NY Times, NCAA, Racism, and UConn Basketball

[JavaMan]

New York Times sports writer pinpoints failures of NCAA in journalism lecture

Here in the basketball capital of the world, sports are a big deal. The power of the National Collegiate Athletics Association, or NCAA, is significant, but Joe Nocera, New York Times columnist and author of “Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA,” sought to highlight the failures of the NCAA at a reading attended by journalism students, professors, athletes and the president of the University of Connecticut.

UConn President Susan Herbst was also in attendance at the reading, and did not shy away from criticizing the NCAA. “The infrastructure and bureaucracy that they have, the compassion got lost somewhere,” Herbst said. “There’s no transparency.”

At one point, Nocera raised the idea of lifetime scholarships, which triggered a discussion between him and Morgan Tuck, the senior forward on UConn’s women’s basketball team, who also attended the reading. “If we were to go pro, we need to be able to complete four years of college…You can’t enter into the WNBA draft until your high school graduating class has graduated college,” Tuck said.

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[Blakeon18]

First quick reaction:

You do NOT have to complete 4 years of college....you have to wait some years but do not have to attend college at all to be in the draft.
Occasionally someone does turn pro and play overseas. This has nothing to do with the NCAA but rather the WNBA rules...it is on them.
Just as the one and done thing on the guy-side has nothing to do with the NCAA but rather the NBA.

For both sides of our game...imo...once you graduate from high school you should be eligible for the draft. If you aren't good enough
or mature enough, teams can pass you by. Baseball/golf/tennis etc allows high school grads to try and get a job in their sport...good for them.

 

[bags27]

Thanks so much for catching this article, JavaMan. A couple of immediate reactions.
1. Every major NY Times journalist, writing for a struggling medium, has now got a schtick. This is Nocera's: he supplements his income by talking/writing on the subject outside of his columns. I don't blame him, he does good stuff, but we have to recognize that he is producing, as well as reporting on, news. To a large degree, that's always happened. But recently the Times seems to have entirely let go of any control of this.

2. The question Morgan raised is actually a difficult one, and her profound intelligence comes from her personal experience, her personal struggle about her next year. If you're going to the NBA, then, yes, one-and-done or even none-and-done makes sense. For this, the NCAA is the bad guy, forcing 18 yr olds to perform for a year when they could be making many millions. But obviously, the WNBA is very, very different, and here the WNBA in cahoots with the NCAA may be doing something very wise (I take your specific point blakeon18, just saying it's a broad plan). It's not one-size-fits-all, and sometimes the NCAA (perhaps accidently) gets it right...not newsworthy to a reporter making as well as reporting on news....

 

[Adesmar123]

Good posting...

By the way, I would be the last person to defend the NCAA. They have become a bloated highly paid ineffective organization that does virtually nothing except to try to make itself look good.

But injecting racism into the conversation only makes for higher ratings and internet clicks. And I think that might be the basis of the interjection.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

I no longer consider the NCAA worth discussing; pretty much on a par with the federal government.

 

[ctfjr]

New York Times sports writer pinpoints failures of NCAA in journalism lecture
Nocera went on to accuse the NCAA of institutional racism, treating investigations into black athletes differently than investigations into white athletes.
“The NCAA is suspicious of black kids in a way that they’re not suspicious of white kids. That’s just a fact,” Nocera said. “I think race is an important component here. I would love it if some black professional athletes would start speaking about this, because I know that they think about this…That could be a very powerful driver of change.”

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Accusations are not proof. If he professes to be a reporter he should be reporting facts. If indeed the NCAA has a racial bias that can be shown, it should be exposed. Otherwise I agree with the other poster who pointed out he may have his own agenda.

 

[huskyd]

I added a thread not long ago about this very subject. The key term in the article I cited from the Washington Post was “exploited.” Many BYs took exception to the term, especially as it might relate to the basketball teams at UConn. A Husky player on the men's team complained that he didn't have enough money for food, and that objection apparently led to changes in the food program. But the very idea that our players might be “exploited” was anathema to posters and management alike on the BY (for different reasons). Many defended the practice of using athletes to earn money for the university as compensation for a free academic ride and many other perks.

In this NY Times article, the same concerns are reiterated. There is a vocal community which believes that athletes deserve greater compensation for the years of work they contribute on courts and fields to their schools. Because large numbers of black athletes constitute these college teams and because these are minorities with a history of exploitation, charges of racism wind up in the mix.

