This is the second installment of a multi-part column series in which The Daily’s Cameron Miller outlines 10 reforms the NCAA can pass in order to become more athlete-friendly and generally less restrictive.

4) Allow institutions to house athletes in athletic dorms or other athlete-only living arrangements.

NCAA Bylaw 16.5.1 does not allow member institutions to “house student-athletes in athletics dormitories or athletics blocks within institutional or privately owned dormitories or apartment buildings” and defines “athletics dormitories” and “athletic blocks” as housing environments where more than half of the residents are athletes.

The ostensible goal of this restriction is to better integrate the “student-athlete” into the wider campus community, and force them out of the athletics bubble they otherwise inhabit. Still, that hasn’t stopped schools like Auburn, Kansas and Kentucky from building top-of-the-line dormitories for the express purpose of housing their athletes, allowing just the requisite amount of non-athletes to pass NCAA muster.

As coaches and administrators across the nation will tell you, allowing teammates to live with one another is not only the right thing to do, it’s necessary to develop the type of team camaraderie and bonding that precedes success on the field. Auburn AD Jay Jacobs puts it very well when he said, “Getting to know your teammates away from the practice field and the weight room is real important. When you get to know people, you care about them.”

Having lived with my teammates on the cross country and track teams for the past two years, I can personally attest to the benefits of living with people who understand your schedule, the demands on your time and the daily struggles of trying to be both a student and an athlete. We all understand the need to be in bed by 10 p.m. the night before a morning workout; we understand the desire not to go out the night before a race; we know what it’s like to be injured, the negative feelings that come with them and how to support one another through those difficult times; the list could go on and on.

But my main point is this: It is my experience that the daily (but especially nightly) activities of most Stanford non-athletes are not conducive to high-level athletic performance. Staying up until 3 a.m. coding, early-morning roll-outs and late-night house meetings and other dorm/community activities often interfere with the athlete’s unique sleep, practice and work schedules — which makes the difficult task of balancing one’s athletic and academic pursuits even harder.

One solution to this issue of clashing priorities is the allocation of an entire dormitory complex, or sections of separate residence halls, for athlete-only use. In this way, athletes who want to focus all of their energy on their academic and athletic responsibilities can do so without the distractions that “traditional” housing arrangements might and often do create.

Of course, living in an athlete-only housing should not be mandatory, but the NCAA should allow institutions to provide their athletes with the opportunity to live in an environment that suits their unique needs. In the case of Stanford, that might mean setting aside one floor of Mirrielees for athletes only, or converting the soon-to-be-completed Manzanita Park Humanities Dorm to an athlete-only complex. This is, to me, not an unreasonable proposition, especially when considering the proximity of both complexes to the athletic facilities.

Think about it this way: Stanford already offers more than a dozen theme and focus houses to provide students with similar academic (and non-academic) interests the opportunity to come together and live under the same roof; why not provide athletes with the chance to live in a community where their strict sleep, practice and work schedules are understood and respected? While I am under no delusion that such a proposition would never, ever be accepted by the Stanford administration (who refuse to treat their undergraduate athletes any differently than the rest of the student population), I believe other NCAA member schools should be given the opportunity to provide optimal living conditions for their players.

5) Mandate that schools cover all sport-related medical expenses during an athlete’s playing career, and permit schools to cover post-career, sport-related medical care as well.

This proposal is relatively straightforward, and probably the most reasonable one offered here. NCAA Bylaw 16.4 allows, but does not require, that member schools cover an athlete’s sport-related medical costs while the athlete is enrolled at the institution. And though most schools will cover what an athlete’s private insurance does not, there are more than a few nightmarish stories of schools abandoning their injured players.

While the NCAA does a commendable job of mandating that schools provide catastrophic injury coverage and allowing schools to purchase loss-of-value insurance for their high-achieving players, it can do more to ensure that all of its athletes’ sport-related medical bills are covered — no matter the cost. Accordingly, the NCAA should eliminate its requirement that all players have their own private insurance, which, even in the day-and-age of ObamaCare, is oftentimes an unreasonable request for some families.

Not only that, but the NCAA should require all of its member institutions to pay for all of its athletes’ sport-related medical expenses during their playing careers, and permit those benefits to extend beyond an athlete’s time on campus. If an institution is asking its athletes to put their short- and long-term health at risk by representing the school in competition, it must be willing to front whatever health costs are attached to training and competing.

Suffering two ankle sprains after jumping off a roof is one thing, but being concussed during a game or developing a stress fracture or soft-tissue injury during the course of training is another. I’m almost never in favor of the NCAA mandating anything, but it has to step up to the plate on this issue.

6) Reduce missed class time by cutting down on or capping weekday competitions.

As over-regulated and as “academic-focused” as the NCAA is, it is surprising to learn that the term “missed class” appears only three times in the 407-page long NCAA Division I rules handbook. Yes, just one bylaw addresses missed class time, and all it does is require schools to set their own policies regarding “missed class time due to participation in intercollegiate athletics and in athletics competition scheduled during final examination periods.”

