The NCAA News - Comment

June 3, 1996

• Guest editorial -- Pay-for-play philosophy is the wrong approach ...By James E. Delany, Big Ten Conference
• Comment -- Title IX not just proportionality issue
• Opinions -- Baseball a great game - but a different one nowadays

Guest editorial -- Pay-for-play philosophy is the wrong approach

BY JAMES E. DELANY
Big Ten Conference

The welfare and development of today's student-athlete is central to the administration of Big Ten Conference intercollegiate athletics. Providing opportunity for young men and women to mature in a wholesome and healthy way is critically important to our universities. A commitment exists at all levels of our universities to providing the resources to support the welfare of Big Ten student-athletes.

At the 1996 NCAA Convention, the Division I membership debated a number of issues related to financial assistance for student-athletes. Limitations on Pell Grants, stipends awarded by the federal government for educational purposes, were removed. Discussions took place, and continue to occur, on ways to liberalize rules on how student-athletes can earn money from work done during the off-season. Around the same time, the NCAA Executive Committee increased the annual funding of the special assistance fund from $3 million to $10
million.

Big Ten institutions provide more than 6,400 young men and women opportunities to play on 250 intercollegiate teams. These young people receive more than $42 million annually from Big Ten institutions in grants-in-aid (tuition, room and board, books). While receiving the opportunity for a world-class education, they compete with and against some of the finest amateur athletes in the country.

Needy student-athletes in the Big Ten may receive up to $2,000 annually above the value of their grant-in-aid via federal aid and are eligible for cash payments from the special assistance fund for items like clothing, emergency trips home and other special needs.

Big Ten universities also assist student-athletes in identifying summer employment opportunities, career placement and catastrophic-injury insurance plans. They also assist with a $1 million insurance plan that financially protects student-athletes with professional sports aspirations in the event they suffer a disabling injury.

Today, the system that served so many so
well and for so long is being called into question by the media, the public and even by some coaches and student-athletes. They assert that some student-athletes in football and basketball should be paid for their participation. They believe that the market forces that drive professional sports, or any other private-sector activity, should provide the controlling principle for the relationship between the student-athlete and the university.

This issue of financial assistance for student-athletes is critical to defining and examining the relationship between intercollegiate athletics and higher education as we approach the 21st century. While we must be open to novel approaches and new ideas, paying student-athletes to play is not supportable within the context of Big Ten intercollegiate athletics -- now or in the future.

In my view, revenues derived from intercollegiate athletics are the sole property of the institution and should be expended in support of the broadest array of men's and women's educational and athletics opportunities. Thus, revenues are earned in private-sector activity and spent within the confines of the university for appropriate educational purposes.

Some critics of college athletics cite the economic and educational exploitation of the student-athletes who participate in our major revenue sports as a major flaw in the system. We believe the educational and the lifetime economic benefits associated with a university education are the appropriate quid pro quo for any Big Ten student-athlete, regardless of the sport.

For many decades, Big Ten intercollegiate athletics has been funded largely by revenues from men's basketball and football programs. This situation is not likely to change in the foreseeable future. Our institutions have sponsored sports programs that enabled outstanding athletes such as Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Red Grange, Archie Griffin, John Havlicek and Dick Butkus (the list is endless) to obtain an education and play their sport, in turn providing resources for educational and athletics opportunities for such people as Suzy Favor, Jesse Owens, Mark Spitz and Jack Nicklaus. Under this system, people like John Wooden and Gerald Ford played alongside student-athletes much less famous, but equally deserving of an intercollegiate athletics experience.

Intercollegiate athletics has provided, and will continue to provide, opportunities for social mobility through education for future generations of young men and women. We must ensure that all young people admitted to our universities are prepared to compete academically so that the overall student-athlete academic outcomes are compatible with their peers within the general student population. Recent efforts to raise NCAA initial-eligibility standards are attempts to counter the argument that unprepared student-athletes are being admitted and then exploited for their athletics contributions.

About seven million fans annually attend Big Ten men's basketball and football events and more than 300 million Americans watch these sports on television. Ticket and television revenues derived from those sources are shared among our members so that each university can sponsor the most broadly based, nationally competitive sporting opportunities in the country.

