Articulations a unlv rhetoric and reader 2nd edition pdf

COLLEGE ATHLETES’ Rights and Well-Being

2

COLLEGE ATHLETES’

Rights and Well-Being

Critical Perspectives on Policy and Practice

Edited by EDDIE COMEAUX

3

© 2017 Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2017 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Comeaux, Eddie, 1973– editor. Title: College Athletes’ Rights and Well-Being : Critical Perspectives on

Policy and Practice / Edited by Eddie Comeaux. Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. | Includes

bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017008836| ISBN 9781421423852 (pbk. : alk. paper) |

ISBN 1421423855 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421423869 (electronic) | ISBN 1421423863 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: College athletes—United States. | College athletes— Education—United States. | College sports—Social aspects—United States. | College sports—Moral and ethical aspects—United States. | National Collegiate Athletic Association—Rules and practice. | Well- being—United States.

Classification: LCC GV351 .C63 2017 | DDC 796.043—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017008836

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or specialsales@press.jhu.edu.

Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book

4

http://www.press.jhu.edu
https://lccn.loc.gov/2017008836
mailto:specialsales@press.jhu.edu
materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible.

5

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION. A Whole New Ball Game for College Athletes? John R. Thelin

1 Part One. Historical Perspective

CHAPTER 1. The Muzzle and the Megaphone: Enlisting the College Athlete Voice for Meaningful Reform Valyncia C. Raphael and J. P. Abercrumbie

2 Part Two. Formal NCAA and Member Institution Policies and Principles

CHAPTER 2. The National Letter of Intent: A Symbol of the Need for an Independent College Athlete Players Association Ellen J. Staurowsky

CHAPTER 3. Amateurism and the NCAA Cartel Robert Scott Lemons

CHAPTER 4. Title IX’s Gender-Separate Allowance in the Context of College Athlete Rights and Intercollegiate Athletics Reform Jennifer Lee Hoffman

CHAPTER 5. The State of Concussion Protocols: Paperwork or Policies?

6

Whitney Griffin

CHAPTER 6. 4–4 Transfer Restrictions on College Football and Athlete Freedom Gerald Gurney

CHAPTER 7. Due Process in College Sports Steven J. Silver

CHAPTER 8. College Athletes and Collective Bargaining Laws Neal H. Hutchens and Kaitlin A. Quigley

3 Part Three. The Commercial Enterprise of College Sports

CHAPTER 9. Commercialism in College Sports Undermines Athletes’ Educational Opportunities and Rights Angela Lumpkin

CHAPTER 10. Conference Realignment and the Evolution of New Organizational Forms Earl Smith and Angela J. Hattery

CHAPTER 11. Competitive Equity: Can There Be Balance between Athletes’ Rights and a Level Playing Field? Andy Schwarz and Daniel A. Rascher

4 Part Four. Personal and Educational Well-Being of Athletes

CHAPTER 12. Looking underneath the Helmet: Learning How African American Football College Athletes Navigate Sports, Education, and Expectations Jamel K. Donnor

CHAPTER 13. Athletic Scholarship Arrangement: Maximizing Educational

7

Opportunities for Pacific Islanders in College Football Keali‘i Troy Kukahiko and Mitchell J. Chang

CHAPTER 14. Intervention Strategies for Improving College Athletes’ Academic and Personal Development Outcomes at Historically Black Colleges and Universities Joseph N. Cooper and Eddie Comeaux

CHAPTER 15. Revisiting African American Males and Highlighting Pacific Islander / Polynesian Male Experiences C. Keith Harrison, Leticia Oseguera, Jean Boyd, and Monica Morita

CHAPTER 16. Activism in College Athletics: A Case Study of the Student- Athletes Human Rights Project Emmett Gill, Jr.

AFTERWORD. Restoring Balance: Putting the “Student” and “Collegiate” Back in Intercollegiate Athletics Scott N. Brooks

Contributors

Index

8

Preface

The Division I college athlete experience is extraordinarily complex and compelling and has generated myriad critical questions for educators and social scientists. At the core of these analyses are growing concerns about underlying issues of equity, fairness, and inclusion. For college athletes, these issues emerge as early as their binding agreement with a college or university—the National Letter of Intent (NLI).

In 2014–15, it was estimated that more than 24,000 Division I freshman athletes agreed to compete in intercollegiate athletics on behalf of colleges and universities in exchange for partial or full athletic scholarships. The contractual relationship between these athletes and their institutions principally comprises the NLI and a financial aid agreement (FAA). By signing the NLI, these athletes have agreed to attend their respective schools to pursue a program of study and participate in intercollegiate athletics. As well, an FAA formalizes their college or university’s commitment to providing athletic grants-in-aid in exchange for their commitment to playing college sports.

