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NCAA News Archive - 2007
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Knight panel urges educational 'intervention' for recruits
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By Gary T. Brown
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
Members of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics focused on outside recruiting influences during their January 22 meeting in Washington, D.C. The commission heard from two panels, one addressing external pressures in recruiting and another calling for more academic integrity when recruiting and admitting prospects.
Commission co-chair Gerald Turner said the group’s greatest concern is “the powerful intrusion of forces into recruiting that have nothing to do with high schools or colleges.” He cited commercial blogs and online recruiting companies as concerns, as well as what he called “programs that move kids around and even place them in high schools, sometimes a different school every year.” Turner also said the commission is concerned about “combines” assembled by groups not associated with high schools. “All of these are being conducted without any organizational oversight or control,” he said.
Commission members worry that the wealth of online rankings and projections — and the positioning of players by nonscholastic teams — treat recruits as “commodities” rather than prospective student-athletes. Commissioners acknowledged, though, that controlling such forces in a free-market society is difficult at best.
Panelists at the session included Harry Edwards, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley; Bobby Burton, chief operating officer of Rivals.com; John Bunting, former head football coach at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Malcolm Moran, former sportswriter for USA Today. University of Oklahoma Athletics Director Joe Castiglione and University of Virginia Director of Admissions John Blackburn also addressed the commission.
Turner, longtime president at Southern Methodist University, called for the NCAA to launch an aggressive educational campaign targeting prospects, many of whom Turner said are from single-family homes or who live with guardians and may be more subject to outside recruiting influences.
“The primary focus of this session was to make commission members more aware of the gravity of these challenges,” Turner said. “What emerged was that while we’re not going to eliminate the Internet influence, we need powerful educational intervention to high school students and their parents. Just because some of these outside agents want to influence kids and provide them information doesn’t mean it has to be given to them. We’re not going to eliminate these forces, so what we have to do is to better educate parents and others about them.”
In other items, the Knight Commission reiterated its support of a report from the NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics that emphasizes fiscal responsibility and integration of athletics into universities’ educational missions.
Turner, who chaired one of the Task Force subcommittees, said the commission will devote much of its May meeting to the concepts of fiscal responsibility and academic integrity. He said he is eager for the uniform and transparent financial data the Task Force advocates to help presidents compare their athletics programs with like institutions and inform decision-making on athletics spending.
“The ability to compare apples with apples will be a huge contribution,” Turner said. “Obviously, the Task Force will leave a greater legacy than simply providing more accurate financial data, but if just that were to occur, it would be a major help for presidents to really know what the competition is doing rather than hearing rumors that so-and-so is doing this and why aren’t you.”
Turner is among several current NCAA chancellors and presidents on the Knight Commission. Others are John J. DeGioia of Georgetown University, Michael Adams of the University of Georgia, William Kirwan of the University System of Maryland and Elson Floyd of Washington State University.
Presidents emeritus on the group are Thomas K. Hearn Jr. of Wake Forest University; Carol Cartwright of Kent State University; Peter Likins of the University of Arizona; and Charles Young of the University of Florida and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Commission co-chair Gerald Turner said the group’s greatest concern is “the powerful intrusion of forces into recruiting that have nothing to do with high schools or colleges.” He cited commercial blogs and online recruiting companies as concerns, as well as what he called “programs that move kids around and even place them in high schools, sometimes a different school every year.” Turner also said the commission is concerned about “combines” assembled by groups not associated with high schools. “All of these are being conducted without any organizational oversight or control,” he said.
Commission members worry that the wealth of online rankings and projections — and the positioning of players by nonscholastic teams — treat recruits as “commodities” rather than prospective student-athletes. Commissioners acknowledged, though, that controlling such forces in a free-market society is difficult at best.
Panelists at the session included Harry Edwards, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley; Bobby Burton, chief operating officer of Rivals.com; John Bunting, former head football coach at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Malcolm Moran, former sportswriter for USA Today. University of Oklahoma Athletics Director Joe Castiglione and University of Virginia Director of Admissions John Blackburn also addressed the commission.
Turner, longtime president at Southern Methodist University, called for the NCAA to launch an aggressive educational campaign targeting prospects, many of whom Turner said are from single-family homes or who live with guardians and may be more subject to outside recruiting influences.
“The primary focus of this session was to make commission members more aware of the gravity of these challenges,” Turner said. “What emerged was that while we’re not going to eliminate the Internet influence, we need powerful educational intervention to high school students and their parents. Just because some of these outside agents want to influence kids and provide them information doesn’t mean it has to be given to them. We’re not going to eliminate these forces, so what we have to do is to better educate parents and others about them.”
In other items, the Knight Commission reiterated its support of a report from the NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics that emphasizes fiscal responsibility and integration of athletics into universities’ educational missions.
Turner, who chaired one of the Task Force subcommittees, said the commission will devote much of its May meeting to the concepts of fiscal responsibility and academic integrity. He said he is eager for the uniform and transparent financial data the Task Force advocates to help presidents compare their athletics programs with like institutions and inform decision-making on athletics spending.
“The ability to compare apples with apples will be a huge contribution,” Turner said. “Obviously, the Task Force will leave a greater legacy than simply providing more accurate financial data, but if just that were to occur, it would be a major help for presidents to really know what the competition is doing rather than hearing rumors that so-and-so is doing this and why aren’t you.”
Turner is among several current NCAA chancellors and presidents on the Knight Commission. Others are John J. DeGioia of Georgetown University, Michael Adams of the University of Georgia, William Kirwan of the University System of Maryland and Elson Floyd of Washington State University.
Presidents emeritus on the group are Thomas K. Hearn Jr. of Wake Forest University; Carol Cartwright of Kent State University; Peter Likins of the University of Arizona; and Charles Young of the University of Florida and the University of California, Los Angeles.
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