Frank Deford of NPR has another piece of advice for college presidents:
But I have a similar quest. I seek one prominent college president to say to her trustees or to the other presidents in his conference: “The NCAA is a sham and disgrace. Let’s get out of it.”
We know those presidents who disdain the NCAA are out there, but, alas, none dare speak the words that will break the evil spell.
There’s two problems with Deford’s mission. First is that finding a college president who will speak out against an organization that has elevated that group to its highest place of power and reverence is tough. I am sure, like Deford is, that there are college presidents who hate the NCAA. But I am equally sure they do not hate the NCAA as a concept. Rather they hate some aspect of the NCAA or some specific NCAA rule(s).
The second problem is that Deford needs to be careful what he wishes for. A college president who speaks out against the NCAA may be fighting for exactly the opposite of what Deford argues for:
Basically, the NCAA has only two functions: to put on championship tournaments; and to enforce its own crazy-quilt rules. Sure, everybody likes championships, but colleges could outsource them to all sorts of other organizations. American Idol could run sports championships, I’m sure; so could Antiques Roadshow. And each athletic division, each conference should make specific rules best for itself.
Anti-NCAA college presidents might end up fighting for an even stronger organization, one with the power to control costs, enforce higher academic standards, and bring college athletics closer to the central mission of the university. That is in stark contrast to the loose confederation of conferences that Deford proposes.
Whenever someone argues that college presidents should do something with the NCAA, they need to also explain exactly what college presidents should do and, even more importantly, why they would do it. When Seth Davis argued college presidents should give up control of the NCAA, he did not say to whom they should cede control. Likewise, Deford needs to explain how colleges and conferences would organize themselves with such loose bonds between them.
Disagree with this post on a number of levels. For one, I think it’s the college athletes, more than the NCAA, that has lifted the recognition of colleges sports. But let’s not kid ourselves, this recognition is not equally shared among all college sports. There are basically two sports – football and basketball. And even without the NCAA, public interest in my view would have also grown over the last 30 years or so. It seems to me to be no coincidence that the popularity of the NFL has grown on a somewhat correlated basis as the popularity of college football. Sure, not a perfect correlation, but there is a lot of cross-over appeal between the two, and a consumer of one (e.g., the NFL) is likely or will likely be a consumer of the other (e.g., NCAAF). Does the NCAA deserve credit for the popularity in the NFL? Maybe a little, but that’s about it.
The reason folks say that school presidents should stand up to the NCAA isn’t to say that the original purpose of the NCAA is worthless. Rather, I see I see Frank Deford’s point as more an attack at the NCAA, a governing body that’s lost its way. Instead, I think schools and school presidents would be well served to reign in a governing body that is subject to little oversight and increasingly the appearance of corruption. Your position of “it’s the NCAA or nothing” is like saying North Korea should have absolutley no government because we think the North Korean government is corrupt. No, a government in North Korea (or Iraq for that matter) serves a legitimate purpose. Just the regime that’s in place is broken and corrupt.
Similarly, the NCAA is broken and corrupt. It’s enforcement is weilded in a haphazard fashion giving rise to “outliers,” while precedent isn’t followed. This basically means the member schools are not treated equally. Moreover, the enforcement process is conducted in secret (sound familiar to North Korea?), with an appeals process that is somewhat of a farce, given the recent examples of members of the NCAA appeals committee working with the COI in the initial report. In other words, there’s no appeal.
Colleges continue to have a need for a governing body like the NCAA. However, given the NCAA’s history, it’s unwillingness to enforce its rules consistently and its continued operation in secretness, with conflicted members doling out punishment to others, is indicative of a corrupt organization. So, yes, Frank Deford is correct, school presidents need to stand up to the NCAA. They need to take back the organization that has been hijacked by the likes of the “Paul Dees” of the word – the ones that gravitate to power to dole out inequitable punishments to then find out his own school (the University of Miami) is the most corrupt of them all – all while he was the Athletic Director. Dee exemplifies the corruption of the NCAA and why its broken. It is, in fact, time to stand up to the NCAA.