Some thoughts on the state of the NCAA

Four year scholarships?

For the purpose of this article, I am only going to consider the case of college football. It's what I know the most about and can speak about most intelligently.

USC decided to move to awarding football and men's and women's basketball players with four year scholarships. To understand the significance of this move, we need to first examine the current renewable scholarship system.

Traditional athletic scholarships (hereon referred to simply as scholarships) are awarded/renewed prior to start of each academic year. Regardless of what peripheral clauses the agreements may have, these scholarships are awarded purely on the basis of athletic performance. The path to renewal is pretty cut and dry: play well. Even if you get thrown off your team for stealing computers, another school will probably give you an offer as long as you're good (Note: I actually don't have a problem granting second chances to players who do boneheaded things like this. I don't particularly like third chances).

Academic performance isn't Cardale Jones's biggest concern

Right off the bat we see academics and athletics at odd with one another: an athlete creates more value for the school (and will thus be rewarded for that value by way of scholarship) by performing well on the field rather than performing well in the classroom. In the documentary Schooled: The Price of College Sports (available on Netflix and highly recommended), Maryland cornerback Domonique Foxworth asserted that given the choice between staying up on a Thursday night to study for a test and compromising his performance on Saturday or going to bed, failing the test, and getting a pick on game day, the language of the scholarship strongly incentivized choosing the second option. A pick in a big spot could be the difference in keeping his scholarship for the next year and not being able to pay for school. But, if he can't dedicate the requisite time to his schoolwork to really be educated, why is he in school in the first place? (Note: NOT HIS FAULT)

This is where four year scholarships come into play. They don't need to be renewed and thus continued enrollment in the university is no longer predicated on athletic performance. If a player is struggling on the field due to off-field issues, he doesn't need to add worrying about his scholarship being revoked to the list of problems. This also means a school honoring a scholarship of a permanently injured player no longer becomes; it's just what is required.

From the athlete's perspective, I cannot find any downsides to a four year scholarship. In a way, it allows the athlete to become more a regular college student. I hope the NCAA moves to this policy in the near future.

UPDATE 8/19/14: University of Maryland announces lifetime degree guarantees for all student-athletes. As it should be.

Pay for play?

The hot topic of the day regarding the NCAA is paying athletes for their services. I have conflicted thoughts on this. On the one hand, athletes are powerful marketing tools and revenue drivers for universities and should be compensated for this. On the other hand, one of the things I love so dearly about college sports is the (blissfully ignorant?) idea that each every team is roughly equal.

Football players are supposedly limited to 20 "countable" hours per week of practice activities in season plus 3 hours of competition¹. When non-countable hours get factored in, that amount of time more than doubles. A quick look at the definition of countable vs. non-countable hours shows why this is the case: travel to/from competition, "voluntary" weight training, training room hours, and several other time sucks are categorized as non-countable.

Let's do a quick weekly hour breakdown for an in-season football player: 44 hours on football, 40 hours on school², and the doctor's recommended 56 hours of sleep. Add those up and we have 140 hours of the 168 in a week blocked off. The point I'm trying to get at it is these athletes are working two full-times jobs: football and school. They cannot reasonably be expected to pickup another job to make a little money for food³ or entertainment. The athletes are compensated for their education but resulting lack of funds from athletic commitment (which generates revenue for the school) preventing a kid from seeing a Sunday matinee with his friends is shame.

The simple argument for paying kids is as such: they generate money and publicity for the universities and the NCAA and should be appropriately compensated.

But...

Unranked Stanford upsetting #1 USC

What I love about college football is that the Jameis Winston makes the same amount of money as Middle Tennessee State's long snapper. While some universities certainly have distinct recruiting advantages over others⁴, one of those advantages is not a contract⁵. Under the current rules, Alabama, despite its best efforts, can't become the New York Yankees. This is one factor that leads to the higher variability of CFB and then we get things like the 2007 season.

App State over #5 Michigan

From an organizational standpoint, I also find equality amongst teammates to be hugely important. One receiver getting paid more than another while the lesser paid receiver was more productive would be a fast track to disaster; similarly, there could be administrative pressure to keep higher paid athlete on the field despite underperformance⁶. College athletics are so refreshing because so much of this, for lack of a better word, bullshit, is non-existent. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of bullshit to go around, but this source of it is dry.

What I see is a necessity for compensation paired with a slightly irrational + emotional desire for no compensation. How can these square? I've discussed this with Fritz and we disagreed slightly.

My plan is give every Division I FBS player (scholarship or walk-on) a certain allowance. I have no idea what is fair. That should be determined by a third party (not some NCAA committee). The players can access a certain percentage of that wage at any point, no questions asked. Another percentage will be doled out in certain intervals (like a pay check). The remainder will be accessed by request through the AD's or coach's office. Anything not spent during the year will be moved to a trust⁷ which will be transferred to the athlete upon graduation. Maybe a certain percentage should be withheld from the start.

Under my system, the quarterback at one school is worth the same as his punter and is the same as the quarterback at any other school in the country. There is no discrepancy among teammates and there is no recruiting advantage between schools vis-à-vis compensation. If a five-star left tackle wants to play for his hometown Western Kentucky Hilltoppers, he's not losing out on anything new by not going to Notre Dame.

Perhaps even more important is this system will teach the athletes personal finance! If a guy blows through his cash in a week, he'll learn the consequences and (hopefully) won't do it again. Fortunately, this mistake won't be back-breaking because it's occurring in a controlled environment. When he's in the real world, he'll be able to make a budget. If he makes the NFL, he'll have a better shot at avoiding becoming one of the money broke players upon retirement⁸. I don't much bad in my plan.

Fritz disagrees with me on part: he thinks each conference should have equal pay, but pay across conferences can vary (eg players in the SEC will be paid more than players in the MAC). As stated, I prefer my plan, but I could live with this too.

I really don't know what the trajectory of pay for play is. But something is going to change soon.

Recent NCAA Violations

Let's have a little fun:

Cake cookies: NCAA violation?

• South Carolina recently self-reported an NCAA violation for "impermissible icing" on cookies. After much debate, the NCAA decided it wasn't a violation. Better safe than sorry on SCAR's part, though.
• Oregon self-reported violations including mini golf and laser tag at team dinners, accidentally responding a recruit's text message, and buying a shaving supplies for a recruit (full list of violations here). I get the violation for buying the shaving supplies: it's slippery slope from a disposable Mach3 to Eric Dickerson's gold Trans-Am (while I'm being a bit sarcastic, there is, without question, a grey area that should be avoided altogether). But the school paying for mini golf is a problem? I guess team building isn't a tenet of the NCAA.

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¹I'm pretty curious how this is defined: is it time only spent competing? I've spent more than 5x the allotted time at a track meet in a weekend but only actually ran for < 40s.
²15 hours of class, 25 hours of schoolwork--this might be a little skewed because they could be doing work in study hall that they count as football time, but I think the 44 football hours is an underestimation.
³Thanks to good old Shabazz Napier, schools can now feed their athletes.
⁴Facilities, academic prestige, girls, coaches, etc.
⁵Let's assume everyone is cheating equally here.
⁶Eg Stephen Drew on this year's Red Sox.
⁷Or whatever.
⁸ESPN has a 30 for 30 on this called Broke. I haven't watched it yet, but every episode in the series is fantastic.