National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2007
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Capitalizing on Capitol Hill
NCAA builds educational and informative presence in Washington, D.C.
NCAA builds educational and informative presence in Washington, D.C.
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By Gary T. Brown
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
Former Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne, also a former member of Congress, used to say federal involvement with college sports was like the Washington Redskins writing tax law for the United States — it’s not their expertise.
But while professional football players may not have much interest in crafting tax policy, Congress likes to keep up with intercollegiate athletics, which is why it’s important the NCAA have a presence on Capitol Hill.
That presence — now more than a decade old — is in the form of a satellite office at One Dupont Circle, headed by NCAA Government Relations Managing Director Abe Frank and Assistant Director Edgar Burch. Frank, formerly a vice president and counsel for government relations at Citigroup, Inc., joined the staff in 2001; Burch followed a year later.
Frank succeeded Doris Dixon, whom the NCAA hired when it established the D.C. office in April 1995. Before then, the NCAA relied on a law firm to represent its federal interests, but when longtime counsel Mike Scott retired in 1994, the NCAA faced the proverbial fork in the road: continue relying on legal representation in Washington or establish a physical presence there. Officials decided the latter was less expensive — and more efficient.
Twelve years later, the office runs just as planned — as inconspicuous in front of the curtain as it is effective behind the scenes. To Osborne’s point, the D.C. office is the reliable information conduit to Congress.
“We think our membership is the expert in administering and governing intercollegiate athletics,” said Frank, who earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Central Michigan University in 1981 and his juris doctor from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1984. “Through the NCAA committee and governance structure, NCAA members adopt rules and policies they believe are most effective for the administration of college sports. We’re here to relay that expertise to members of Congress.”
To that end, perhaps the greatest indication of the D.C. office’s success is what people don’t know about because it hasn’t happened. In other words, if it weren’t for the work of the D.C. staff, there might be more hearings and Congressional intervention simply because no one was there to inform them otherwise.
But the interaction also produces more tangible results, since the D.C. staff often collaborates with Congress to achieve shared goals.
The NCAA, for example, is a member of the Citizenship Through Sports Alliance, which has focused on raising awareness on sportsmanship issues. When the CTSA wanted to release its report card at the National Press Club, the NCAA sought help from Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-North Carolina), who agreed to highlight the need for sportsmanship in youth sports and call attention to its impact on character development.
Frank said having a member of Congress involved would boost public attention. McIntyre was a good choice, being a father of two sons who participated in sports and having coached youth sports for several years in his North Carolina hometown.
Not only did McIntyre’s involvement help the CTSA effort, it energized the Congressman to do more on his own.
He and CBS basketball commentator Clark Kellogg spoke at the press conference and were alarmed at the deficiencies in the way organized sports were perceived by children, volunteers and adults in the community.
McIntyre recognized the need for a strong voice on Capitol Hill to show support for youth recreation programs across America and call attention to the example that collegiate sports programs can show for community youth sports and recreation.
That led him to create a Congressional Caucus on Youth Sports and propose a resolution to establish a National Youth Sports Week to raise awareness for sportsmanship concerns. He said he could not have accomplished either without the NCAA’s help.
“The D.C. staff worked with us closely in emphasizing all of the positive attributes of youth sports, such as character development, promoting physical health and well-being, and learning the attributes of responsibility, discipline, civility and loyalty,” McIntyre said. “They helped ensure that the youth-sports caucus had all the support it needed, not only from the NCAA, but also from other collegiate and professional organizations.”
Important presence
In addition to the direct link with members of Congress, the D.C. office also benefits university federal relations people in Washington.
Mike Waring, the executive director of federal relations and director of the Washington office at the University of Michigan, has worked with the D.C. staff in a number of instances, including an effort after 9/11 to implement restrictions on aircraft flying over or near stadiums on game days. But many of the issues Waring and his peers rely on the D.C. office for are those that colleges and universities don’t raise themselves.
“The NCAA Washington office has to respond to inquiries on many of those issues,” Waring said, “and Abe has figured out that if he can engage some of us to help in that process, it helps him get his job done. He understands that we can play a helpful role in dealing with members from our own delegations from time to time. So it’s good to have somebody here who understands Congress as we hope to understand Congress and then be a guide in terms of what we can do to help the NCAA cause.”
Again, the value of the D.C. office may best be understood by thinking of the value lost without one. Congressman McIntyre said that would be “a notable absence.”
“If there’s not someone to stand up and speak out about an issue, then it goes unaddressed,” he said.
For that reason — and to clarify misinformation about issues — the D.C. office plays an important role that NCAA President Myles Brand said has served Congress well.
