You are here: Home / Archives for philosophy

Is the Era of the “Compliance Office” on the Way Out?

July 19, 2011 by

Tony Barnhart of CBSSports.com has some strong words for athletic directors. The new boss might be the same as the old boss but that boss is singing a different tune, and not a happy one for schools who want to gain and edge or find a shortcut. In response, Mr. Barnhart has a couple of suggestions.

2. Search for the biggest, brightest and toughest legal mind you can find and make that person your NCAA compliance director. The compliance director has one job and that’s to protect the institution (and the athletic director). If that person is doing his/her job correctly, they will be the most disliked person in the department (next to you, of course).

Setting aside the questions marks of turning compliance into an extension of the legal profession, this is a major rethinking of the role of the compliance office. It’s not a new idea though. The Committee on Infractions has scrutinized the relationship between compliance office and coaches as compliance tries to strike the balance between cops and partners. The COI has questioned the tactic of working with coaches even during investigations, although most campus compliance staff would claim this is unworkable.

Mr. Barnhart goes one step further though with a stern message to athletic directors about the culture that needs to be the foundation for this new attitude toward compliance:

3. Meet with your coaches once a week and always end the meeting with these two statements:

“If you have a problem with the compliance director you come to me. If you do not cooperate with the compliance director you are done. If you try to intimidate the compliance director you’re done. I don’t care how much money you make or how many games you’ve won. The president of this university has my back on this.

“If you get even a whiff that a rule has been broken, walk down the hall to the compliance director and dump it in their lap. If you cover anything up, you’re done.”

Take the two suggestions together and the loyalties and function of the compliance office are clear. It’s no longer a compliance office, it’s an enforcement office. Its job is not to work with coaches, but keep them in line. It seeks to protect itself, the institution and the athletic director first, and the coaches last. Such a set up also raises the suspicion that some coaches have of compliance becoming a tool for athletic directors to force them out. In short, the relationship between this office and coaches will be more adversarial than cooperative.

So what happens to all the other parts of compliance? Who works on the waivers? Who tracks eligibility? Who fights with the NCAA and the conference to get the interp that helps the program? Who in the athletic department will ever work for a student-athlete rather than just keeping tabs on them?

The answer seems simple: to make Mr. Barnhart’s vision of the “New World Order” work, the compliance office has to break apart. What Mr. Barnhart calls a compliance office would be an enforcement office. Just like in the NCAA national office, other functions like eligibility, interpretations, and waivers would be handled by one or more different offices, all reporting to the athletic director. The enforcement office would monitor the rest of what was the compliance office just like it monitors the coaching staffs. Watchers watching the watchers if you will.

Coaches need a compliance office they can have a cooperative working relationship with. They need someone in the athletic department they can trust to help them be successful on the field. A more proactive NCAA enforcement staff may mean those people cannot be the same people who monitor those coaches. In that case, it may be time to take a page from the national office and create different offices to do different jobs.

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: , ,

Ohio State, Oregon, and West Virginia Plotting the Future of Compliance

July 10, 2011 by

From 1950 until the late 1990s, the growth of compliance was simply the existence of compliance as a full-time position. For most of the last decade, the growth was through the expansion of offices until today when most BCS athletic departments have four or five full-time employees. But aside from how job responsibilities are split up and the growth of technology, there really hasn’t been a fundamental change to what compliance does day-to-day.

Now three schools, all of them facing some degree of scrutiny from the NCAA, are considering or making changes that could dramatically change how compliance offices are organized. And all three changes are very different.

As part of a review of its compliance office, Ohio State is considering moving its compliance office to a central group also overseeing research and medical compliance. While many compliance offices now report outside of the athletic department (to the president or legal counsel rather than the athletic director), they’re still considered part of the athletic department. Making the compliance office part of the university’s central administration would pull them further out of the athletic department.

Oregon is adding a new position to the athletic department administration, but it is not a standard compliance position. The position asks for four years of law enforcement or investigative experience, rather than athletic administration experience. And in addition to the providing surveillance rather than monitoring, the position will liaison with law enforcement in Eugene and coordinate self-defense classes for student-athletes and staff.

Finally West Virgina has hired a new employee with experience at the NCAA, law firms, and the US government. But instead of working for the compliance office, Alex Hammond will be working for the football team. Along with traditional recruiting organization functions, Hammond will also be the liaison to the compliance office and admissions. All of those functions have been performed in the football office before, but normally not by someone whose resume does not suggest a future coaching career.

All three moves bring the potential to help ensure rules compliance. Removing compliance from the athletic department completely establishes their independence and improves their official authority. Having a law enforcement background in compliance also can help with some of the personal conduct issues that have plagued college football as much as NCAA violations have. And insert someone with a radically different background into a football staff can help break up the groupthink or rationalizations that can lead to violations.

The changes also bring challenges. You must establish a higher degree of professionalism and respect for the chain of command with an external compliance office. The image of compliance as cops or spies is likely to be heightened when you employ someone with experience as a cop or a PI. Embedding an administrator with the football team requires a keen balance of rapport with the coaches and sense of duty to the compliance office.

These experiments might fail miserably. They might become standard practice around the country. To do so though, the NCAA must allow them to run their course. While no one with a stake in these schools will want to see this type of scrutiny again soon, it could happened. If these moves contribute to violations down the road, trying something new should not cause the school to suffer worse penalties.

That’s not to say the school should avoid punishment entirely or trying something new is an excuse for lax standards and poor execution. But institutional control and monitoring are not about simply adhering to the state of the art or some minimum standard. Innovating and pushing the state of the art forward are just as important and should be promoted, not punished.

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: , ,

Copyright �© 2010-2012 NCAA �·