The O’Bannon trial. Judge Claudia Wilken’s ’71 ruling. Increased autonomy for the Power 5 conferences. UNC’s athletic-academic scandal. The College Football Playoff (and the mind-boggling profits it generated). Cost-of-attendance legislation.
The past year has been as eventful and transformative as ever for the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) and its member institutions, and more change is on the horizon. With court dates for the Shawne Alston and Martin Jenkins lawsuits (with the latter known as the Kessler case) upcoming, the NCAA will again be under fire in the 2015-16 competition year, and perhaps more so than at any other time in its long and storied history. For the NCAA, reform is soon to be forced down its throat by courts of law and equity; it’s not a matter of if, but when and in what scope. Mark Emmert and his legal team can appeal decisions all they want — as they have in the O’Bannon case — but the underpinnings that have supported the NCAA’s unsustainable amateurism model for the better part of the last century are crumbling faster than can be repaired. To quote Sean Bean, “Change, er, winter is coming.”
In light of that stark reality, I propose 10 changes/reforms the NCAA can implement to benefit the health and welfare of its athletes and become generally less restrictive. They appear below in no particular order and without regard to importance, feasibility or likelihood of being adopted.
1) Lift all transfer restrictions on athletes and allow them to transfer anywhere, at any time and for any reason without the loss of eligibility.
Although the NCAA’s rules regarding transferring between institutions are complex, and excessively so, they ultimately boil down to this: Athletes, especially those in football and basketball, seeking to transfer between four-year schools (not community or junior colleges) “generally… are not eligible to play at the new four-year school until [they] spend an academic year in residence at that new school.”
While there are several exceptions that allow athletes to play immediately, many essentially lose of a year of eligibility when they transfer between NCAA institutions because they are forced to sit out for an entire competition season.
Of the four criteria that must be satisfied in order to use what is called the one-time transfer exception (so that an athlete can play immediately upon transferring), perhaps the most onerous for the athlete is the requirement to secure a “written release agreement from your first school saying that it does not object to your receiving an exception to the transfer residence requirement.” In many cases, schools do not provide athletes with this “release,” or do so with a set of restrictions on where the athlete can transfer if he or she wishes to play immediately.
Issues regarding these transfer restrictions have bubbled up several times in the past year, with the most high-profile cases coming out of Kansas State (involving a female basketball player) and, more recently, Notre Dame (involving the potential transfer of former starting quarterback Everett Golson).
In both instances, schools have flat-out denied to give an athlete release, or have provided the release but severely curtailed the possible landing spots for an athlete who desires to play immediately. Furthermore, schools and coaches are able to “block their former players from getting scholarships at new schools.” In this way, athletes are often held hostage and treated like valuable cattle, not college students.
When comparing these outcomes for transfer athletes with the outcomes for non-athlete college students who switch colleges or collegiate coaches who cycle through institutions, the differences are painstakingly obvious.
Non-athlete college students can transfer to any other university, at any time and for any reason and not be forced to “sit out” of extra- or co-curricular activities for any significant period of time. If a writer for The Stanford Daily transfers from the Farm to, say, UC Berkeley, it would be crazy to think that the administration across the bay would prevent that student from writing for The Daily Californian. The same goes for students who participate in theater troupes, a cappellas, student government organizations, ethnic groups and the like. What makes one’s participation in varsity sports different from the rest of these activities — different to the point that athletes have to ask their school’s permission in order to play immediately somewhere else?
Similarly, the vast majority of college coaches are able to switch institutions without impunity. Just this offseason, former Colorado State football coach Jim McElwain headed south to Florida, former VCU basketball coach Shaka Smart defected to Texas and ex-Wisconsin head man Gary Andersen left Madison for the warmer (but rainier) climes at Oregon State.
Instead of being forced to sit out a year, like many of their athletes are made to do, McElwain, Smart and Andersen were able to begin coaching the moment they signed their new contracts. They didn’t have to ask for permission to enter into negotiations with other schools or seek a release: All they had to do was indicate their intention to terminate their current contract, and poof, they’re free to go anywhere they so desire. And I have absolutely no problem with that, but if coaches are able to transfer with virtual impunity, so should their players.
The inequity in the rules (or lack thereof) regarding coach and player transfers is completely unfair and unduly restrictive; my solution is to remove all transfer restrictions on NCAA athletes in order to allow them to switch between any school, at any time and for any reason and play immediately — just like their fellow students and their coaches are able to do.
2) Expand the ability of undrafted players to re-enter college (provided they stay enrolled through the draft process).
NCAA Bylaw 12.2.4.2. reads “After initial full-time collegiate enrollment, an individual loses amateur status in a particular sport when the individual asks to be placed on the draft list or supplemental draft list of a professional league in that sport, even though: (a) the individual asks that his or her name be withdrawn from the draft list prior to the actual draft; (b) the individual’s name remains on the list but he or she is not drafted; or (c) the individual is drafted but does not sign an agreement with any professional athletics team.”
Thus, even if a college player goes undrafted, he or she is not permitted to return to college and play for any NCAA school because, by simply entering the draft, status as an amateur has been forever forfeited (the question of whether one truly morphs from amateur to professional simply by appearing on a draft roll is certainly up for debate).
To me, this policy does not square with the NCAA’s stated mission of furthering and promoting the educational achievement of its athletes. In fact, such a policy might prevent or, at the very least, deter undrafted players who are underclassmen (and thus have remaining eligibility) from returning to school at all, because 1) they no longer have access to an athletic scholarship (and are otherwise unable to afford the costs of higher education) and 2) they may have only been attending school/going to class in order to participate in intercollegiate athletics.