“Intercollegiate athletics reflects American culture. There is great interest in sports, including especially college sports,” Brand said. “With that significant interest, and with the attendant media attention, college sports generate strong emotions and revenue opportunities for the corporate community. All this draws the attention of the Congress.”
That’s good, Brand said, since college sports should not be beyond the purview of national lawmakers. To inform Congress about the true nature of college sports, and to help the members understand the complex issues involved, Brand said the Washington office has helped the NCAA national office and its member universities better explain the purposes and goals of intercollegiate athletics.
“A lot of what we do doesn’t have to do with legislation, but correcting misinformation,” Frank said. “On the one hand we want to support and assist federal and state proposals that are beneficial and relevant to intercollegiate athletics, and on the other we want to clarify misinformation that’s out there. In that way we are a monitoring service to prevent surprises for our members.”
D.C. office Assistant Director Burch agreed, citing a greater chance that misinformation would lead to laws being passed that would not be in the best interests of intercollegiate athletics, or go against what the NCAA membership believes is best.
“We’ve had to be informative about core areas of athletics policy and administration, such as the steroids issue, the enforcement process, recruiting rules, membership standards, and amateurism and agents,” he said. “Without a D.C. presence, it’s possible that legislation could be introduced and passed that would be detrimental to NCAA members and student-athletes.”
Case study
Congressional interest or action may result from a single incident in intercollegiate athletics or from a trend that has been brought to the attention of Congress by press reports or direct contact from an individual or organization.
A few years ago, gambling scandals involving professional and collegiate sports, and an increase in off-shore gambling Web sites raised concern about the effect of sports wagering on youth and the integrity of sporting events.
“Once an issue exists,” Frank said, “it is important to relay the NCAA’s position on the matter to members of Congress. The NCAA membership has adopted specific rules prohibiting student-athletes, athletics department members and conference officials from engaging in sports wagering. Our first step was to make sure members of Congress knew that.”
With Internet gambling being of concern to other sports organizations and family values groups, Frank said the NCAA helped build and work with a coalition of interested parties in educating members of Congress and their staffs about the dangers presented by online wagering, specifically on college athletics events. That included in-person visits to counter any incorrect information that had previously been provided by opposing groups. The NCAA also helped select and prepare witnesses to testify at Congressional hearings and served as a resource to respond to additional inquiries.
That effort led Congress to eventually pass the Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act, which prohibits people engaged in the business of sports wagering from knowingly accepting credit cards and fund transfers for unlawful Internet gambling. President Bush signed the act into law in October 2006.
“Influencing legislation is an extension of our education efforts,” Frank said. “That education helps create a broad understanding of an issue, which hopefully will result in the inclusion of provisions within legislation that directly apply to the NCAA’s policy position.”
Frank and his staff might be busy educating Congress about sports wagering again when members reconvene in September, given what has transpired in the NBA.
Thus, the D.C. staff’s track record is replete with success from what has and what hasn’t happened. There might be less of the former and more of the latter if the NCAA wasn’t a tenant at One Dupont Circle.
“The NCAA’s presence here is important,” said Michigan’s Waring. “While institutional federal relations people track issues in Washington, most of us don’t track college sports issues as closely as the NCAA staff does. There are opportunities for Abe to make sure we are on board with what the NCAA is doing and help us be advocates for various issues.
“There’s no substitute for having someone here full time walking the halls. Having a Washington presence enables the NCAA to have an effect on the process.”
Once the NCAA decided to establish a physical presence in Washington, D.C., it made sense to do so at an address known for its higher-education tenants.
While the NCAA’s three-room suite doesn’t occupy much space in the 197,000-square-foot building at One Dupont Circle, the Association is regarded as a big-time neighbor.
The historic building houses almost two dozen higher-education associations, including the American Council on Education; the American Association of Community Colleges; the Council for Higher Education Accreditation; the National Association of College and University Attorneys; and the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.
The educational focal point came to be when ACE in 1967 developed the National Center for Higher Education there. ACE, which had been located on Massachusetts Avenue for 17 years before outgrowing its facility, noticed that other higher-education associations were drawn to the Dupont Circle area for its proximity to Capitol Hill.
Coleen Collins, assistant vice president of human resources and operations services for ACE, said as of 1967 there were 50 higher-education associations headquartered in a two-block radius. At that point, ACE proposed a national center for higher education as a solution for space needs. The center served as a headquarters for the major national educational associations. It included meeting and conference facilities, and it provided office and research facilities for college and university representatives when they were in Washington.
Collins also noted the economies in shared facilities and services, such as duplicate library and data-processing facilities.