This issue won't go away, and I suspect that some small gestures will be made to try and satisfy the people involved. Whether the NCAA will give up its Golden Goose is hard to imagine. Money and the power that goes with it is not something lightly sacrificed. As a people we are avid believers in many things, some of them completely contradictory.

 

[JavaMan]

Accusations are not proof. If he professes to be a reporter he should be reporting facts. If indeed the NCAA has a racial bias that can be shown, it should be exposed. Otherwise I agree with the other poster who pointed out he may have his own agenda.

We ALL have our own agenda.

In the reporter's defense, he was not "reporting" at this event, it was a book reading and discussion.

I think the racism aspect is worthy of more investigation. But lets be clear, he didn't accuse, or even imply, that a specific individual was guilty of racism, he said "institutional racism." I would think that an analysis of all (or many), complaints, sanctions, and rulings from NCAA actions might reveal some trends that would lend credence to, or dispel, this institutional racism thing. I do understand that this might be too daunting of a task, if even possible at all.

Also, one thing I feel fairly confident about is that University Presidents rarely allocate time for trivial issues.

Further, I am a bit dismayed by Morgan's topic for her question as mentioned above. To me that seems not to bode well for a 5th year at UConn. Hope I'm wrong.

Good discussion.

 

[Adesmar123]

We ALL have our own agenda.

In the reporter's defense, he was not "reporting" at this event, it was a book reading and discussion.

I think the racism aspect is worthy of more investigation. But lets be clear, he didn't accuse, or even imply, that a specific individual was guilty of racism, he said "institutional racism." I would think that an analysis of all (or many), complaints, sanctions, and rulings from NCAA actions might reveal some trends that would lend credence to, or dispel, this institutional racism thing. I do understand that this might be too daunting of a task, if even possible at all.

Also, one thing I feel fairly confident about is that University Presidents rarely allocate time for trivial issues.

Further, I am a bit dismayed by Morgan's topic for her question as mentioned above. To me that seems not to bode well for a 5th year at UConn. Hope I'm wrong.

Good discussion.

That was a load of BS! Now mind you, I didn't say what you said was a load of BS.

And University Presidents usually allocate their time to issues that will enhance them in the eyes of their constituents, be they trivial or substantive.

 

[UcMiami]

Interesting article with very little meat, but bringing up interesting issues. I have some thoughts and hope not to make this too long:
1. The NCAA has no real influence on how professional sports are run or the rules they impose on their athletes. Their one rule that is enforced is that NCAA athletes must not be 'professional' - they cannot have received payment for their athletic services, nor have hired an agent, nor taken money from any entity in anticipation of a professional career - more rules apply here but not worth getting into them. Some professional leagues tried to limit college athletes ability to turn pro and they were taken to court and lost. The WNBA is the only league I am aware of that has been able to maintain their rule, and I believe it still stands because it is a minimum age or minimum education rule and not only a minimum education rule. It could conceivably be challenged in court but I don't believe it ever has been and the money is not great enough in the WNBA to make it worth most peoples' effort to do so. So the comment 'They shouldn't be able to do that' is either misinformed or related to the WNBA and not the NCAA.

2. There is no constitutional right or legal right to a college education nor to collegiate or professional participation in a sport. They are privileges both earned and paid for. There is a right to not being denied based on discrimination, and to be treated equally based on merit.

3. The NCAA for all its issues, administers competition in 90 +/- sports of which the NCAA men's basketball tournament generates somewhere around 80-90% of it's revenue - in total probably only three sports generate more revenue for the NCAA than they expend - both genders of basketball and football. The only reason this becomes a national debate is because of the obscene amounts of money generated not by the NCAA itself but by the big time football and men's basketball programs.

4. Baseball and Hockey are the two professional leagues in North America that truly have professional developmental leagues and a clear route for non-college athletes to pursue professional careers - men's basketball is working in that direction, but it is in its infancy and remains more a second chance for college athletes than a real HS graduate option. This is actually unique in the world - every other major sport outside the US has professional training leagues that often act as secondary schooling as well - especially true for the most profitable sport in the world - soccer. The US professional team sports of men's basketball and football have become dependent on the US college system to be their developmental leagues. Interestingly, you seldom hear any issues with the third sport in terms of college athletes - baseball, because those athletes that are not academically inclined have a professional option, and not because the NCAA treats them better. In fact the threat of accepting a college scholarship has become a major negotiating tactic in the baseball draft - pay me or waste your draft pick - for the star high school players.

