6. Despite Criticism, NCAA Takes a Firm Stance on Professionalism

Steve Weiberg

The following article appeared in USA Today in January 2011.

From the stiff penalties assessed Southern California in the Reggie Bush case to the pay-for-play soap opera surrounding Cam Newton to the pending suspensions of Ohio State football players for selling jerseys, rings and other trinkets, the last six months have underscored a key NCAA commandment:

College athletes are not to be paid, not to cash in on their prominence, never to cross any kind of line of professionalism.

The NCAA has largely stood firm on Bylaw 12—in which it spells out the dos and don’ts—as television, marketing and other revenue run ever deeper, spending on coaches and other personnel continues to climb and calls mount for those on the field to get something beyond a scholarship. The mother of one of the Ohio State offenders, receiver DeVier Posey, complained to the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch last week that the association’s strict, scholarships-only stand leaves many players and their families in unnecessary financial straits and invites violations.

“The NCAA has everybody’s hands tied,” Julie Posey said, “but they roll in dough.”

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USA TODAY briefly examines the issue:

Q. Why is the NCAA so hard-line?

Keep in mind that its 1,000-plus member schools and conferences draw up the regulations that fill a 419-page, almost inch-thick rules manual. They ostensibly agree with Bylaw 12’s stipulation that “member institutions’ athletics programs are designed to be an integral part of the educational program” and that athletes are “an integral part of the student body, thus maintaining a clear line of demarcation between college athletics and professional sports.”

NCAA President Mark Emmert is intent on staying that course. “I feel adamantly that we can never move to a place where we are paying players to play,” he said two weeks ago, echoing a sentiment he has expressed since taking office in October.

Q. How can he or anyone else defend that position given, for starters, the new 14-year, $10.8 billion contract the NCAA just struck with CBS and Turner Sports for media rights to the Division I men’s basketball tournament?

College football’s top-tier Bowl Championship Series pockets $125 million annually from ESPN. The games, and those who play them, are essential properties.

Players, or at least the vast majority of them, receive scholarships covering room, board, books and tuition. With that, Emmert says, they “benefit from the best coaching staff, the best facilities, the best trainers, the best educational environment that anybody can get in the world.”

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He adds, “OK, so the university generates some revenue to help support that effort. I don’t have a problem with that.”

Most major-college athletics programs aren’t piling up money. Only 14 were operating in the black last year.

Q. Still . . .

Critics rail that keeping players amateur—i.e., unpaid—in an otherwise highly commercial enterprise is an injustice. Sales of replica jerseys are an oft-used example. Schools and marketers can profit; the performers who give them their cachet can’t. Multiply that by millions when it comes to game revenue.

“The NCAA amateurism rules are a fictional, oppressive harness designed to protect a plantation-like economic model,” sports attorney David Cornwell wrote recently in SportsBusiness Journal.

Q. Is change possible? Impossible?

Strip away all pretense and simply hand college players a paycheck? That not only won’t fly philosophically in the NCAA, but it’s also financially implausible, given the scores of programs that can’t keep up with existing expenses.

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Any proposal to limit salaries or bumped-up benefits to athletes in the revenue-generating sports of football and men’s basketball almost certainly would meet legal resistance (and would scarcely be more affordable).

Emmert’s predecessor, Myles Brand, briefly promoted the idea of adding $2,000–$3,000 to the value of scholarships to cover travel, laundry and other incidentals, which factor into the full cost of college attendance. But he was talked down by administrators and others in the trenches. A group of former athletes sought the same thing in a class-action suit that was settled in 2008, in part by widening access to supplemental funds.

The NCAA has moved on a few fronts, beefing up those supplemental funds—which athletes can tap for individual needs—and allowing them to borrow against future earnings for insurance against career-ending injury. In perhaps its most startling departure from tradition, athletes are allowed to compete as pros in one sport and maintain college eligibility in another. For example, North Carolina State quarterback Russell Wilson can be a minor league baseball player for the Colorado Rockies but still play for the Wolfpack football team.

Q. That’s it, then?

Eyes are on another class-action suit, filed by former Arizona State and Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller and others claiming the NCAA and its video-game partner, EA Sports, have gone too far in using the likenesses of college players who are barred from sharing in the games’ profits.

A court could award multimillion-dollar damages or, more likely, the sides could reach a settlement. The NCAA could be compelled to tighten the use of athletes’ likenesses. But it’s a good bet it won’t move toward annually compensating them.

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Interestingly, Emmert muses on change in another area. At a time when players’ brushes with agents are drawing sanctions and attention, he questions the extent to which they’re restricted from exploring pro careers.

“You want to be an accountant? Fine, we’re going to introduce you to every accounting firm we can. We’re going to bring in accountants to talk to you. You’re going to get a summer internship,” he said. “Say you want to be a Major League Baseball player, and you’re toast. We don’t let you talk to anybody.

“I think there’s some part of that we’ve got to fix.”