Editor’s Note: I don’t
usually talk about sports on this blog (it is called Tyler Talks TV after all),
but I haven’t written anything in a while and this is a topic that interests me
and I had a few things to say.
I generally loathe the NCAA.
It is an ineffectual organization that is mostly concerned with
maintaining the status quo of a cartel built on unpaid labor. It pretends to uphold the morals and virtues
of academic institutions but instead largely concerns itself with making sure the money
keeps flowing to athletic departments and that student-athletes see none of
it.
The one foundational principle on which its concept of
amateur athletics rests is the idea that athletes are being compensated for
their labor and their bodies in the form of a college education. It’s an idea that has proliferated and found
support among both fans and the media. “College
athletes are already paid with their education [sic],” wrote Syracuse professor of sports management Richard Burton
in the US News and World Report. Charles Ellison of The Root, argued that “college athletes already
earn anywhere from $55,000 to $125,000 a year in accumulated full tuition,
room and board packages.” “A free college education…expert coaching…free
meals…[and] free medical consultation” are all touted as benefits of being a
student-athlete according to the Lincoln Journal-Star, hometown newspaper of the multiple national
championship-holding Nebraska Cornhuskers. Even athletes
have bought into the story, with Florida State quarterback and reigning
Heisman Award winner Jameis Winston telling reporters that “We’re blessed to get a free education.”
The University of North Carolina would kindly like you to know
that that is all bullshit. A report,
conducted by United States Department of Justice official Kenneth Wainstein and
released today by the university, details a program coordinated by two university
administrators (including a department head) in the university’s Department of
African and Afro-American Studies that funneled thousands of students, almost
half of which were student-athletes, into no-show independent study classes
that required little to no effort on the part of students in exchange for
grades ranging from A’s all the way to B+’s.
The athletic department and its academic advisors knew about these
classes and intentionally steered their athletes, especially those needing to
boost their GPAs, to these easy classes.
Faculty members and administrators at the university knew that these
independent studies were not being overseen by faculty members, in violation of
university policy, but said and did nothing.
The entire report and a pretty damning breakdown are available at
Deadspin
but the money quotation is this: “[T]he University failed to conduct any
meaningful oversight of the [African and Afro-American Studies] Department and [the
Office of Academic Support for Student Athletes], and Crowder's paper class
scheme was allowed to operate within one of the nation's premier academic
institutions for almost two decades.”
The first “core value” of the NCAA
is a commitment to “the collegiate model of athletics in which students
participate as an avocation, balancing their academic, social and athletics
experiences.” The second value is a
commitment to “the highest levels of integrity and sportsmanship.” The third is a commitment to “the pursuit of
excellence in both academics and athletics.”
For the past two decades the University of North Carolina has flaunted and
downright disgraced the term “student-athlete,” violating each of these three "core values" and it is for this reason that
the NCAA should levy its harshest possible punishment against UNC.
If I haven’t made it clear by now, I firmly believe that
student-athletes should be allowed to be paid beyond the cost of a scholarship. I believe that the billions of dollars earned
by universities every year from college athletes render the idea of “amateur”
Division I athletics laughable. But the
NCAA has made the preservation of the collegiate model its raison d’être over the past few decades, coming down hard on
athletes for such terrible violations of the amateur spirit as signing
autographs (allegedly for pay), selling commemorative jerseys, and trading
school-issued trinkets for free tattoos.
Hell, Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant was suspended for most of
his junior year not for committing an NCAA infraction, but for lying about a
meeting that could have been (but wasn’t) an infraction.
The NCAA has, for years, waged war on professionalism in
college athletics. But if it every truly
believed in the rhetoric it spews, this
is the hill the NCAA must make its stand on.
The idea that student-athletes are being compensated for their labor
with a college education is the one last barrier preventing a landslide of
support in favor of paying student-athletes in real money rather than company scrip.
If that education turns out to be worthless because athletic departments
are funneling their students into classes with no educational value, then what
are these athletes receiving in exchange for their labor?
Let me be clear: I do not believe that UNC was unique in its
offering of no-show classes for student-athletes. I believe it was unique in the scope of its program, but every school
has ways of getting its students good grades, whether it’s pressuring an
impressionable, young graduate assistant into boosting a C to a B or enrolling
its star, junior quarterback in a freshman-level history class. This kind of academic fraud is not unique to
the University of North Carolina, a university that “prides itself on…academic
opportunities not found anywhere else).”
That this is not a new phenomenon does not mean that we
should ignore it, however. That this is the most
egregious such circumstance yet found means that the NCAA should do everything in
its power to ensure that it does not happen again.
And that means dropping the hammer on UNC. This scandal demonstrated a lack of
institutional control at all levels of the university, from the athletic
department to the provost. For two decades, the University of North Carolina gave truth to the lie that college athletes are are students first and athletes second. If ever the
NCAA was a true bastion of amateurism in athletics, this would be the time to
show the public why. That is, obviously,
if the NCAA actually cares about the “student” part of its student-athletes,
and not just ensuring a continuing supply of free labor for its constituent
institutions.
Tyler Williams is a
professional librarian and an amateur television critic. You can reach him at TyTalksTV AT gmail DOT
com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.