Federal law requires equity of opportunity; fairness and common sense compel the same result. While the source of program revenues will continue to be predominantly men's basketball and football, the expenditure of these revenues will continue to support multiple and varied educational and sporting opportunities for young men and women student-athletes.

We should not object if young athletes prefer to go directly from high school to the NBA, NFL, NHL or some international version of professional sports. If they choose to attend a university for a year or several years, we should not attempt to restrain them from moving into professional leagues. In fact, after making the best possible case for the value of an education, we should eliminate any and all obstacles to such access. In short, the college community should provide educational and athletics opportunities, then get out of the way so those talented individuals interested in pursuing their sport on a professional basis can do so.

While acknowledging the commercial activity attendant to the presentation of some of our sports activities, we do not similarly accept the premise that our athletes are professionals. Ours is a unique system that has fostered social and educational good by supporting a broad array of opportunities for thousands of young men and women.

Additionally, if forced to decide between adopting or adapting to the professional model, I am confident our institutions would forgo the revenues and take steps necessary to downsize the scope, breadth and activity of these historically vibrant programs. While these decisions would be difficult and sad, this would be the ultimate choice of the presidents, faculty and board of trustees of Big Ten presidents.

Whatever marketplace arguments may exist on behalf of pay-for-play, they are far outweighed by the athletics and educational value of the experience provided by our institutions in the name of intercollegiate athletics.

A news story in the February 8, 1896, edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that a faculty representative meeting of the Western Conference (the former name of the Big Ten) was scheduled to discuss "a firm stand for purity in athletics and eradication of professionalism...."

While the pay-for-play issue affects only a minority of student-athletes in the Big Ten, its ultimate resolution will lay the foundation for the 21st century paradigm for intercollegiate athletics, just as its resolution in the late 19th century laid the foundation for the 20th century experience.

James E. Delany is commissioner of the Big Ten Conference.

Comment -- Title IX not just a proportionality issue

Letter to the editor

This is in response to Paul Diefenbach's letter in the March 25 issue of The NCAA News ("Make opportunity the Title IX standard").

Mr. Diefenbach stated that "enforcement of Title IX focuses only on participation," a factor that he claims "provides a distorted measure of opportunity." A random sampling of Office for Civil Rights findings will quickly refute the participation enforcement standard that Mr. Diefenbach claims.

Title IX regulations do not require male and female participation ratios similar to those of the undergraduate population. Title IX does, however, require that an institution show continuing progress toward substantially equal treatment of both sexes.

His premise is based on the fact that men's squads are typically 25 percent larger than women's, thereby forcing schools to drop men's sports to balance participation numbers in order to comply with Title IX. And he asks, "How would that benefit women?"

He suggests that the maximum "opportunity" slots available be the measure for compliance instead of actual participation numbers. And I ask, "How would that benefit women?"

Such arguments serve to maintain the status quo and mollify the advantaged rather than stimulate reflection.

What the writer neglects to address is our moral obligation as educators to address the underlying reasons for participation differences between men and women. If we truly embrace athletics as having educational value, we must reason beyond the obvious "Are current interests being met?" to "How might we reverse society's 'stifling' of the interests girls show for sport early in life?"

As for the law, Title IX is in fact all-inclusive, with reviews covering 13 program components: (a) accommodation of interests and abilities; (b) athletics financial aid; and (c) 11 other program areas (equipment, travel, coaching, publicity, etc.). Because Title IX protects benefits and opportunities on the basis of sex, compliance is determined by comparing the benefits provided to all men's teams to the benefits provided to all women's teams. This approach gives institutions needed flexibility in how to comply with Title IX.

We may forget the comprehensive nature of the law because our attention has been focused repeatedly on "opportunity" due to the numerous court rulings in favor of plaintiffs, where there was proof of gross denial of opportunity when both interest and ability were present.

Let us be reminded that accommodation of interests and abilities is simply one of the 13 program areas evaluated. It, in itself, is made up of a three-prong test, only one of which an institution must satisfy. The three ways to comply are (1) to provide participation opportunities for men and women that are substantially proportionate to their respective rates of enrollment as full-time undergraduate students; or (2) to demonstrate a history and continuing practice of program expansion for the underrepresented sex; or (3) to fully and effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.

