Daily Bruin File Photo Former UCLA football player
Ramogi Huma exhorts fellow student-athletes to
join the Collegiate Athletes Coalition last January.
By Hannah Gordon
Daily Bruin Reporter Eraste Autin. Devaughn Darling. Rashidi
Wheeler. These men died in the name of NCAA sports, pushing
themselves past their physical limitations. That fact keeps former
UCLA linebacker Ramogi Huma traveling the country, talking to
fellow athletes about his organization, the Collegiate Athletes
Coalition, which is lobbying for better health coverage and changes
in employment rules and scholarship levels for Division I college
athletes. Huma’s passion on this and other issues in college
athletics brought him to the U.S. Congress on Feb. 13 to testify in
hearings on “Challenges Facing Amateur Athletics.”
Despite backing from the steel worker’s union, his questions
about the nature of amateur sports puts him in a David and Goliath
battle with the National Collegiate Athletics Association.
Inception Groceries. When former UCLA football
player Donnie Edwards got busted in 1995 for accepting an improper
benefit, he had taken groceries from a friend because he was out of
money. Huma started talking to friends about how they could stand
up for their teammate and get a voice in the college athletic
system. Then, in 1996, Huma sat listening to coaches talk about the
importance of summer workouts. The school can’t pay the
medical bills if an injury occurs during one of these
“voluntary” workouts, according to NCAA guidelines.
“Our jaws dropped. We were like, “˜Wait a minute, are
you kidding?'” Huma said, recalling the time he and his
teammates found out about this. “Voluntary” workouts
have been the subject of much criticism by both the NCAA and
athletes because it is widely known that they are essentially
mandatory. “A lot of players refer to them as
“˜volandatory,'” Huma said. “You might not
go to these voluntary workouts, but you will be voluntarily sitting
your butt on the bench.” So Huma kept talking.
Not on speaking terms On Jan. 18, 2001, Huma
formally launched the CAC at UCLA and has since signed up nine
other schools. Last month, he turned the ear of thousands of
viewers when he appeared on “60 Minutes.” Last week, he
had the rapt attention of Congress as he promoted his ideas. But
the one place he can’t yet get an audience is the NCAA.
Although “60 Minutes” reported that the NCAA agreed to
meet with the CAC, the meeting was cancelled. “We presented
to the Student Athlete Advisory Committee and when they saw the
depth to which the CAC is funded and guided by the steel
workers’ union, they felt it was inappropriate,” NCAA
spokesman Wally Renfro said.
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The CAC is funded by the United Steel Workers Association, whom
the CAC came to for organizing expertise. The USWA agreed to advise
them because its philosophy is to support people exploited in any
realm, said USWA spokesperson Tim Waters. “This, in our
opinion, is a situation where there are a lot of players working
for a corporation exploiting them,” Waters said. Huma
stresses that the steel workers union does not have an
inappropriate influence over the CAC. “The CAC is not a
unionizing effort, but it parallels one,” Huma said. SAAC
co-chair Mike Aguirre said it resembles one too closely. “It
is not a natural fit for student-athletes to be aligned with the
steel-workers. (Student-athletes) have a system in place ““
the SAAC ““ and that is what we need to focus on,”
Aguirre said. Huma said he saw the chance to meet with the NCAA as
an opportunity to help save lives by getting health coverage for
sports-related workouts. “The NCAA backed out like it was
nothing. To us, that is an indication that they are not even
serious about these issues,” he said. Waters saw the
cancellation as more strategic. “They’re treating it
like a PR game,” he said. The NCAA maintains there is no game
playing, and furthermore, that it already has a student voice built
into the system in the SAAC. Every school and conference must have
a SAAC, with a national SAAC drawing one representative from each
of the 32 conferences. Whether members are elected or picked by
coaches and administrators varies from school to school and even
sport to sport. Unlike the CAC, members of SAAC come from every
sport. The CAC is currently organizing only football and
men’s basketball players for logistical reasons, but the CAC
wants to pass the benefits on to all sports. National SAAC members
sit on various committees but do not have a vote on the
NCAA’s Management Council, the body which votes on
legislation before passing it on to the board of directors.
“With a vote, ours would be only one of many. Today our voice
is powerful precisely because we don’t have a vote,”
Aguirre said in a prepared witness testimony for Congress. If the
SAAC had a vote, Aguirre said, the Management Council would tell
them to speak with their vote, but since they lack one, they can
demand to argue their case. Huma disagrees.
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“The SAAC is insufficient by design. They can’t vote
on legislation, whereas in Division II, their SAAC can vote on
legislation,” Huma said. “The difference is, there are
billions of dollars in Division I that they don’t want the
athletes talking about or trying to re-direct.”