The fact that these policies may vary across institutions is somewhat concerning, but even more troubling is the idea that the NCAA — which preaches the importance of academics to anyone that will listen — does not have a framework in place to limit the amount of live, in-person instruction that its athletes are absent for as a result of off-campus, sport-related activities.

As a collegiate athlete myself, I understand that it would be completely unreasonable to ask schools and the NCAA to rearrange competition schedules such that athletes would miss no class at all. With far-flung conferences, mid-season invitationals halfway across the country and championship events that cycle between locations every year, it is inevitable that collegians will miss in-person instruction due to athletic-related travel — likely far more than their non-athlete peers.

And while the NCAA and its member schools do their best to schedule games and meets on Fridays and weekends and have evening start times for weekday events, the Association must do a far better job at reducing the amount of class time its athletes miss if it desires its “academics-first” mantra to be taken seriously by its constituents and the general public.

It’s definitely not a good look for the NCAA when it touts the “academic primacy of its mission,” and at the same time allows institutions to schedule mid-week football contests and asks basketball athletes who participate in the NCAA tournament to go on the road for days on end in March and early April. But football and basketball athletes don’t have the worst of it.

That the NCAA permits the college baseball season to drag on from early February into the middle of June — which caused the average Division 1 player to miss 2.3 classes per week in 2010 season — is unconscionable, and no one seems to be that concerned about it. And for cross-country and track athletes like myself, missed class is a given when considering our near-perennial competition schedules.

As such, I propose that the NCAA should, after good-faith and full-throated conversations with its member institutions and athletes, work to limit missed class time by cutting down on midweek competitions and capping the amount of school days athletes are allowed to miss for varsity athletics purposes. The NCAA should limit its football squads to one weekday game per season, with exemptions for teams who qualify for postseason bowls and the College Football Playoff.

As for basketball, teams should not be able to play more than 50 percent of their preseason and regular-season contests away from home, and the NCAA must take all necessary steps to ensure that the 68 teams that qualify for the NCAA tournament miss as little class as possible. This could mean rescheduling weekday games for weekends, and, as much as possible, sending qualifying schools to the geographically closest regional site.

Furthermore, the NCAA should set a hard cap on the percentage of school days per quarter or semester that any athlete is able miss due to sports-related competitions and travel — somewhere between 10 to 20 percent sounds good to me. The bottom line is this: If the NCAA wants to elevate and emphasize the “student” portion of its “student-athlete” motto, it must stop pulling its athletes out of class for the length of time that it does for supposedly “amateur” sporting contests.

7) Eliminate street/recreational drugs from the NCAA testing protocol, but allow individual institutions to test for this class of drugs.

Currently, collegiate athletes can be drug tested year-round and without cause by the NCAA and their institution, though the NCAA does not require a member school to create and implement a drug testing program (Stanford is one of the few programs in the Power 5 that does not drug test its own athletes).

If a school does decide to drug test its athletes, however, the NCAA requires the institution include all the NCAA’s banned substances on its own banned substance list and to follow its own drug testing protocol. Recent examples of institutions that were punished for not adhering to their own drug testing procedures include Syracuse and Oklahoma State. To clarify, NCAA-administered testing usually takes place at national championship events, while school-administered tests take place randomly on campus throughout the year, though it is within the NCAA’s authority to conduct random testing on campuses at any time.

There are eight classes of drugs on the NCAA’s banned substance list; one of these is what the NCAA calls
“street drugs.” Although the NCAA claims “There is no complete list of banned substances,” it cites heroin, marijuana, THC and synthetic cannabinoids as examples of street drugs that would trigger a positive test.

As you might recall, two Oregon football players were suspended shortly before January’s inaugural College Football Playoff championship game for marijuana use, denied the opportunity to play in what would have certainly been the biggest game of their lives against Ohio State. Putting aside the significant legal and Constitutional issues drug testing policies like this raise, I believe the NCAA should stop drug testing its athletes for recreational drugs if only because such policies do not align with any of its Core Values.

The NCAA’s principle objective is organizing and facilitating intercollegiate sporting competitions — not regulating the personal decisions of its athletes in an attempt to force its standard of morality on them. And, since the NCAA “denies that is has a legal duty to protect student-athletes,” it cannot logically assert that its prohibitions on street drugs emanate from an intention to promote or safeguard athletes’ physical well-being.

As I have argued before, the NCAA does not have a legitimate need to know whether or not its athletes are using recreational drugs, nor should it not test for substances that have not been scientifically proven to enhance athletic performance. If anything, use of recreational drugs like marijuana or heroin will decrease athletic performance, and that’s the athlete’s and institution’s problem, not the NCAA’s.

Thus, I believe that while individual colleges/universities should, if they so desire, include street drugs on their banned substances list (if they implement their own drug testing program), the NCAA should not be in the business of regulating, restricting and punishing the personal and private decisions of its athletes — whether that behavior is legal or illegal under the law.

Contact Cameron Miller at cmiller6 ‘at’ stanford.edu.