In either case, the NCAA’s rules restricting an athlete’s ability to re-enter the collegiate ranks after going undrafted appear to foreclose on an individual’s opportunity to continue education and to include varsity athletics as a part of that education. And though there is a one-time exception for basketball players to “enter a professional league’s draft one time during his collegiate career without jeopardizing eligibility in that sport,” similar protections for other athletes need to be implemented as well.
A recent example of a football player who could have used such an exception is LSU offensive lineman La’El Collins, who went unselected in the 2015 NFL Draft after questions concerning his possible involvement in the murder of his ex-girlfriend emerged just days before the Chicago-based bonanza was to begin.
As a result of the enormous uncertainty regarding his role in the incident, Collins, who was widely-projected as a first-round pick (ESPN Scout’s INC. rated him the 22nd-best player available) went undrafted, which left him in a untenable position: As per NFL rules, he could not enter the 2016 draft, and, even if he had remaining collegiate eligibility (which he did not) he could not go back to LSU and continue playing because of the NCAA restrictions regarding re-entry. I’m certain that had Collins (who has never been named a suspect in the death of his ex-girlfriend) come out after his junior season and had a similar situation befall him, he would have liked to have had the option to finish out his eligibility at LSU or another NCAA institution and enter the NFL draft at a later date.
Thus, I believe the NCAA should expand the ability of undrafted athletes to re-enter college and immediately regain their eligibility. The NCAA and its membership should reform their current rules on re-entry to allow college players to enter a draft without jeopardizing whatever remaining collegiate eligibility they have left. This would give both undrafted players and drafted players who do not sign a professional contract the ability to return to their former school and be cleared to resume their playing careers immediately (provided they have not exhausted their eligibility).
For example, if on the off chance that former Duke star Jahlil Okafor goes unselected in the upcoming NBA draft, he would, under these new regulations, be able to return to the university and play in the 2015-16 basketball season. And if he entered the 2016 NBA Draft and went unselected again, he would be able to return to campus for the 2016-17 campaign (a process that could repeat itself until he had no more NCAA eligibility left).
The caveat to all of this, though, is that in order for a player to be immediately eligible to play upon going undrafted or refusing to sign a contract, he or she would need to stay at least partially enrolled at the original institution through the duration of the draft process. Even if this meant taking online classes while preparing for the draft, I believe that players who want to have another shot at college should their hopes of going pro not pan out at least keep up the appearance of being both a student and an athlete (I’m sure the NCAA would look favorably on something like this, should they actually consider the proposal I’ve put forth here).
The benefits to this system are twofold. Firstly, it would give athletes greater freedom of choice by allowing them to test and retest the professional market without jeopardizing their future participation in NCAA competition. In addition, it would further the NCAA’s objective of educating and ultimately graduating its athletes by allowing undrafted players to return to college to finish out their eligibility and (hopefully) earn their degree. Seems like a win-win situation, right?
3) Contract with a third-party watchdog group or other regulatory firm to ensure compliance with the existing 20- and eight-hour-per-week CARA standards.
In what is ostensibly an attempt to ensure that its “student-athletes” have the requisite time to devote to their academic work and fulfill other non-athletic responsibilities, the NCAA limits an athlete’s in-season “participation in countable athletically related activities (CARA)… to a maximum of four hours per day and 20 hours per week.”
During the offseason, this ceiling drops to eight CARA hours per week. What is a Countable Athletic-Related Activity, you ask? Perhaps that question is best answered by defining what is not counted toward the 20-hour in-season limit: mandatory compliance meetings and study hall, “voluntary” sport-related activities, captain-led practices, medical treatment/rehabilitation sessions, hosting prospective athletes on their official visits and, perhaps most time-consuming of all, travel.
Those activities alone could exceed the 20-hour maximum, and they aren’t even counted! What is counted are meetings and practices (including weight room and conditioning sessions) that are initiated, organized and attended by the coaching staff, competitions (which the NCAA ridiculously caps at 3 hours), and several more. This much is clear: The existing CARA standards are woefully inadequate at capturing all of the “athletically-related activities” in which collegiate players engage.
Furthermore, many athletes have long complained that their coaches blatantly disregard the 20- and eight-hour-per-week limits, and a recently-released Pac-12 study confirmed what many individuals involved in collegiate athletics already knew: Athletes are “too exhausted to study effectively.”
While the easiest and most direct way to address this issue is to overhaul the CARA guidelines to more accurately reflect the types of activities athletes are asked to participate in and the amount of time they devote to those activities, I will ignore that for now. Alternatively, I suggest that the NCAA contract with a third-party watchdog group or some other independent regulatory agency to ensure that individual sport programs are complying with the existing hours limit regulations.
This group should have access to a program’s practices, weekly schedules, travel itineraries and activity logs, and must have the ability to interview coaches and players concerning daily and weekly time inputs. Violations must be reported to the institution and the NCAA, and those responsible must face whatever consequences the membership deems necessary, though I believe coaches who are chronic violators should face a suspension or other official reprimand.
It is my opinion that an institution’s compliance office is, however unfortunately, unable to be a truly independent monitor of CARA hours, simply because it may be pressured by coaches or administrators — both of whom are above their pay grade — to underreport the amount of time an athlete truly puts in.
If the NCAA wants to get serious about enforcing its own 20- and eight-hour-per-week standards, it needs to get creative and look outside its self-interested membership for help. Hiring an outside firm to ensure that athletes are not overworked by their coaches and have a decent amount of time to devote to academic achievement — which the NCAA considers to be its primary objective — is an outside-the-box idea that it needs to consider. That, or reworking the current CARA framework, and hopefully both. If the NCAA cannot enforce and defend “the primacy of the Association’s academic mission,” the entire collegiate athletics system “stands as a house of cards.”
Contact Cameron Miller at cmiller6 ‘at’ stanford.edu.