The NCAA News - Comment
July 8, 1996
Guest editorial -- Exodus of athletes has societal overtones
BY JOHN THOMPSON
Georgetown University
The recent rash of underclassmen and high-school seniors who made themselves
available for the recent National Basketball Association draft is alarming
from several perspectives -- and not just because one of my star players was
among them.
The NCAA will be concerned about reduced "product value" as popular college
players are no longer avail-able for television viewers. The NBA must look at
the potential public relations nightmare of teenagers being pushed into an
environment that some adults have demonstrated they cannot handle. Concerned
adults look at the impact on the players themselves, asking how will this
child deal with the challenges of an environment with no supervision, lots of
money, and unscrupulous, irresponsible and even criminal individuals as a
surrounding cast.
My concern, however, deals with the impact that this demonstrated
disaffection with education will have on society. Don't tell me that we are
only talking about a few kids going to the pros -- they are the example that
hundreds and hundreds of children will follow. Hundreds of children who will
believe that education is unimportant and unnecessary, that if their
athletics talents are great enough, they don't need college at all, in fact
they may not need high school.
Don't tell me they can pursue education later -- many of these kids don't see
the value of education to begin with, so what will prompt them to attempt a
degree later?
Finally, don't tell me that they have the right to go for the money. I don't
dispute their rights, but I want everyone to recognize the harm that we are
doing to ourselves as a society by diminishing the importance of education
and magnifying the importance of immediate gratification. And I want us to
think about some ways we can make it more attractive for them to stay in
school.
I make no apologies for the fact that I am a capitalist, and I am not saying
that money is bad. When I didn't have it, I wanted it and was determined that
one day I would make the most of what I could get. I am saying that we should
consider carefully how we teach our children, that we must examine what
priorities we give them and what conclusions they will draw from what we
allow or encourage. Everybody likes Christmas, but it doesn't happen whenever
you want it.
If you want to eliminate fear, you do it with education. If you want to
eliminate hate, you do it with education. If you want to eliminate violence
and hopelessness and self-destruction, you have to attack the ignorance that
lies at its roots, and the way to do that is through education.
In 24 years as the head coach at Georgetown University, I have seen many
players develop an appreciation for education in spite of their initial
intention to use college athletics purely as a steppingstone to the NBA. I
have seen the college environment challenge and change how these young men
understood the world. Even those who were not great scholars came out of
college better prepared to deal with the world and went on to insist that
their children go to college.
We've got to be realistic about how we keep players in school. They won't
stay just because we say so, and they surely won't stay given a current
system of rules and pressures that encourages them to leave. But if pursuing
hoop dreams depends upon surviving in an educational environment, young
people will "pay" that price.
Along the way they will learn about themselves, the world and the importance
of education. They will be exposed to ideas that will force them to think in
new ways. They will increase their expectations of themselves and the world
around them. The alternative is to say that only money is important and that
you have to get it anytime you can, anyway you can. Do you really want to
live in an environment where that is the message being received by young
people? I don't.
So, how do we resolve the tension between the desire for immediate
gratification and the need to encourage education? I don't have all of the
answers, but I think there is a definite order to the questions. First, what
is a student-athlete? Not what was a student-athlete in the 1950s or '60s or
'70s, but what is a student-athlete today. There are some great minds in
higher education that must creatively examine both expectation and reality to
come up with a workable and accurate definition.
Next, we must look at what incentives we offer youngsters to pursue education
and what incentives we offer them to abandon it. The pressure on a talented
player to leave school early is enormous. When NBA scouts are constantly
around to evaluate underclassmen, when the sports agent hires runners --
friends and family members -- to influence a kid about who will represent
him, when the media clamors, "Are you going pro?" when chanting fans plead
for "one more year...." it creates an atmosphere that says education is
unimportant.
