proposed by the SEC, the fear amongst the membership was that August 1 would be a feeding frenzy of coaches who would pressure student-athletes to make a decision quickly to fill a recruiting class they were used to being finished with up to two years prior. Both this proposal and a companion offered by the Ivy League proposing many of the same restrictions for all sports were both defeated.

#4: 2004-121

In men’s basketball, to specify that the head men’s coach must annually develop an individual personal growth plan with each student-athlete using community and institutional resources; further, to require the coach to periodically meet with each student-athlete to ensure that appropriate progress is being made toward the objectives set forth in the student-athlete’s personal growth plan.

Offered as part of a package developed by the NABC, this proposal would have required the creation of a mentioning plan between head coaches and student-athletes in men’s basketball. It’s a far cry from the NABC’s recent stance of deregulating most men’s basketball activities outside of money funneling.

The unanswered question is how this would ever be monitored. Sure, plans could be created and filed. And meetings could be scheduled and tracked. But how would you ever know if a student-athlete was progressing along his personal growth plan? Sadly we’ll never know. The proposal was defeated, resoundingly so, by a vote of 41-4.

#3: 2001-69

To specify that there shall be no simultaneous telecasting or cablecasting of regular season intercollegiate football games on Friday nights.

There’s college football televised on almost every night. But back in 2001, the Atlantic Coast Conference proposed leaving Friday Night Lights for high school only. There was one catch though: a Friday game could be broadcast live if it finished by 7:00 PM everywhere it was broadcast. So had the ACC not withdrawn the proposal after it was introduced, perhaps college might have seen the Friday Night Dusk.

#2: 2002-97, 2006-86

To establish an NCAA Division I Nonscholarship Football Championship.

Twice since 2000, the Football Championship Subdivision teams that do not provide scholarships have asked for the NCAA’s assistance in creating their own national championship. Conference of nonscholarship FCS schools are not eligible for automatic bids and the individual schools are rarely, if ever, selected as at-large participants. On two separate occasions, the schools have tried to carve out their own unique niche.

2002-97 was to create an official NCAA championship for Division I FCS (I-AA at the time) nonscholaship football. 2006-96 asked to allow schools to exempt the games in a non-NCAA championship event for nonscholarship football programs. As the calls for a major college playoff get louder and louder, we almost had two Division I playoffs without including the big boys.

#1: 2000-103

To permit a student-athlete to obtain a loan (not to exceed $20,000) based on future earnings potential from a centralized lending institution, as specified.

First the particulars: it wasn’t all student-athletes. Only student-athletes that had qualified for the NCAA’s disability insurance for elite student-athletes. Currently, that would apply to student-athletes who are projected to be drafted in the first round of the NBA, MLB, or WNBA Draft or first three rounds of the NFL or NHL Draft. And it wasn’t a loan from just anyone but from a real bank.

The Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet sponsored the proposal through the Management Council, the predecessor to the Legislative Council. The Board of Directors did not yet have authority to sponsor legislation, so 2000-103 came from as close to the top as it could back then.

And the proposal was never actually defeated in an up and down vote. It was tabled and forgotten until 2008 when the shift to the current governance structure finally killed the proposal. It may not be paying athletes exactly, but it’s the most surprising rule that could have been from the last 10 years.

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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Headcounts Are Nader’s Problem, Not Scholarships

March 25, 2011 by

Ralph Nader’s proposal to replace athletic scholarships with need-based financial aid is a crackpot idea. Mostly because it would be totally ineffective. The cottage industry parents use to get a college scholarship would shift to also help parents maximize financial need. And a financial aid office unprepared for this transition would be raided by college coaches seeking to maximize their scholarship dollars.

But Nader has a point. The problem is he attacks the entire athletic scholarship rather than the more specific problem: the headcount.

NCAA sports have two financial aid models: headcount and equivalency. In a headcount sport, the limit is on the number of counters: student-athletes on the team who receive any athletically-related financial aid. $1 counts the same as a full scholarship, so typically only full grant-in-aids are awarded. In equivalency sports, the limit is on the total amount of athletically-related aid awarded. This limit is expressed as a number of equivalent full grant-in-aid awards, like the 4.5 allowed in men’s golf. There are also hybrid models in sports like FCS football and baseball where there are limits on both counters and equivalencies.

In a headcount sport, the coach has a binary decision: to offer aid or not. Ability to pay and academic merit count, but can quickly be overwhelmed by athletic concerns and are only baselines. Either a prospect can pay or not. A prospect can either keep up academically at the school or not. That’s something of an oversimplification, but the basic point remains.

In equivalency sports, financial need and academic merit matter much more. If a coach is recruiting two prospects of equal athletic ability and one could get half their schooling paid for through academic or need-based grants, that prospect is more valuable than the other. He or she frees up half a scholarship to get another student-athlete.

If headcounts were eliminated, particularly in the revenue sports of men’s basketball and FBS football, the recruiting process would be forced to focus more on academics and financial need. A coach who awards aid irrespective of the other financial aid a student-athlete would be out of a job quickly because the team wouldn’t be competitive. Academically gift or needy prospects would become more valuable in the recruiting process.

Under current rules, the effect would be limited due to the in ability to mix athletic aid with other forms of institutional aid, particularly need-based aid. In lieu of developing best practices for managing the relationship between financial aid and athletics, using institutional aid to augment an athletic scholarship is largely prohibited. The rules would need to be changed to exempt all non-athletically related aid, replacing those regulations with a system for ensuring athletics stays out of the awarding of non-athletically related aid.

Deregulation in this area would more closely align the goals of the athletics department and the university. To field the most competitive team, a coach would need to recruit prospects that will be offered the most non-athletically related aid. In a modern financial aid system, that means the students the admissions office, with the help of the financial aid office, is seeking to attract. Coaches would even be motivated to assist with fundraising for the general student body, since it would mean better financial aid packages for their prospects.

Student-athletes are just that: students and athletes. Ralph Nader is correct that in recruiting for revenue sports, the athlete part has overwhelmed the student part. But it is not the rewarding of athletic merit that is the problem. The problem is requiring coaches to award this aid in such a blunt and simplistic manner. More flexibilit would not just allow but essentially require football and basketball coaches to focus more on which students deserve and need a scholarship rather than just which athletes they need.

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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