I rarely comment on any of the TB posts but somehow on this one, I feel uniquely qualified. In my ancient history I have been both an NCAA Division I scholarship athlete and worked in Environmental Compliance in the oil industry. How are those related you may ask? The first needs no explanation while the second is an industry that is well known for regulations and the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of fines or sanctions.

First off I should admit that I only made it through page 3 of the document before I fell asleep. The last half of the document was a blur. The problem with college athletics is the fault of both the schools themselves and the NCAA. I learned about the money game in college sports when I was being recruited to play Volleyball. I know that’s a sport that those of you east of the California Nevada border are not familiar with, but in California it’s a big deal. Before I ever played the sport I was a little egghead, bouncing my way around the gifted and talented programs in school. I had no idea of what I wanted to do when I “grew up” and so what school I would want to attend or what major I would pursue was totally unclear. I applied to many California institutions and received scholarships to UCLA, USC, and Stanford among others. These scholarships were referred to as “full rides”. Everything was paid for including tuition, books and fees and room and board. I chose instead to change course and follow in the footsteps of Ansel Adams. I enrolled at the Brooks Institute of Photography but they had a two year waiting list for enrollment so in the meantime, I enrolled in the local Junior College to take courses while I awaited my turn. It was there that I was introduced to volleyball and suddenly discovered that I was the top recruit for all the schools that seriously played the sport. Once again I was offered “full rides” but this time as an athlete rather than as a student with academic pursuits. The curious things was that when the financial details of the scholarships arrived for each of these schools, the bottom line of each was almost double the amount that the academic “full ride” had included. I decided that maybe they assumed that athletes were taller or bigger and needed larger housing and therefore higher rent. Clearly the meal plan allotment had to go up because of the huge caloric intake of an athlete in training. I could only guess that the reason the books and fees were higher was because all of my textbooks would be picture books and therefore more expensive than the typical physics text. Same schools, double the scholarships, only difference, one was for academics the other was for athletics. I should also mention that not one of the schools offered to pay my way to visit their campus when I applied as a regular student. By the way, the Bonaventure hotel in L.A. is very comfortable.

I chose the University of Hawaii and I must say that when it came to volleyball, they were in strict compliance with all NCAA regulations. The rules I believe were the responsibility of the coach to comply with and I don’t think the school honestly had much to do with it. I did however notice a lot of strange things going on with the football team and its members. Things like players being enrolled in the same class I was in and never attending or in one bizarre case, a football player who seemed to be able to change gender along with a tremendous transformation in physical size when it came time to take the final exam. A large Hawaiian suddenly became a short Japanese girl during the test, amazing. I do believe that a few perks were thrown my way that probably would not have occurred if I were not the volleyball star. On the day of registration, I went with the herd of students to the gym to pick my classes. By the time my turn came up there were no classes left that I wanted at all. I decided to head for the exit and go to UCLA. In my mind, I was on my way out the door and on my way to the airport. A school official saw me trying to exit the “in” door and stopped me, when I told them what my plan was, suddenly every course I needed had an open seat. I don’t think that would have happened to the typical student.

When it comes to NCAA rules and enforcement, the problem is they are going about it the wrong way. The stakes are very high, millions of dollars. If we had a football program bringing in 80 million dollars, our budget would not be near so bleak. Therefore many of the programs are willing to take risks. It all comes down to risk assessment. If the gain is much greater than the penalty or the chance of being caught is slim, the chances for abuse are higher. The problem with the current system is the wrong people get the sanctions.

When I worked in the oil industry, the EPA started enforcing rules and regulations through their regulatory agents. In my case it was the South Coast Air Quality Management District or SCAQMD. They came up with rules and enforced them by attaching large fines for violators. When a project is going to generate 16 million dollars of income, a one million dollar fine is seen as the cost of doing business and just a minor hindrance. It was not until they included wording that said the CEO would spend some time in jail that they got their attention. The company didn’t care about a cash fine because they were going to make a boatload of cash regardless. The penalty must be related to the crime and be assessed on the person or persons responsible.

Many years ago, Cal State University, Long Beach had a powerhouse basketball team. They got in trouble with the NCAA for some major violations in their dealings with their star player Ed Ratliff among others. The sanctions levied by the NCAA obliterated the schools basketball program for decades. The coach, the person who was guilty of the violations, was Jerry Tarkanian. With the program hindered by the NCAA sanctions, Jerry moved on to UNLV where he was eventually found guilty of the same violations.  In each case, the schools and the players/programs were hurt. The coach has a multi-million dollar contract and can pack his bags and go to another school that will accept them with open arms. The players in the meantime would have to give up a year of eligibility to play at another school and so most of them are marginalized because the school becomes invisible during the sanctions. In most situations the coach is the one responsible for following the rules. The university president has little to do, if anything, with the recruiting activities of the athletic program. If the sanctions went with the coaches along with the schools, rule violations would drop.

What needs to happen is sanity. The amount of cash involved with both professional and college athletics is out of control. I don’t think a college athlete should get paid like some are proposing, but what’s the difference between an English major that has a work study position working in a department office and an athlete that spends even more hours a day on the practice field or in training. Both are doing things for the school. I can take one of my students to lunch but not if they are an athlete.

Schools need to come clean. What I mean by this is in terms of how they recognize their own athletic programs. The University of Oklahoma should have a degree in Football or Professional Athletics. This program would have courses in everything from sports strategy and physical fitness or kinesiology to finance and ethics. Some would argue that graduating with such a degree does not guarantee success in the field, but when has a degree in any other discipline done that? Instead, the academic advisor for the athletic program signs their athletes up for what they believe will be the easiest major that they think their players can handle. My advisor picked the major that had the least required hours to graduate. His choice had nothing to do with what I wanted to do in life. The schools are pretending that they are doing something else. The athletes should meet the criteria that the school sets for its incoming students. It should be noted that many schools curve the requirements based on the major. For instance, you had better do well on the math portion of the SAT and have a high academic ranking if you plan on attending Berkeley in the Physics department. A student planning on studying Art may not have to ace the SAT math portion, but have a great portfolio. (I’m sure a reader out there will inform me that Berkeley uses the same standard across the board of all majors, so I pre-apologize, but I think you get my drift). So maybe an athlete should not necessarily meet the same qualifications as every student but it should be similar to requirements of other departments.

The rules need to be applied evenly and penalties need to be appropriate to the crime and applied to the violator. Reggie Bush gave up a Heisman trophy for violating the same rules that probably most previous Heisman winners were guilty of. The younger members of his team that were not involved are now banished from being in any post season bowl game and are out of the hunt for a national championship. In other words they are off the radar. This will impact them when it comes time for the NFL draft. The guilty parties got to move on. My alma mater had to give up its first NCAA Men’s volleyball trophy because it was discovered after it was all over that one of the players had played on a professional team in Greece years before. He did not get paid or even have a contract but the NCAA rules disallow playing in anything professional regardless of being paid. The coach and other team members were totally unaware of it and the player had no idea it was a violation of NCAA rules. For the players it was the loss of everything. There is no NVBA to aspire to. In the meantime, other schools could have players winning large cash prizes in beach volleyball but retaining their eligibility because it was not a professional sport. The NCAA is not the only one with this problem, just look at the Jim Thorpe story and his Olympic medals.

If you made it this far, you know why I was an Art major and not an English major or Philosophy, Communications, etc…………………….

Thanks for reading, I’ll stop rambling now.