A PRICE TO PLAY | ‘Corrupt’ system in danger of collapse

Editor’s note: This is the sixth and final installment of a Bradenton Herald series on the state of college athletics.

College presidents emerged from their two-day summit last week calling for sweeping changes to improve the integrity of college athletics.

Several key people who have been battling for reform said the NCAA might have in effect signed its own death warrant because it didn’t address the issue of helping athletes.

“There is a massive underground economy out there. There is massive cheating, and the reason is that they (athletes) don’t believe in the system,” said Allen Sack, University of New Haven professor and co-founder of the Drake Group, a national organization of college faculty members formed to fight corruption in college sports.

“This is like prohibition and outlawing alcohol merely led to an outbreak of the worst kind of crime in the nation’s history with Al Capone, Chicago and the mobs,” Sack said. “What we have here is a system out of control where most nice, regular, good people say it is corrupt, and therefore athletes are violating rules because they don’t believe the people who run this thing are really honest.”

NCAA President Mark Emmert said the NCAA would focus attention on the serious threats to the integrity of intercollegiate sports. He cited improving enforcement efforts, strengthening penalties and raising the academic requirements for athletes.

“I am not impressed about going after kids who have sold their national championship rings when big-time college sports have sold the entire university to the networks for billions of dollars,” Sack said.

“The NCAA is starting to crumble internally. It is losing legitimacy in the eyes of its constituents, especially the athletes.”

Twenty years ago, then-Maryland Congressman Tom McMillen, a former NBA player, called for hearings on the NCAA. He said nothing much has changed since.

“The NCAA is a fragmented power structure and the only thing in charge right now is the almighty dollar. The players have a right to say I want a piece of the pie, and I think they will eventually win,” McMillen said.

Emmert will not discuss any of the lawsuits currently in litigation against the NCAA and did not answer a request to respond to statements by Sack and McMillen.

“We want to make a decision to set clear academic expectations for participation in any of our tournaments,” Emmert said. “If you don’t meet those expectations, you will not be allowed to participate in our tournaments, including the men’s basketball tournament (the NCAA’s top revenue producer).”

McMillen, now a member of the University Of Maryland Board of Regents, said the NCAA is not addressing the real issue, which is athletes’ welfare, money and the commercialism of college sports.

“At some point in time, when coaches are making $10 million and the players can barely go to their grandparent’s funeral, you are going to have some kind of litigation that will blow this up,” he said.

“You have coaches making salaries that are often 25 times more than what the college president at his school makes. When you go to that excess, it’s not unnatural for players to say, ‘I want some of this.’”

Penn State President Graham Spanier said violators “should be afraid now if they are going to go out and break any rules -- because people have had enough of that.”

Sack said this tough stance is just posturing among the NCAA presidents to regain support from a public that has lost confidence in them.

McMillen and Sack say the players will eventually win more rights through the court system.

There was speculation the NCAA might allow conferences the option of granting multi-year athletic scholarships and raising those grant-in-aids, but no details were released on how this would work.

“It’s great for the haves, but not so great for the have-nots and will probably exacerbate the arms race and that means more spending and more spending,” McMillen said. “The strong conferences will elect to give extra money to the athletes and so they obviously have tremendous advantages.

“I think they made some positive steps. The playoff standards for participation were admirable, but trying to address the welfare of the student-athlete is important and I am not sure the solution they came up with does that.”

Two lawsuits could have a major impact on the NCAA.

One is the O’Bannon case that seeks compensation for former college players whose images are used in video games.

The other was filed by former Rice University football player Joseph Agnew, who had his football scholarship revoked. It argues the one-year limits on athletic scholarships are a price-fixing agreement between the NCAA and its member institutions.

Sack, a quarterback on the 1966 Notre Dame national championship team, said if the NCAA does not change, the student-athletes will do it for them. McMillen sees the same scenario.

“The athletes have the power to change things, and they are already doing it,” Sack said. “They are much smarter these days. Instead of going to the streets, they are going the legal route.

“If there is any case that should be won it’s O’Bannon. This one I truly believe that the athletes should win on the basis of the law, but there are never guarantees in these cases.”

Football great Jim Brown, a longtime advocate for athletes’ rights, says the NCAA needs to reorganize from the top down.

“It’s a hypocritical organization. They starve kids to death and make all this money. If players don’t get money under the table from doing some bogus job they can’t survive,” Brown said. “There are too many things that get you in trouble and make you an outlaw, and it shouldn’t be that way.”

Critics are questioning why nothing was mentioned about increasing medical benefits for student-athletes and lifting some restrictions placed on the athletes.

They say any increase in grade requirements for incoming freshmen discriminates against kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. They are against an NCAA a proposal that would allow companies to use players’ images in advertisements and a new rule forcing college basketball players to commit a month earlier to the NBA draft next year, saying it helps college coaches and hurts the players.

This story was originally published August 19, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "A PRICE TO PLAY | ‘Corrupt’ system in danger of collapse."