Title IX, when applied to athletics, is much more than simply "participation" and "accommodation." It is more than access to education and athletics opportunities. It includes providing a positive environment for personal growth and maximizing human resources for the betterment of
society.

It is time to cease defending the status quo and time to move on to an enlightened era of sport.

Christine H. B. Grant
Director of Women's Athletics
University of Iowa

Opinions -- Baseball a great game - but a different one nowadays

Cliff Gustafson, baseball coach
University of Texas at Austin

"We used to get a few second- and third-round draft picks in college. Now, we don't. First-rounders are getting anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million. Second-rounders are getting anywhere from $200,000 to $400,000. Kids can't afford to turn that down....

"The most successful college pitchers right now are the ones who have command of their breaking pitches. The guys who can throw in the 90s without much finesse are going to get hammered....

"I've always been a coach who stressed pitching and defense. Some of the finer points are lost. It's silly now to play for one run early in a game, to bunt a guy over, because one run's not going to stand up. It takes some adapting in your philosophy.

"You just have to accept it. That's the nature of the game nowadays."

Rod Dedeaux, former baseball coach
University of Southern California

"I've always said that if I could play college baseball the rest of my life, I would. The College World Series has a lot to do with that. For me, it probably was the best feeling I've had in baseball....

"I've been to every one of them, and I've always said that the College World Series is the greatest show on earth. The excitement that builds up over the length of the tournament can't be matched."

Initial-eligibility requirements

Tom Osborne, football coach
University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Discussing a Big 12 Conference rule regarding nonqualifiers and partial qualifiers:

"Under Proposition 16, we eliminated roughly 30 percent of Division I football and basketball players. We have only 46 percent of minority high-school graduates who meet Proposition 16. Now, if we're further tightening the screws and won't allow a non-qualifier to enter a Big 12 school, pay his own way and earn his grades, we've made it very difficult for a lot of people."

Foreign tennis players

Chuck Kriese, men's tennis coach
Clemson University

Discussing how college tennis rosters are dominated by foreign players:

"I'm upset with the state of college tennis. I'm upset that we have coaches that make the wrong decision to win at all costs."

Kent DeMars, men's tennis coach
University of South Carolina, Columbia

"If you want to keep up with the Smiths and the Joneses, you might have no choice. There just isn't enough talent here in the U.S. to beat the international kids who come over."

Sportsmanship

Charles M. Neinas, executive director
College Football Association

"Is sportsmanship a thing of the past?

"Recent actions in the NBA involving head-butting, chest-thumping and a forearm shiver aimed at an official create a poor environment for young people who watch sports on television.

"The problems are not confined to pro basketball. What is the message when the taunter and showboater par excellence, Deion Sanders, reaps millions from commercials? College football was not immune and had to resort to a 15-yard penalty to eliminate taunting. Such action was unfortunate because rules do not promote sportsmanship, people do.

"Sometimes, sportsmanship manifests itself in strange ways. Nick Faldo and Greg Norman, both great golfers and fierce competitors, were playing partners in the final two days of this year's Masters. It was well-known that the two were not friendly with each other. However, after Faldo won the tournament, he exhibited empathy for Norman, who had experienced a disastrous final round. Faldo told the 'Shark' that he was sorry for what happened and asked to embrace his rival. Both men left the 18th green with misty eyes....

"The best officiated basketball game I witnessed involved Bernie Saggau, long-time executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association. Bernie's officiating partner was injured and unable to continue after about five minutes in a game between Kansas and Kansas State that would decide the Big Eight championship. (Two-man officiating crews were then used for college basketball.) Bernie called the coaches and players together and extended himself to his full five feet eight inches and explained he couldn't adequately officiate such an important contest without their help. The result was that the players indicated when they had fouled or caused the ball to go out-of-bounds. There were no complaints about officiating and the game did not lack for excitement of competition. Why? Because those involved accepted responsibility.

"The foregoing examples represent respect for the opponent as a worthy competitor. We extol the virtues of athletics as teaching teamwork, the will to win, and a sense of fair play. It is time we place more emphasis on the latter in this highly competitive society in which we live. In essence, teaching sportsmanship should be a simple lesson. It's called the Golden Rule."