A PRICE TO PLAY | Rights of college athletes debated

From the time colleges organized in 1906 and laid the groundwork for what would eventually become the modern National Collegiate Athletic Association, keeping costs down and maintaining what its leaders call a level playing field have been a high priority, according to historical accounts.

NCAA officials and some college administrators have said protecting the student-athlete is a priority in a debate that has gone on for nearly a century.

In the last decade, there has been a movement to increase the rights of college athletes and remove restrictions that have been placed in some cases for generations.

Walter Byers, the NCAA’s first full-time executive director who served in that capacity for 37 years until his retirement in 1988, said today’s athletes get short-changed and exploited. Once a proponent of limiting the rights of college athletes, he reversed course during his last years with the NCAA.

“I suggested allowing student-athletes to endorse products. ... I said full-need student-athletes should be given additional financial assistance over the permitted grant in aid. I argued that since the colleges were exploiting their talent, the athletes deserved the same access to the free market as the coaches enjoyed,” he wrote in his book, “Unsportsmanlike Conduct, Exploiting College Athletes.”

Initially, Byers feared NCAA athletes could be identified as employees by the courts and thus eligible for worker’s compensation, so he created the term “student-athlete.”

Now he centers a lot of the blame on college presidents for exploiting the system.

“Presidents glory in all the good things about college athletics and blame others for the bad. They are more responsible than anybody else for the current hypocritical tone of college athletics,” Byers said in his book.

NCAA President Mark Emmert does not agree with assumptions that his organization is unfair to student-athletes, though he acknowledges problems. He has said he didn’t understand Byers’ position on some issues, had never talked with him nor read depositions he gave regarding the NCAA.

“The priorities are student-athlete well-being and protection of the collegiate model that we all know and feel viscerally about, but that which we have to convert into language and actions that are meaningful to a public that doesn’t quite understand it -- or if they do, they don’t always believe us,” Emmert said in a statement on the NCAA website.

“We have to remind ourselves that this is about the young men and women we asked to come to our schools for a great educational experience. We have to collectively deliver on those promises. ... That is why we are in business.”

This story was originally published August 14, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "A PRICE TO PLAY | Rights of college athletes debated."