5. The actual issue that exists is with at most about 50 scholarship athletes a year per school - the ones who are really only at the school to train for football and basketball pro careers - for U of Texas that represents less than 10% of their scholarships. There are very few other athletes that have major issues with the scholarship system - they are getting an added benefit to their education that is actually costing the school money.

5. In reality I think football is broken beyond repair in terms of NCAA control - the conferences are the entities that generate the vast sums of money from the games and they can pretty much do as they like. Unlike football, the major revenue driver for basketball is the NCAA tournament - it is the big broadcast rights ticket and it is controlled by the NCAA and not the conferences, and it is what pays for the rest of the 90 sports that are being administered at a loss. I think the best solution for righting the ship is to turn at least some of the NCAA football loose - for those schools that want to 'change the rules' to create wholly owned subsidiaries that are 'semi-pro' football teams. The non-BCS schools can remain in the NCAA and play amateur football. With football cut loose the NCAA could really start to enforce academic control over basketball - if the one and done schools don't like it, they can join their brethren in the semi-pro football league.

6. On the racism issue ... I believe it does exist, I know it exists within the society at large and it is unlikely that either individual institutions nor the NCAA can completely escape the society in which they exist. It is I think a separate issue from the larger one of the NCAA and scholarship athletes - and the specific situation cited I am sure has existed across all ethnicities - it is one of poverty and not race. That a former friend dropped a dime is the only reason it came to light and I suspect it would have been the same regardless of race.

 

[UcMiami]

Further, I am a bit dismayed by Morgan's topic for her question as mentioned above. To me that seems not to bode well for a 5th year at UConn. Hope I'm wrong.

Good discussion.

Not sure how it pertains at all - I am unaware of her ever having wished she could turn pro prior to this year, nor of anyone else on the Uconn team holding those feelings. Her issue is whether to extend her stay in college beyond her entry class's date of eligibility not whether she could leave early.

 

[Adesmar123]

Interesting article with very little meat, but bringing up interesting issues. I have some thoughts and hope not to make this too long:
.

How dare you inject common sense and thoughtfulness into this thread!

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Actually and most to the point, the comment (Herbsts?) that the NCAA has lost both compassion and common sense is really the root of so much of this.

If, in fact, they made common sense decisions and showed some compassion to the pressures of being a real person with real life issues, then I think fan-bases (at least) would have a lot less complaint with them.

And whoever raised the point about compensation above is, to me, correct. As the old NCAA ads put it (I forget the exact quote), 90% of us are going pro in something other than sports. So, is a scholarship, health benefits, etc enough compensation for the opportunity to play a sport you love (at a loss to the school)? I get the desire for athletes to want to share the wealth of highly successful programs, and even the argument that they deserve to, but lets not divorce these ideas from the real truth of college athletics, that football is at most schools paying the bill for the rest of athletics, and at some schools, amazingly enough, not making money. And no one school can reverse the "arms race" in facilities and coaches salaries.

 

[UcMiami]

Actually and most to the point, the comment (Herbsts?) that the NCAA has lost both compassion and common sense is really the root of so much of this.

If, in fact, they made common sense decisions and showed some compassion to the pressures of being a real person with real life issues, then I think fan-bases (at least) would have a lot less complaint with them.

And whoever raised the point about compensation above is, to me, correct. As the old NCAA ads put it (I forget the exact quote), 90% of us are going pro in something other than sports. So, is a scholarship, health benefits, etc enough compensation for the opportunity to play a sport you love (at a loss to the school)? I get the desire for athletes to want to share the wealth of highly successful programs, and even the argument that they deserve to, but lets not divorce these ideas from the real truth of college athletics, that football is at most schools paying the bill for the rest of athletics, and at some schools, amazingly enough, not making money. And no one school can reverse the "arms race" in facilities and coaches salaries.

Specific to the highlighted bit - the number of schools where it actually pays the bills is staggeringly small - that may change a little with new broadcast deals, but probably not much. Most schools run all athletics at a loss with football possibly reducing that loss.
On Compassion and Rules:
I used to work in the theater with theater unions. When you look at the rules imposed by the various unions on theater management (and TV and film) a bunch of them are crazy and end up with musicians being paid not to perform for certain broadway shows, and control who can touch what when. Occasionally you would actually have union reps that were so a___ retentive that it drove everyone up the walls. But the reality of those rules is they were negotiated specifically because at some point some manager was pushing actors or stage hands over the limits of decency and something had to be done to protect the welfare and safety of everyone involved. The same is generally true for all unions. In the modern work environment the rules seem crazy, but without those rules in place you can bet that some manager would start pushing the limits again. (You only need to see what happens in rogue coal mines, or sweat shops around the world to know this is true.