Money running amok Student-athletes get a
bedtime story every night ““ what Huma thinks of as “The
Myth of Amateur Athletics,” the story of how they are getting
a free ride through college in a fairy land free of
professionalism. “It’s been a myth for some
time,” Huma said. “Forces of professionalism are
rampant.” One measure of professionalism is the failure of
schools to graduate their athletes. According to the Knight
Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, the most recent
NCAA reports, released this past summer, show that 48 percent of
Division I football and 34 percent of men’s basketball
players earned degrees. CBS is paying $6.2 billion over 11 years
for the right to broadcast the men’s basketball tournament.
Television contracts account for 79 percent of the NCAA’s
2001-02 revenues, bringing in $271.5 million. Corporate
sponsorships, licensing and royalties bring in the next greatest
portion, hauling in $26.7 million this year. The NCAA is quick to
point out that profits from men’s basketball ““ which
brings in $25 million excluding TV ““ and football are used to
cross-subsidize other men’s and all women’s sports. But
according to the NCAA’s own reports, in 1999 the average
Division I school broke even without institutional support (trusts
and boosters) and profited $1.9 million when institutional support
was taken into account. “We are concerned about stories of
student-athletes who can’t make ends meet financially,”
Aguirre said in his testimony. “At the same time, I recognize
that student-athletes ““ and especially football and
basketball student-athletes on full grant-in-aid ““ are
considerably better off than most students.” Huma
acknowledges the criticism but said regular students and
student-athletes cannot be compared. “It’s just a
different trade-off. People say you are getting a free ride. But
it’s money earned. It’s labor performed,” Huma
said. The legal argument could be made that student-athletes are
akin to teaching-assistants who are similarly granted tuition and a
stipend in return for labor. TAs waged their own legal battle and
won the right to organize unions. A TA union was first recognized
by the UC in 1999. But the CAC has not taken that stance.
“We’re not making the argument that student-athletes
are employees,” Waters stressed. “What we are saying is
that these guys are generating billions of dollars. Those people
that are distributing that money need to address their
concerns.”
CAC agenda “The (stipend) check is
helping keep your head above water. But you’re not doing the
backstroke. You’re not chillin’ on your float,”
said UCLA junior middle linebacker Audie Attar. One of the changes
on the CAC’s agenda regards grant-in-aid. NCAA member
institutions determine grant-in-aid as tuition, books, and room and
board, which falls short of total cost of attendance. The stipend
at UCLA is $873 a month. “Everybody thinks that you’ve
got it so good,” Attar said. “But if your friend wants
to take you to dinner, it’s a violation.” False
expectations and the ensuing potential for violations led to
another of the CAC’s proposed changes: lifting of the
employment restrictions. The SAAC was instrumental in allowing
student-athletes to work at all, a change that came after Donnie
Edwards was penalized in 1995. Currently, players can only make up
to $2,000 during the academic off-season and can at no time be paid
for any work related to their talent ““ including coaching at
summer camps. The CAC’s other concerns regarded health and
safety. They want year-round health coverage for all sports-related
injuries, including those sustained in “voluntary”
workouts. The NCAA is conducting a feasibility study on year-round
health coverage, due out in April, which schools could purchase.
The CAC also wants to allow families access to the death benefit if
their child is a current or prospective student who dies in any
university-related workout, and possibly raise the benefit from
$10,000. The NCAA pays $8 million a year on a catastrophic
insurance premium. But cases like that of University of Washington
football player Curtis Williams make the CAC question how payment
is meted out. Williams was paralyzed from the neck down on Oct. 28,
2000, in a game against Stanford. His brother took time off to
learn to care for him, but the NCAA’s $20 million
catastrophic insurance plan limited yearly medical benefits to
$100,000 for home care. The plan would pay all his bills only if
his family would institutionalize him. After battling for several
months, they agreed to pay the full bills. According to Renfro, the
kind of home care Williams received was an anomaly, and the NCAA
lobbied the insurance company on his behalf.
Looking to the future CAC members do not say
exactly how many members of the team are officially involved, which
raises questions as to their legitimacy. “I believe the whole
(football) team is on (CAC). By that I mean they all have an
intention of improving student-athlete life. They stand for what
the CAC does,” Attar said. However, low activism may result
from the fear of stigma attached and from apathy, given how little
change there has been over the years. “We need a watchdog
over the NCAA,” said Representative Shelley Berkley,
D”“Nevada, a former Nevada University regent, in her
congressional testimony. “I know from personal experience
that coaches and academic institutions are often scared to death of
the NCAA because they know that if the NCAA doesn’t like you,
they are going to come after you,” she said. Whether David or
Goliath will prevail remains to be seen. “On a formal basis,
we will not meet with them,” Renfro said. “Informally,
the SAAC is always open to student-athletes and their
concerns.” Currently, players from UCLA, USC, Stanford,
Washington, Arizona, Arizona State, Oregon, Boise State,
Hawai’i and Saint Louis University have formed chapters of
the CAC. But the CAC has a long way to go, given that there are 117
Division I institutions. Meanwhile, Huma will keep talking.