“Our building is truly a unique venue in Washington — nowhere else will you find such a large collection of associations and organizations focused on issues of importance to colleges and universities,” said Collins. “When people hear ‘One Dupont Circle,’ they think higher education.”
But while professional football players may not have much interest in crafting tax policy, Congress likes to keep up with intercollegiate athletics, which is why it’s important the NCAA have a presence on Capitol Hill.
That presence — now more than a decade old — is in the form of a satellite office at One Dupont Circle, headed by NCAA Government Relations Managing Director Abe Frank and Assistant Director Edgar Burch. Frank, formerly a vice president and counsel for government relations at Citigroup, Inc., joined the staff in 2001; Burch followed a year later.Frank succeeded Doris Dixon, whom the NCAA hired when it established the D.C. office in April 1995. Before then, the NCAA relied on a law firm to represent its federal interests, but when longtime counsel Mike Scott retired in 1994, the NCAA faced the proverbial fork in the road: continue relying on legal representation in Washington or establish a physical presence there. Officials decided the latter was less expensive — and more efficient.
Twelve years later, the office runs just as planned — as inconspicuous in front of the curtain as it is effective behind the scenes. To Osborne’s point, the D.C. office is the reliable information conduit to Congress.“We think our membership is the expert in administering and governing intercollegiate athletics,” said Frank, who earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Central Michigan University in 1981 and his juris doctor from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1984. “Through the NCAA committee and governance structure, NCAA members adopt rules and policies they believe are most effective for the administration of college sports. We’re here to relay that expertise to members of Congress.”
To that end, perhaps the greatest indication of the D.C. office’s success is what people don’t know about because it hasn’t happened. In other words, if it weren’t for the work of the D.C. staff, there might be more hearings and Congressional intervention simply because no one was there to inform them otherwise.
But the interaction also produces more tangible results, since the D.C. staff often collaborates with Congress to achieve shared goals.
The NCAA, for example, is a member of the Citizenship Through Sports Alliance, which has focused on raising awareness on sportsmanship issues. When the CTSA wanted to release its report card at the National Press Club, the NCAA sought help from Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-North Carolina), who agreed to highlight the need for sportsmanship in youth sports and call attention to its impact on character development.
Frank said having a member of Congress involved would boost public attention. McIntyre was a good choice, being a father of two sons who participated in sports and having coached youth sports for several years in his North Carolina hometown.Not only did McIntyre’s involvement help the CTSA effort, it energized the Congressman to do more on his own.
He and CBS basketball commentator Clark Kellogg spoke at the press conference and were alarmed at the deficiencies in the way organized sports were perceived by children, volunteers and adults in the community.
McIntyre recognized the need for a strong voice on Capitol Hill to show support for youth recreation programs across America and call attention to the example that collegiate sports programs can show for community youth sports and recreation.
That led him to create a Congressional Caucus on Youth Sports and propose a resolution to establish a National Youth Sports Week to raise awareness for sportsmanship concerns. He said he could not have accomplished either without the NCAA’s help.
“The D.C. staff worked with us closely in emphasizing all of the positive attributes of youth sports, such as character development, promoting physical health and well-being, and learning the attributes of responsibility, discipline, civility and loyalty,” McIntyre said. “They helped ensure that the youth-sports caucus had all the support it needed, not only from the NCAA, but also from other collegiate and professional organizations.”
Important presence
In addition to the direct link with members of Congress, the D.C. office also benefits university federal relations people in Washington.
Mike Waring, the executive director of federal relations and director of the Washington office at the University of Michigan, has worked with the D.C. staff in a number of instances, including an effort after 9/11 to implement restrictions on aircraft flying over or near stadiums on game days. But many of the issues Waring and his peers rely on the D.C. office for are those that colleges and universities don’t raise themselves.
“The NCAA Washington office has to respond to inquiries on many of those issues,” Waring said, “and Abe has figured out that if he can engage some of us to help in that process, it helps him get his job done. He understands that we can play a helpful role in dealing with members from our own delegations from time to time. So it’s good to have somebody here who understands Congress as we hope to understand Congress and then be a guide in terms of what we can do to help the NCAA cause.”
Again, the value of the D.C. office may best be understood by thinking of the value lost without one. Congressman McIntyre said that would be “a notable absence.”
“If there’s not someone to stand up and speak out about an issue, then it goes unaddressed,” he said.
For that reason — and to clarify misinformation about issues — the D.C. office plays an important role that NCAA President Myles Brand said has served Congress well.
“Intercollegiate athletics reflects American culture. There is great interest in sports, including especially college sports,” Brand said. “With that significant interest, and with the attendant media attention, college sports generate strong emotions and revenue opportunities for the corporate community. All this draws the attention of the Congress.”
