The NCAA News - Comment

June 24, 1996

• Guest comment -- This column brought to you by the folks at... ...By John Blanchette, Spokane Spokesman-Review
• Letter to the Editor -- Law should reward enterprising behavior
• Opinions -- Dean: Revenue programs drive SEC's overall success

Guest comment -- This column brought to you by the folks at ...

BY JOHN BLANCHETTE
Spokane Spokesman-Review

You don't need a bunch of suits sitting around talking to tell you collegiate athletics is up to its Swoosh-covered heart in commercialization.

Although if one of the suits is Keith Jackson, he can certainly help you articulate your disgust.

Like most of us, Mr. College Football flopped into his easy chair last January 2 to watch the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, prove itself to be the baddest outfit to come down the pike since "no contest" became a plea instead of a point spread. The Cornhuskers were mussing up Steve Spurrier's hair in what used to be called the Fiesta Bowl, but which for $15 million had been sold down a river of salsa to a popular snack food.

And we mean sold. They didn't paint the logo on the game ball, but that's all they missed.

If Jackson is the voice of college football, he can also sound like its conscience when he insists, "I don't want to see it destroyed or sold out or abused.

"And my degree of feeling of what I saw -- and I turned it off at half time -- was that there had better never be a sack of Tostitos in my house."

Whoa, Nellie. We'll assume Miz Jackson has amended her grocery list.

Now, when he's in the booth for ABC, Jackson doesn't delude himself that his network feeds viewers a diet of public-service announcements during timeouts. Somebody has to pay the freight and the freight gets heavier by the year, which is one of the reasons Jackson convened this year's Edward R. Murrow Symposium at Washington State University, his alma mater, on April 16.

To palaver the business of collegiate sports and television, Jackson invited a heavyweight panel to Beasley Coliseum on the Washington State campus: outgoing ABC sports president Dennis Swanson, former University of Michigan athletics director Don Canham, Washington State President Sam Smith and Bill Battle, the former University of Tennessee, Knoxville, football coach who's now CEO of Collegiate Licensing, a company that grossed about $2.5 billion in royalties last year from selling you the Cougars hat you wear while mowing the lawn.

They had a lot to talk about. Some of what they had to say decried the rampant commercialism they've all, to some extent, been a party to.

In an afternoon sit-down, for instance, the topic briefly turned to Nike and the damnable Swoosh now tattooed on college uniforms in a show of marketing force that must have the old preppie alligator people welling up in envy.

Maybe apparel money at some schools is keeping lacrosse alive and the track team in spikes. Nobody can read a bottom line better than Canham, but he still claimed "the Nike thing is a disgrace to me."

More than a disgrace, though, it could eventually be counterproductive, too.

"If Nike can get all that exposure from the major universities (on uniforms)," noted Swanson, "they're not going to need to buy television time -- and that impacts our ability to pay rights. And what's the next logical extension? If you're going to put one logo on there, what's to stop you from putting a half-dozen on?

"Pretty soon, you're going to look like a race car."

So it's an aesthetic question. And a fiscal question. And a moral one.

The collegiate athletics people still like to think they're part of the educational mission, but more and more they're walking a tightrope between the entertainment demands of their audiences and financing equal opportunity. More and more, the corporate community has been asked to help -- the same companies who buy the same exposure in professional arenas.

So what happens when Joe College sees the corporate support, the TV cash and gate receipts go to pay Shawn Kemp's $6 million salary -- but that his own sweat is only worth room, board, books, tuition and fees?

It scares the college administrator to death.

"If players strike -- for a salary or 200 bucks a month of whatever -- the public would turn off just like that," Canham said. "People see the college athlete as an amateur and as soon as that illusion disappears, the loyalty will disappear with it, too."

Hmm. That may be more persuasive to the disgruntled quarterback who packs the stadium but doesn't have 10 bucks for a pizza than telling him the money he brings in has to fund women's crew.

Easier still would be to persuade him to participate in a national playoff.

This figures to be something of a last stand for the NCAA's powerful Presidents Commission, which Smith now chairs. Oh, other structural and academic issues certainly remain, but even the Washington State president acknowledges nothing will galvanize public debate more than a football playoff. And nothing is a larger potential revenue stream.

And yet Swanson -- the man with the money -- wonders whether the colleges can afford to take it.

"Clearly, there is upside revenue potential," he said, "but you can argue if we need more revenue. At what price?

"The root of most of the problems that exist in college athletics today is money and greed -- whether it's dealing with agents or overaggressive alumni creating recruiting infractions or elimination of sports. It's all money-driven."

College administrators had better chew on that the next time they're offered a Tostito.

John Blanchette is a columnist for the Spokane Spokesman-Review, in which this article first appeared.

Letter to the Editor -- Law should review enterprising behavior

Letter to the editor

This past spring I was asked to serve on a student scholarship selection committee at my institution.

Accompanying the list of students who met the minimal criteria for the scholarship was a determination -- based on federal guidelines -- of the amount of financial aid for which each student on the list was still eligible.

During a committee meeting I was chagrined to learn that some students were deemed to have reached their formal aid limit because of their earned income, while other students -- who may not have worked a day during the year -- were still considered eligible for financial assistance.

In other words, the industrious and enterprising student may price him/herself out of social support, while the student who engages in slothful behavior is "entitled."

