NCAA News Archive - 2003

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Reform includes giving student-athletes benefit of doubt

Sep 1, 2003 5:01:07 PM

By Myles Brand
National Collegiate Athletic Association

In the last several months, there has been a subtle but important shift in how NCAA staff and committee members respond to reinstatement and waiver requests. More and more, the answer is "yes" instead of "no." That is by design.

My January Convention speech outlined my vision for reform and advocacy in intercollegiate athletics. Part of that reform is making the NCAA a less bureaucratic organization that is more responsive to student-athlete needs. Work is under way to do just that by examining current practices in the areas of interpretations, academic waivers, legislation, student-athlete reinstatement and institutional certification. The desired outcome is to streamline our processes and say "yes" more than we have in the past.

That may seem daunting to some. After all, the NCAA has a reputation for saying "no." The NCAA has contributed to that reputation over time. For years, the NCAA membership has adopted legislation that heavily focuses on establishing competitive equity among schools. The unintended result is a myriad of rules regulating student-athlete behavior that when applied by the book complicate the unique relationship student-athletes have with higher education. We have to seek to change that -- we have to find ways in which we give student-athletes the benefit of the doubt.

Certainly, the NCAA has to make a distinction between major infractions and minor rules violations. The Association has to be firm and aggressive in major infractions. That's our job. We are the investigative and enforcement agency in college sports. We do much more than that, but that falls to us and we must do it well. But our desire to do that well and be aggressive and firm can easily bleed over into the way we treat everything, including the way we administer rulings on secondary infractions.

I expect the national office staff and certainly the reinstatement and waiver committees to be able to use good common sense in applying the rules. This good judgment will require looking at the mitigating circumstances in each case more than relying simply on a literal reading of the rule or case precedent for a decision. There are cases in which a common-sense approach would lead to a more forgiving decision.

We already have begun to apply that approach. Several recent cases have resulted in student-athlete reinstatement without loss of eligibility or repayment of benefit even though a literal reading of the rule would have led to a more restrictive outcome. One in particular granted reinstatement without penalty to nine basketball student-athletes from one school who were unintentionally affected by the school changing from a credit-based academic system to an hour-based format. A literal reading of the legislation would have required those student-athletes who received financial aid even though they technically did not meet the six-hour requirement to repay the aid. These student-athletes did nothing wrong; they were subject to unintentional consequences of a rule needed for other reasons.

The idea is not so much a policy change, a rule change or a legislative issue. It is a cultural change on how we interpret the rules we have. I have confidence in our committees, in our staff -- and in our staff's recommendations to the committees -- to reach decisions that more often give student-athletes the benefit of the doubt.

Are there risks in saying "yes" first? Perhaps. We inevitably will make some mistakes -- not very many -- but given human nature, there will be some. But we already know that by saying "no" first, we are susceptible to making mistakes that disadvantage student-athletes and programs. I would rather make mistakes that advantage student-athletes than mistakes that disadvantage them.

That does not mean we should be loose and sloppy. We should be very careful and thoughtful to make decisions using good judgment where the literal reading of the rule might not dictate. Moreover, we have to do that in a timely way. We can't keep the student-athletes who are about ready to compete at bay.

The NCAA has a reputation of being rigid and overly committed to following the rules without using appropriate common sense. That is a strong statement, and we need to chip away at its validity. This change in culture is not one that will happen overnight. But this is the direction I want us to go -- a more personal direction that is more responsive to student-athlete needs.

Myles Brand is president of the NCAA.