By Scott Schultz
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
If the NCAA endorses recommendations of a recent report, schools
will be required to graduate 50 percent of their players by 2007 in
order to play in the postseason, coaches will have to forfeit
lucrative endorsement contracts and the association will have to
distribute revenue based on academic performance, among other
changes.
Ten years after the Knight Foundation Commission on
Intercollegiate Athletics released its report condemning the
commercialization of college athletics, the commission reconvened
and released its latest opine regarding the current state of the
NCAA on June 26.
Many members of the commission agree the prognosis is alarmingly
discouraging. With recommendations as drastic as they were
succinct, the report focused on the escalating commercialism of
college sports and the free fall of athletes’ graduation
rates, particularly among football and men’s basketball
players.
“This corruption in athletics is a cancer, a blemish on
the academic institutions as a whole,” said former Knight
Foundation President Creed Black.
According to the most recent NCAA graduation rate reports, UCLA
would qualify for postseason play in both sports even if the
recommendations by the commission were to be enacted as NCAA
regulations retroactively.
UCLA officials, the athletic department and men’s
basketball head coach Steve Lavin were unavailable for comment or
had not yet read the Knight Commission, and therefore declined to
comment on the commission.
Other recommendations by the 12-year-old, 28-member Knight
Commission, made up of presidents from universities, television
networks and the United States Olympic committee, include bringing
coaches’ salaries in line with those of professors and
prohibiting uniforms from bearing corporate logos.
Black, who is one of the current commissioners on the panel,
pointed out that if the recommendations in this year’s report
had been enacted prior to last year, neither team in the college
football championship would have been eligible for the postseason
nor would half of this season’s Elite Eight teams from the
men’s basketball tournament.
“Of the 64 teams in this year’s NCAA tournament,
seven teams had a 0-percent graduation rate (of African American
players),” Black said. “These graduation rates are not
aberrations. They are a way of life.”
Though the commission made recommendations as a whole, members
were not unanimous with their opinions. NCAA president Cedric
Dempsey opposed setting the arbitrary 50-percent graduation rate
for schools to maintain postseason eligibility. Dempsey, who was
one of the commissioners, said graduation rates should be based on
the rate of the entire student population of the particular school
in question.
“The NCAA understands the findings of the commission which
are most troublesome are the things that President Dempsey has been
working on for the last three or four years,” said NCAA
director of public relations Wally Renfro. “However, the
recommendation for a 50-percent graduation rate to qualify for
postseason play may be a line in the sand.”
According to Renfro, the NCAA’s position is that because
different schools have different mission statements, implementing
an arbitrary number for graduation rates across the board would be
unfair to some athletes. They’re concerned that in some
cases, athletes would be held to a higher academic standard than
the rest of that particular school’s student body.
The report alleges that teams openly disobey NCAA regulations,
curtailing practice time and that academic support programs are
intended to maintain a player’s eligibility rather than
assist them toward attaining a degree.
According to the Knight Commission, only 48 percent of Division
I football players are graduating and only 34 percent of the
men’s basketball players are attaining degrees.
The commission also stated that the NCAA has begun to reflect a
business rather than an amateur organization: “In too many
respects, big-time college sports today more closely resemble the
commercialized model appropriate to professional sports than they
do the academic model.”
An example of the commercialization of college athletics listed
in the Knight Commission include the University of Michigan’s
latest seven-year contract with Nike, which is to pay $25 million
to the school. Multi-million-dollar contracts with apparel
companies has become the norm for major universities. UCLA as well
has an exclusive deal with Adidas for its athletic apparel, which
lasts through June 2005.
Another example of the commercialization of college sports cited
in the report is the contract that the NCAA signed with CBS to
carry the men’s basketball tournament. The contract, which
will go into effect in 2002, gives CBS exclusive rights to carry
the tournament for 11 years, for which the NCAA will be paid $6.2
billion dollars.
The Knight Commission also opposes the seven- and eight-figure
contracts being paid to head coaches in the collegiate ranks.
“Coaches are receiving four, five times the salary of
college presidents,” Black said. “It’s obscene
that the coaches are making that much money.”
“Outside contracts for shoes and such should go to the
universities, not the coaches. If they want to go pro, let
them.”
Black cited basketball coach Rick Pitino’s recent
eight-figure contract with the University of Louisville and his
many endorsement deals as an example.
It is The Knight Commission’s belief that the
school’s reputation is what allows the coaches to receive
lucrative off-campus endorsements, and that the money should
therefore be negotiated through the school. However, marquee
college coaches take umbrage to that claim.
“There’s some truth to that, however do the
professors in your Anderson School negotiate their consulting
contracts through the University?” asked Stanford men’s
basketball head coach Mike Montgomery. “Top-notch people are
paid extraordinary amounts for their services. I don’t think
you can treat coaches differently than normal
professors.”
Montgomery, whose Cardinal team is the only basketball team in
the Pac-10 with a 100-percent graduation rate for the four-year
period used in the most current NCAA report, is against setting an
arbitrary graduation rate for postseason eligibility. He said an
institution’s athletic department should represent the
student body.
“These kids are at a school, because they fit that
school,” Montgomery said. “Otherwise, what you have is
athletes for hire, which is specifically what’s going on.
“You’re bringing in athletes who are isolated from
the rest of the student body as a whole, because they don’t
fit. That is why you see some of the problems that you see, and it
is why you see a lot of the kids not graduating.”
In the wake of the first commission by the Knight Foundation ,
which holds no formal authority, more than half of the
recommendations of the Knight Commission were endorsed by the NCAA.
However, the recommendations made in this report were more extreme
than its predecessor, and the commission is expecting the report to
trigger more discussions than actual change.
“There’s a number of recommendations that say the
right thing but are going to be very difficult to implement,”
said former United States Olympics executive director and current
commissioner Richard Schultz. “I think most of the
commissioners felt we had to make the recommendations and that
hopefully the schools will have the courage to follow
these.”
Now that the report has been released to the public, the ball is
in the hands of the NCAA and the college presidents to steer the
direction of college athletics. If they accept the recommended
revisions, the repercussions will greatly alter the landscape of
college athletics.