I note that this same "logic" is being applied to Title IX regulations involving athletics funding (May 27, 1996, issue of The NCAA News: "Title IX Ticker"). To wit, if the coaches and players on one team (for example, baseball) work hard all year to earn $10,000 for a spring trip, then the only form of exertion the members of the definitionally equivalent team of the other gender (softball) need display is a hand outstretched to their institution and the utterance "gimme the same."

When was it that the American creed of "equal opportunity for all" was changed to "equal outcomes for all"?

Paul E. Dubois
Professor of Physical Education
Bridgewater State College (Massachusetts)

Opinions -- Dean: Revenue programs drive SEC's overall success

Joe Dean, athletics director

Discussing the success this year of the Southeastern Conference, which captured nine NCAA Division I championships:

"It becomes a financial thing. Because we have big football stadiums and a powerful football conference, we generate enough money to fully fund our other sports and give them the opportunity to win national championships.....

"There's no question (that weather also) helps sports like golf, tennis, track and baseball. It's hard for a school like Michigan to win some of the spring sports. They have a wonderful program, with a big stadium that allows them to fund at the highest level, but the weather works against them....

"As we try to raise additional moneys, more and more pressure is going to be applied to the revenue-producing sports to make it all work.

"That's a sensitive issue, because you're charging someone who comes to a football or basketball game to pay for those other programs."

Marcus Camby case

Joe Fitzgerald, columnist

"What we ought to be asking is what happens to the majority of scholarship athletes once their playing days are done? Does society get any return on that investment of classroom seats, other than a thrilling Final Four?

"But no one wants to ask that question.

"We want to ask why a guy like Marcus Camby wasn't paid for all he gave to dear State U., as if we should have been grateful he graced us with his presence.

"We pay pros to satisfy our Walter Mitty dreams, to fulfill our vicarious need to triumph over someone else.

"Must we pay collegians, too?

"Then why stop there? Why not high-school stars? How about Little League hotshots?

"Whatever Camby got, we're now asked to believe, he deserved.

"If so, then the rest of us deserve what we're getting, too."

Terence Moore, columnist

"You have those knee-jerk folks whining their silly tune again that goes, 'It's time to pay college athletes.' And, again, I ask a series of questions that those knee-jerk folks never can answer: How much should college athletes get paid? Which college athletes should get paid? Who is going to police the system? What about gender equity? Where is the money going to come from, especially since most athletics departments are financially strapped because of gender equity?

"Until those knee-jerk folks find answers to the unanswerable, these are the NCAA rules we'll have for a while. And rules are rules, whether Camby, (John) Calipari and those knee-jerk folks like them or not. Says Camby, 'I made a mistake, but I also was taken advantage of.'

"Yeah, well, there are many who'd love to be taken advantage of by receiving $5,300 worth of something."

Professional basketball

Mike Tranghese, commissioner
Big East Conference

"I think the NBA is a farce. Everything in basketball trickles down from the pros and what is the message the NBA is sending? Dunks. Marketing. Rough play. Light shows.

"Basketball is no longer a game of skill, with emphasis on shooting and passing. It's about all these other things. That is the message the NBA is sending. Dennis Rodman is now a cult hero. What's the message to a 12-year-old?....

"David Stern and the NBA say that players leaving college early is not their problem, it's the college's problem. But it's about to become the NBA's problem. Because the NBA is going to be full of more and more socially immature, uneducated people.

"I don't think we're ever going to prevent kids from going to the NBA. And maybe we shouldn't. It's not really about kids' leaving. It's about the intensification of agents. And it's about AAU coaches who have a tremendous influence over kids. It's about a system that has no values....

"We have to do as much as we can, because right now the system is out of control."

Initial-eligibility standards

Bob Pruett, football coach
Marshall University

"The (high-school) seniors understand the new rules, but the ninth-graders need to understand. Hey, every year counts the same.

"You can't screw up in the first year (of high school) with D's and E's and expect to come back. Your freshman year counts as one-fourth of your total."

Baseball

Ronald J. Maestri, chair
NCAA Division I Baseball Committee

"My personal opinion is that it (a later college baseball season) is something we need to look at because it would help baseball throughout the country.

"A later season would create in the North and the Northeast and the Midwest coaching positions that would be excellent.

"The way it is now, you are not going to see many leaving a Louisiana State or an Alabama to take a job in the North.

"(If top coaches could be more attracted to northern locales), the coach would have a chance of selling his program to the community. It would make the selling of advertising easier. It would create a better baseball job. For that reason, it would help the coaching profession throughout the United States."

Discussing what would have to change:

"One of the issues would be the academic calendar. There are many institutions that are through with exams in April. Do you keep student-athletes during the summer period after that? How much would it cost?....

"There are also some who don't want it. We have to be united in whatever we do. If the majority feels there needs to be a change, then everybody has to support it.

"It certainly doesn't do us any good if we have a bunch of people who want it, and we have a few prominent coaches who come out and vehemently speak against it.

"What everybody has to keep in mind is, 'What is in the best interest of college baseball overall?' -- not just from an individual situation because you have good weather and a good program."

Sex barriers

Gerry Kraus, assistant track and field coach
University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point

Discussing challenges facing a top female pole vaulter:

"Any time women start to delve into an area that has generally been dominated by men, you find resistance. Eight, nine years ago if you would have asked if we would ever have women pole vaulting, the answer would have been a resounding, 'No way.' "