The reason I bring this up is that the NCAA rules are very similar to Union rules - every rule in the books was put there specifically to stop some coach or school or agent or scholarship athlete from pushing the limits of what is generally acceptable. Taken as a whole they are incredibly complex and deal in minutia that seems crazy, but is very real.

And in a litigious society, any bending of rules for compassionate reasons creates an opening for a lawsuit for discrimination against everyone who didn't have rules bent for them. Corporations have been 'lawsuited' out of being compassionate to specific employees, and the NCAA is in a similar situation.

Specific to paid travel for parents - isn't that what 5 official visits paid by the school is supposed to cover? Or was she not able to travel to see specific games which is not 'seeing where her boy is going to go to school' but a whole different issue. And you can bet that if a school is allowed to pay for travel to games it will not be long until some 'BigU' coach is flying family members around in private jets or chauffeured in Rolls Royces.

And the NCAA does handle violations in different ways - the whole concept of secondary violation is less than a slap on the wrist. The 'racism' claim would probably hinge on set of specific instances where the NCAA was 'compassionate' but did so disproportionally.

 

[UcMiami]

Maybe I am an old curmudgeon but for the most part I find these discussion about compensating student athletes to be mostly about greed. There are three types of scholarship athletes in my mind:
1. Students who have translated specific athletic skills into a free ride at university. They are there to get an education and they are paying for it by playing a sport and devoting a lot of time to training and practice and games and travel. They compare to the general student population that is paying a huge amount of money to get the same education, or borrowing a huge amount of money to get that education, or working incredible hours to earn the money to pay for that education - train, practice, play, vs. short order cook or delivery boy, or _____, or start post college life owing $200K and work 20 years to clear that debt.

2. Athletes who want to continuing playing their sport and have found someone to pay them room and board to do so, in return for having to attend some classes and do some school work. Not a bad gig and if you can get through all four years you get this cool piece of paper that says some things in latin and has the school crest on it - bummer that you can only do this gig for 4 years, wouldn't it be cool if you never had to get a job!

3. Athletes who have a dream of playing professionally and making a career out of their sport. They get access to the best coaches and training facilities and teammates to workout against and good competition to play against as well as insurance and room and board and a huge marketing arm to increase their earning potential. There are a bunch of rules they have to abide by, and there is always the chance of injury derailing the dream, and they have to attend classes and do some school work, but they get special assistance if they need it, and babysitters to manage their time, and if they care about it and stay for four years they can actually get a first rate education as well. If they are lucky, they enter school with an earning potential of zero as an athlete and they exit with an earning potential in the millions per year. If they are unlucky but academically inclined they are in the same boat as #1, and if they aren't academically inclined they are in the same boat as #2. These scholarship athletes are in much better situations than the HS grads who enter minor league baseball or hook up with minor league/youth hockey teams. And they are much better off than the equally skilled contemporaries that couldn't figure out a way to get through HS or couldn't meet minimum standards to get into college.

Of course there is a small percentage that have their bodies broken by their participation in college sports, but life is tough and there are no guarantees - the same could have happened in grammar school or HS and did to some of their contemporaries. Setting up an additional fund for these athletes might be nice but what would this fund do - most likely provide job training which is sort of what college is supposed to be doing anyway.

People look at college athletics and see the hundreds of millions flowing in and everyone wants a piece of the pie - but ... Universities get a lot of money out of that pie - but almost none of the athletic departments are actually in the black. The best ADs make big salaries, but they are managing very complex 'companies' with lots of workers, and have a major responsibility of raise large sums of money to try and balance their huge budgets. Coaches like Saban make millions, but the value his coaching skill adds to his players over the years has probably returned 10 times what he has earned - a pretty good investment return for his players.

Are there a few scholarship athletes and their families that are hoodwinked into think they are getting something other than what they end up with - maybe some, but very few. There are a lot more who know exactly what the score is, and only complain when their pipe dream comes to a crashing halt. And those that were truly hoodwinked into believing they were going to get a 'real education' when they clearly did not have the academic skills for college - 99.9 percent of them would still have signed the LOI in pursuit of that pipe dream of professional success, and the others would have gotten the job that non-athlete contemporaries in their community with a HS education get.