The NCAA News - News and Features

January 20, 1997

State of the Association address

Following is the 1997 State of the Association address presented January 12 by NCAA Executive Director Cedric W. Dempsey during the opening business session of the 91st annual Convention.

Let me take you back more than 75 years ago to the 1920 NCAA Convention. Delegates at that Convention were discussing whether the Association should write legislation to regulate intercollegiate athletics -- a practice it had not yet started.

Walter Camp, one of the Association's pioneers and the long-time football coach at Yale University, told this story. "A mother was in the nursery with her newborn baby, who was sleeping in the crib. Charlie, the father, came in and leaned over the crib and, with a concerned look, began saying something the mother couldn't hear. 'How Charlie does love that baby!' she thought, as she drew nearer to hear what she assumed were his loving words. Instead, she heard Charlie saying, 'It beats all how a crib like that can be made for two and a half dollars!'"

But then Camp told the delegates, speaking again about the effect of creating national legislation, "Let us love the baby. Don't be quite so anxious about the crib it is in."

With this story, I think Camp was trying to tell the delegates to that 1920 Convention something important, something we lose sight of too often. Rather than worrying so much about the crib -- our procedures and rules -- we need to focus on the core of what intercollegiate athletics is all about, the student-athlete.

With this session, 77 years later, we are opening the last Convention of its kind. Today, I want to do what Walter Camp suggested and focus first on student-athletes. I want to spend some time looking back on what the Association has accomplished in the last decade and highlight some areas of real progress.

I also want to discuss the negative impact some processes and philosophical priorities have had on student-athletes and the Association. And finally, I want to show how going forward, focusing first on student-athletes, will help us remove some of that negative effect.

he last 10 years have been ones of significant progress for intercollegiate athletics. There is much of which we can justifiably be proud. Through initial-eligibility and continuing-progress rules, we have raised the academic standards student-athletes must achieve if they are going to compete in college sports on our campuses.

These efforts came as a result of criticism that some student-athletes were exploited and there was little concern for their academic success. The perception was that athletic talent was used until eligibility was exhausted but the student-athletes didn't graduate. Although the reality was never as bad as the perception, higher education and intercollegiate athletics still took action.

But it hasn't been easy. Even as we raised the standards, we drew criticism that they were too high. But in staying the course, we have seen graduation rates rise. In 1992, when the first Division I graduation rates were published, student-athletes as a whole earned their degrees at a rate lower than the rest of the student body. By 1996, we've not only closed that gap, but student-athletes as a whole now graduate at a higher rate than the rest of the student body. And, this has happened at a time when all college students are graduating at a higher rate than five years ago.

We have gained ground in all categories. The greatest gains have been among African-American men and women. Today, black male student-athletes are graduating 10 percentage points higher than five years ago and eight percentage points ahead of their peers in the entire student body. And black women student-athletes are graduating at a rate 13 points higher than five years ago and 15 points higher than their counterparts.

The most recent good news is that the enrollment figures for African-American student-athletes are beginning to show a trend toward the higher pre-Proposition 48 levels, and that is a trend we will watch closely.

For those who did not graduate within the six-year limit, we established the Degree-Completion Program in 1987. That program helps student-athletes who have exhausted their eligibility but have not yet finished their degree requirements. A nearly $9 million endowment funds that program.

In the 10 years since the program has been in place, $4 million in grants have been approved. More than 700 students have received their undergraduate degrees. That's nearly 90 percent of those accepted into the program.

More assistance has been given through the academic-enhancement fund to make sure student-athletes get everything they need to succeed academically.

One Southern university used this fund to help a basketball student-athlete.

Based on his high-school record, he was viewed as academically at risk. Through the academic-enhancement fund, a very expensive test for diagnosing learning disabilities was purchased and the university discovered that this student-athlete had a problem processing information. The school was able to use the same funds to provide appropriate tutoring. As a result, he made the all-conference honor roll and has the second highest GPA on his team.

ot only have we worked diligently to ensure the academic success of student-athletes, we have also worked to improve their overall college experience. In a 1991 survey, student-athletes complained that their playing and practice schedules left them little extra time. You responded by placing limits on their daily and weekly practice and playing schedules. You limited their postseason commitments. In other words, you listened and made their life better.

You also responded financially with the special assistance fund at the Division I level. It was established to help underprivileged Division I athletes afford some very basic necessities in life, things the scholarship doesn't cover. Let me give you just one example:

A football player at a Midwestern university had problems with his wisdom teeth, made worse by a mouth guard. He was told that oral surgery would be required to remove all four wisdom teeth.