Can we strike a balance for today's student-athlete? We certainly can't make
both sides of the equation financially equal, and we shouldn't try. The
belief that kids decide to go pro because current NCAA rules don't allow them
to have spending money is naive. An allowance for kids to go to the movies
pales in comparison to a multimillion-dollar pro contract. This doesn't mean
that players should be penniless -- an accurate definition of today's
student-athlete would mandate new (and hopefully simpler) NCAA rules.
But when we, the NCAA, pass rules that ignore individual situations and
inflexibly restrict everyone to antiquated standards, we are saying, "We
won't help you, get the money now." Is this the message we want to send?
Aren't we condemning ourselves to a society with more and more ignorant
people, young people whom we have convinced that education is not important?
In our own interests as people who have to live in the society we create, we
have to stop minimizing education in pursuit of GTMN (Get the Money Now).
A wise individual once said: "If you give a hungry man a fish he will eat
today; if you teach him how to fish he will eat for the rest of his life."
John Thompson is coach of the Georgetown University men's basketball
team.
Letters to the Editor -- Professional attitude must be dismissed
Letters to the editor
As a college sports fan, I am against the professionalism that's infecting
the collegiate scene. Recent proposals for student compensation will only
make it worse.
Student-athletes shouldn't be treated any better than other students.
Basketball and football players shouldn't be treated any better than runners
or swimmers. And male athletes shouldn't be treated any better (or worse)
than female athletes.
If anything, the recent wave of undergraduate and high-school basketball
players heading for the NBA is a positive occurrence for the NCAA. People who
don't want to be in college shouldn't be wearing college uniforms.
Encourage the NBA and the NFL to set up minor leagues for jocks who don't
care to go to class. It works for baseball and ice hockey. Both college
baseball and ice hockey seem to be gaining more and more fans, and if they
aren't as popular as their pro counterparts, so what? I believe the goal of
collegiate sports is to provide fun for student-athletes and fans with a
program that represents a university with honor and academic integrity.
Anything else is a sham.
Perhaps the combination of higher academic standards, shrinking funds,
professional minor leagues and undergraduate departures to the NBA and NFL
will "dilute" the level of Division I sports to the level of Division III.
Perhaps television ratings will continue to decline and the big-bucks
contracts will dry up. Perhaps the NCAA's leaders will have to take pay cuts
or look for other work. Again, so what?
There will still be millions of college sports fans like myself who will
support their alma maters and the universities close to where they live. And
we will have the satisfaction of knowing that the athletes we watch are true
students, not hired jocks.
Conrad Bibens
Humble, Texas
Setting the record straight
In a story on the NCAA's Washington, D.C., office (The NCAA News, June
17),
it was incorrectly reported that I became
the NCAA representative in Washington in the 1960s. My beard, though gray, is
not that gray.
The fact is that the NCAA was first represented in Washington by the late
Phil Brown of Cox Langford & Brown, who assisted the NCAA in connection
with a lengthy arbitration proceeding relating to international track and
field, held in the early 1960s at the initiative of then-Attorney General
Robert Kennedy.
I came to Washington from Cleveland in 1971 to open an office for Squire,
Sanders & Dempsey and began to work on NCAA matters with Phil after the
two firms merged in 1973. Most of the work in those early days related to a
series of disputes among the NCAA, the Amateur Athletic Union and the U.S.
Olympic Committee concerning international competitive events. These
differences were to a major extent resolved by the adoption of the Amateur
Sports Act of 1978, which rewrote the federal charter of the Olympic
Committee and in the process, provided for various dispute-resolution
mechanisms favored by the NCAA.
All of this is, of course, ancient history. but it is perhaps noteworthy that
the Olympic Committee's 1978 revised charter remains unamended almost 20
years later and that "turf battles" between the NCAA and the AAU are now
thankfully just that, ancient history.
Let the record be clear, though: Phil Brown represented your interests here
first, and I assumed responsibility only following Phil's untimely death in
1979.
Michael Scott
Washington, D.C.