That’s good, Brand said, since college sports should not be beyond the purview of national lawmakers. To inform Congress about the true nature of college sports, and to help the members understand the complex issues involved, Brand said the Washington office has helped the NCAA national office and its member universities better explain the purposes and goals of intercollegiate athletics.
“A lot of what we do doesn’t have to do with legislation, but correcting misinformation,” Frank said. “On the one hand we want to support and assist federal and state proposals that are beneficial and relevant to intercollegiate athletics, and on the other we want to clarify misinformation that’s out there. In that way we are a monitoring service to prevent surprises for our members.”
D.C. office Assistant Director Burch agreed, citing a greater chance that misinformation would lead to laws being passed that would not be in the best interests of intercollegiate athletics, or go against what the NCAA membership believes is best.
“We’ve had to be informative about core areas of athletics policy and administration, such as the steroids issue, the enforcement process, recruiting rules, membership standards, and amateurism and agents,” he said. “Without a D.C. presence, it’s possible that legislation could be introduced and passed that would be detrimental to NCAA members and student-athletes.”
Case study
Congressional interest or action may result from a single incident in intercollegiate athletics or from a trend that has been brought to the attention of Congress by press reports or direct contact from an individual or organization.
A few years ago, gambling scandals involving professional and collegiate sports, and an increase in off-shore gambling Web sites raised concern about the effect of sports wagering on youth and the integrity of sporting events.
“Once an issue exists,” Frank said, “it is important to relay the NCAA’s position on the matter to members of Congress. The NCAA membership has adopted specific rules prohibiting student-athletes, athletics department members and conference officials from engaging in sports wagering. Our first step was to make sure members of Congress knew that.”
With Internet gambling being of concern to other sports organizations and family values groups, Frank said the NCAA helped build and work with a coalition of interested parties in educating members of Congress and their staffs about the dangers presented by online wagering, specifically on college athletics events. That included in-person visits to counter any incorrect information that had previously been provided by opposing groups. The NCAA also helped select and prepare witnesses to testify at Congressional hearings and served as a resource to respond to additional inquiries.
That effort led Congress to eventually pass the Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act, which prohibits people engaged in the business of sports wagering from knowingly accepting credit cards and fund transfers for unlawful Internet gambling. President Bush signed the act into law in October 2006.
“Influencing legislation is an extension of our education efforts,” Frank said. “That education helps create a broad understanding of an issue, which hopefully will result in the inclusion of provisions within legislation that directly apply to the NCAA’s policy position.”
Frank and his staff might be busy educating Congress about sports wagering again when members reconvene in September, given what has transpired in the NBA.
Thus, the D.C. staff’s track record is replete with success from what has and what hasn’t happened. There might be less of the former and more of the latter if the NCAA wasn’t a tenant at One Dupont Circle.
“The NCAA’s presence here is important,” said Michigan’s Waring. “While institutional federal relations people track issues in Washington, most of us don’t track college sports issues as closely as the NCAA staff does. There are opportunities for Abe to make sure we are on board with what the NCAA is doing and help us be advocates for various issues.
“There’s no substitute for having someone here full time walking the halls. Having a Washington presence enables the NCAA to have an effect on the process.”
NCAA has higher-education neighbors
Once the NCAA decided to establish a physical presence in Washington, D.C., it made sense to do so at an address known for its higher-education tenants. While the NCAA’s three-room suite doesn’t occupy much space in the 197,000-square-foot building at One Dupont Circle, the Association is regarded as a big-time neighbor.
The historic building houses almost two dozen higher-education associations, including the American Council on Education; the American Association of Community Colleges; the Council for Higher Education Accreditation; the National Association of College and University Attorneys; and the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.
The educational focal point came to be when ACE in 1967 developed the National Center for Higher Education there. ACE, which had been located on Massachusetts Avenue for 17 years before outgrowing its facility, noticed that other higher-education associations were drawn to the Dupont Circle area for its proximity to Capitol Hill.
Coleen Collins, assistant vice president of human resources and operations services for ACE, said as of 1967 there were 50 higher-education associations headquartered in a two-block radius. At that point, ACE proposed a national center for higher education as a solution for space needs. The center served as a headquarters for the major national educational associations. It included meeting and conference facilities, and it provided office and research facilities for college and university representatives when they were in Washington.
Collins also noted the economies in shared facilities and services, such as duplicate library and data-processing facilities.
“Our building is truly a unique venue in Washington — nowhere else will you find such a large collection of associations and organizations focused on issues of importance to colleges and universities,” said Collins. “When people hear ‘One Dupont Circle,’ they think higher education.”
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