He had the surgery and then discovered his insurance wouldn't cover the cost. He got a student loan to cover part of it, but not enough. Through the special assistance fund, he got the balance -- nearly $800 -- and paid off his debt.

This is just one story. I know many of you have stories from your own campuses that you could tell.

Today, the fund has been increased from $3 million to $10 million a year, and we have added to the flexibility of how those dollars may be used. Students whose parents can't afford to pay for their dental care, school supplies and other basic expenses now don't have those worries.

That added funding has been made possible by the extraordinary financial growth and stability of the Association in the last 10 years. The appeal of college sports has helped all of our programs increase our revenues. We have been able to capitalize on the popularity of our championships -- especially the Division I men's basketball tournament.

Ten years ago, the general operating budget approved for the NCAA was $57.4 million. Today, it is more than four times that -- reaching $239 million.

Ten years ago, we returned $37 million of our revenues to the membership. Today, we will distribute nearly $177 million to the membership, roughly three-quarters of our total revenues. That's close to five times what we returned just 10 years ago.

Revenues and distributions to the membership will increase steadily for the next six years, when, over that period, our projections indicate the membership can look forward to distributions, including championships, of $1.1 billion.

These dollars are much needed as each of you struggles to meet ever-increasing demands for new programs and program upgrades. Indeed, these are dollars that benefit every student-athlete participating in NCAA college sports.

We can look back at this past decade and feel proud of the Association's reform legislation and the financial progress we've made.

ow, after hearing all the positive stories about the tremendous progress we have made in improving the experience and the welfare of the student-athlete, you might think such good news would be reflected in the public perception of intercollegiate athletics. But if you did, you'd be wrong.

The irony is that after years of working to improve the welfare of student-athletes, the NCAA is perceived as acting against the interests of those same student-athletes. And that's our fault.

I believe that this negative image is related to two areas: the first is our sometimes cumbersome processes; the second is how we prioritize our principles.

I'd like to spend a few moments on each of these areas.

Some of our processes, carefully constructed to be fair, occasionally create an impression of being just the opposite -- of being unfair -- of creating injustice. We can't let this continue.

As you know, when an athlete is in violation of our rules, regardless of the severity of the violation, the athlete must be declared ineligible. Then the institution must request reinstatement of eligibility. This process is frequently misunderstood: the media and public can easily jump to the conclusion that the student-athlete is a victim of injustice.

That is exactly what happened this past year in the case of the student-athletes who wagered a football jersey on the outcome of college games. In doing so, they violated our rule which prohibits gambling. Although you could argue whether or not their wager constituted gambling, the real issue was how the case was processed and perceived.

When the three athletes were declared ineligible, many in the public and media leaped to the conclusion that the athletes had just received the eligibility equivalent of the death penalty. In fact, we received many e-mails, calls and letters that reflected that belief.

The reality, of course, is that at no time were the student-athletes in danger of losing their eligibility forever over a minor violation. In fact, the process was over in a week and the student-athletes lost no playing time at all. But the damage to our image had already been done. Thus, the problem lies in the way we handle and communicate how that process works.

This past year we implemented Proposal 16. Much of the criticism this legislation has drawn is directed, again, not at the rule but at its implementation.

Students with excellent academic records who fail to meet each and every academic criterion for initial eligibility must use the waiver process. Having to do so creates great anxiety for those qualified students. When they receive a nonqualification notice, it appears to many to be a grave injustice. In some cases, the information-gathering process and ultimate decision took so long that some students missed a full season of competition. That should not happen. However, the majority of student-athletes who filed a waiver request became eligible, which shows that, in this case too, the process works.

Another negative aspect to that situation is that high schools were unable to challenge directly the clearinghouse's decisions on what constitutes core courses. To do so, they had to find an NCAA member to file the appeal for them. High schools either didn't know about the process or thought it too cumbersome. As a result, many students, far too many, were forced to use the waiver request. The good news is, we have improved that process and you'll be hearing more about those improvements in the next few weeks.

aving inefficient processes is one reason we draw criticism. Another relates to a bigger issue, how we seem to assign incorrect priority to our principles when they conflict.

Nothing illustrates this more than our present legislation limiting the student-athlete from working part-time while in school. While other students in Division I schools can determine whether or not they can handle a part-time paying job along with their academic responsibilities, student-athletes cannot.

Much of our legislation, including the prohibition against jobs, has been maintained upon building a level playing field. Let me hasten to note that this concept has helped intercollegiate athletics because it has meant more parity in competition. But in the end, we can never achieve a truly level playing field.