Opinions -- Big Eight, Southwest Conferences slip into the past
Prentice Gautt, associate commissioner
Big 12 Conference
The Associated Press
Discussing the last day of the Big Eight Conference, when workers were
removing memorabilia from the conference office:
"It feels like they're taking big chunks of my life and tossing them in the
trash. Sometimes I want to yell at them to stop, and bring all that stuff
back in here.''
Bill Foster, associate commissioner
Southwest Conference
The Dallas Morning News
Discussing an auction at which office items were sold on the last day of
the Southwest Conference:
"It's sad -- depressing, really. You're talking about 81 years of history,
and I say that as a transplant....
"I can only imagine how some native Texans are feeling. It's really tough to
see it all end."
John Lewis, football referee
Southwest Conference
The Dallas Morning News
"The landscape constantly changes, and you just have to go along with the
change. But you can't help but stop and reflect. It makes you want to go and
sit in a corner by yourself....
"Money no longer speaks in college athletics -- money screams. If you ask
me, money's screaming in this case. I hate to see the SWC go."
Richie Parker case
Discussing consideration by Long Island University-Brooklyn Campus of
offering a grant-in-aid to basketball player Richie Parker, who has been
convicted of rape:
Donna Lopiano, executive director
Women's Sports Foundation
The New York Times
"From the perspective of a former athletics director, I would not extend an
offer of an athletics scholarship to someone like Richie Parker. A
scholarship is a measure of integrity and standards. It is our job to look at
the type of people we recruit. We look for people who are exemplary role
models for kids in generations to come."
Ernie Lorch, director
Riverside Church basketball program
The New York Times
Lorch has known Parker since the eighth grade:
"I think people began to realize that you can't condemn a kid in perpetuity
when he makes a mistake, however serious it may be, at the age of 16.
"He was never in trouble before, he has never been in trouble since. I think
that when a kid makes a mistake, a serious mistake, he needs to pay for it,
he needs to recognize that he's made a serious mistake. But then I think we
have an obligation to afford him the opportunity to redeem himself.
Certainly, redemption is a great part of our point of view."
Anne Connor, president, New York City branch
National Organization for Women
The New York Times
"This is a real tough one. You want a young person to be able to have a
chance to get on with their life if they have been punished. But what about
the young women who was the victim of that attack?
"Young people have to know that there are consequences to behavior. You did
this and therefore you've lost some chances and you will not be rewarded.
It's tough...I wouldn't organize a protest at the university. But on the
other hand, I wouldn't be part of the welcoming committee."
College basketball
Mark Bradley, sportswriter
The Atlanta Journal
"It has been suggested that the recent NBA draft, laden with talent not
nearly ripe, will ultimately bring harm to the NBA. Too many young players
will make for substandard play, which will so disillusion onlookers that
they'll turn instead to water polo. Nice theory. Won't happen.
"The NBA will be fine. It is the best sporting enterprise going. We in
America have come to love basketball in a way once reserved for that silly
old game of baseball. The influx of underclassmen won't cool our ardor; if
anything, the new faces will be more reason to watch. And if the quality of
play flags, we might not notice and probably won't care. If the game were
played for purists, why didn't more people follow John Havlicek and K.C.
Jones in their prime? Why do so many watch Shaquille O'Neal and Shawn Kemp
now?
"No, the casualty with the draft wasn't the league the youngsters are joining
but the level many of them just left. College basketball is in trouble. For
nearly 20 years the college game managed to be what skeptics insisted it was
not -- a national entity, as opposed to a regional one. Now it is in real
danger of retreating whence it came....
"At every level, basketball is about stars. The NBA just drafted its biggest
batch ever. The college game is almost down to zero. Try naming a five-man
All-America team for the season upcoming. I'll even spot you three names
--Tim Duncan, Danny Fortson, Jacque Vaughn. Can't do it? Didn't think so.
"The Final Four became a major event because of Earvin Johnson and Larry
Bird, Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon. Now there are few amateurs left
worth following, with little carryover between seasons. Christian Laettner
played in four Final Fours, Patrick Ewing in three. Is there an undergrad
today who'll make it to two?"
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