Each member institution has its own strengths and weaknesses, whether it's location, certain academic majors or a winning athletics tradition. No NCAA rules can or should ever change that.

But, because we fear that someone else may gain some slight advantage, we put the level-playing-field principle first.

We talk about protecting student-athletes from taking on too much, like a part-time job. But I think a major reason we have perpetuated that rule is to maintain a level playing field. For example, without our limitation on part-time work, University X would be afraid that University Y could recruit better players because there are better part-time jobs in Community Y. That priority is flat-out wrong.

Our amateurism principle also has had a significant effect on the financial needs of student-athletes. Let me make it clear that I do not advocate paying student-athletes. But if an English major who is not an athlete can earn money from writing, or a fine arts major who aspires to be an actor has an opportunity to earn money in his or her future field, I believe an athlete who also has such talents should be allowed to take advantage of similar opportunities without affecting his or her financial aid.

By giving these two principles -- the level-playing field and amateurism -- greater priority than the welfare of the student-athlete, I believe that we hurt more than the individual student-athlete. We feed the perception that the NCAA acts against the interests of student-athletes, which hurts the organization and every member institution.

Is it possible, then, to maintain the basic principles of the Association, yet do a better job of meeting the needs of student-athletes without sacrificing those basic principles? Absolutely. The solution is to re-evaluate our rules and processes to ensure that they focus first on the welfare of the student-athlete.

Let me offer a few examples of how we are already doing just that, and where you have an opportunity to do even more at this Convention.

The Special Committee on Agents and Amateurism and the financial aid committee, with support from the Council, have put forward Proposal 62, permitting student-athletes to work under certain conditions and to earn up to the cost of attendance. Even though this has failed at past Conventions, I encourage you to support this revised proposal. I fully recognize this might bring some minor imbalance to that level playing field, but within the parameters of the legislation, it addresses an important financial need for student-athletes.

Proposal Number 59 will take care of allowing some student-athletes to participate in activities that are now barred, like writing and acting: It does not allow payment for those activities, but it is a much-needed first step in putting student-athlete welfare ahead of the level-playing-field principle.

The Eligibility Committee is at work on its process and terminology.

At this Convention, we will vote on Proposition 98, introduced by the Eligibility Committee and supported by the Council, which will remove from the formal eligibility process de minimus violations that shouldn't affect the student-athlete's eligibility.

In addition, the Eligibility Committee will consider at its June meeting strategies that should make the eligibility system more user-friendly for student-athletes, institutions and the public.

The Academic Requirements Committee and the Committee to Oversee Implementation of the Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse are working to clear up some of the problems with core-course disputes, so that they can be handled in a better manner.

Fewer waiver requests and indeed fewer unnecessary problems for student-athletes should result.

These potential changes in priority of principle and in process all focus first on student-athletes and deserve your support.

Now, I want to return to Walter Camp and his comments to this Convention 77 years ago. He spoke to an organization poised at the edge of a great change.

As an organization, we are again poised at the threshold of another great change. We have been engaged for the last two years in a restructuring, which will probably be viewed as the most significant change since the founding of this organization 90 years ago.

At the conclusion of this Convention, we will have made a statement about the governance of college sports that will move us further toward our mission of making intercollegiate athletics an integral part of higher education.

We will have demonstrated, firmly and finally, that like all other aspects of higher education, intercollegiate athletics belongs under the governing purview of college and university presidents.

In addition, we will have set in motion a federated structure that, more significantly than ever before, recognizes and accommodates the enormous diversity among the more than 900 active NCAA members.

With restructuring, each of the new governance groups will have the opportunity to review all of their rules and processes. I urge all of our governing groups to accept the challenge to retain our basic principles while improving the experience of the individual student-athlete.

With the upcoming inauguration in Washington, I'm reminded of a quote from President Carter's inaugural address in 1977. He said at that time, "We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles."

As we embark on a great change in this Association, I submit that we must hold to our unchanging principles. But as Walter Camp advocated, one principle is more equal than any of the others. In the end, what the NCAA is about, what your institutions are about, is the development and education of young people. We cannot, we should not allow any other principles to overshadow that mission.

As you begin the business of this Convention, I urge you to reflect on all the good things you, your institution and the NCAA have done in the last 10 years for young people. Think about the student-athletes you've nurtured and helped to grow and to flourish. Then focus first on student-athletes and what is best for them as you make your decisions.

Your work this week will ensure that when we look back, 10 years hence or even 77 years hence, this Convention will be seen as one that set a positive course for the organization for years to come. I am proud to be here to witness it, and I am proud to work with all of you to secure that future.

Thank you.