An athletic scholarship affords athletes an opportunity to pursue both their athletic and academic dreams. Nevertheless, the inherent value of a formal college education relative to the revenue generated by athletes in big-time collegiate sports and the ever-increasing salaries of head coaches has been highly debated. Many critics of college athletics, in fact, argue that the contractual relationship between athletes and their institutions is rarely a fair exchange. For instance, as commercial interests in college sports continue to grow, there are more extensive game schedules, more travel, and increased “special admit” athletes who do not meet the admission standards of their institutions. It is increasingly difficult to ignore the effects of these circumstances on the quality of educational experiences for college athletes.

Brown (2011) reported that athletes at Division I football subdivision schools spend 43.3 hours per week on sport-related activities, and men’s and women’s basketball players miss the most classes—2.4 and 2.5 per week, respectively. Missed classes are largely the result of coaches’ demands and television networks’ dictation of schedules and times for games. Moreover, some athletes are restricted to certain academic majors

9

because of scheduling conflicts (Fountain & Finley, 2009). And studies have shown low graduation rates among Division I athletes in high-profile sports, particularly Black, male athletes (Harper, Williams, & Blackman, 2013). Unfortunately, economic and commercial interests create an organizational culture where academic goals and obligations, as well as the overall well-being of athletes, are less of a priority among coaches and other stakeholders of athletics.

Many critics of college athletics have also argued that this contractual relationship is disproportionately unfavorable to athletes because they are not receiving basic rights and protections, including (but not limited to) guaranteed multiyear athletic scholarships to help them complete their degrees, guaranteed medical benefits if they are injured during sport participation, health and safety rules to reduce the types of injuries that cause brain trauma, and, because of NCAA amateurism ideals, the ability to profit from their own names, images, and likenesses.

Meanwhile, power brokers who determine the rules of engagement for college athletics continue to benefit quite handsomely from the multibillion-dollar college sports enterprise. For the fiscal year ending in 2015, the revenue of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) exceeded $1 billion. A significant portion of this revenue is the result of a 14-year, $10.8 billion agreement with CBS and Turner Sports for the television and marketing rights to the Division I men’s basketball tournament. Further, head coaching salaries in big-time football and men’s basketball are rapidly rising—on average, they now exceed $1 million— and salaries for athletic directors and NCAA conference commissioners are also steadily climbing.

Despite the argument that the current intercollegiate athletics enterprise is not a fair exchange for athletes, current athletes and their advocates have incredible power in their political and social voices. Rarely have these voices been exercised, however, because support systems and reasonable protections within athletic departments and their institutions are absent. As such, many athletes agree to contractual relationships and conform to current policies and practices of intercollegiate athletics rather than challenge them.

Nonetheless, a growing number of current and former college athletes across the country are finding their way and choosing their battles in the name of fairness, basic rights, and well-being. The Missouri players’ protest against racism, the Grambling State players’ boycott for better playing conditions, and the Northwestern University football players’ union bid are all examples of athletes’ activism and of their ability to

10

participate in the transformation of the present intercollegiate athletics enterprise. These actions, coupled with several court rulings in recent years and a pending antitrust claim, do indeed demonstrate college athletes’ power and authority in effecting change. And, as Paulo Freire (2000) reminds us, actions can become “the practice of freedom” (p. 34).

Until now, there has been no supplemental text for the study of college athletes’ rights or their personal and academic well-being. These will be among the most critical issues facing athletics in higher education over the next decade. Both of these issues—the absence of a comprehensive teaching tool to consolidate baseline knowledge in this area and the heightened enthusiasm for the study of athletes’ rights and well-being— created the need for this important and timely anthology.

THIS IS A PRACTICAL TEXT, particularly suitable for those who seek to enhance their understanding of the intercollegiate athletics landscape. The textbook is primarily intended for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, though scholars, teachers, practitioners, policy makers, athletic administrators, and advocates of college athletes will also find it essential. The book is arranged into 16 individual chapters that cover diverse topics on college athletes’ rights and well-being. It is not exhaustive, but the current concerns, challenges, and themes of relevance to the college athlete experience are well addressed.

The chapters are organized into four parts that describe in depth: (1) the historical foundations that have shaped student rights and well-being in intercollegiate athletics; (2) the formal policies and principles established by the NCAA and member institutions that influence how college athletes experience life on campus; (3) the highly commercialized business enterprise of college sports; and (4) the overarching structures and conditions that influence the quality of experiences and well-being of college athletes.

The 16 chapters provide distinctive expert voices from a range of fields. Each offers reasonable policy and practice recommendations that, when implemented, will ensure a more inclusive future for college athletes and protect their rights and improve their well-being. Each chapter also includes guided discussion questions that are ideal to spark further conversation in the classroom and beyond. In all, adopters of this text will find that this timely content sheds new insight and presents unique opportunities for the study and protection of college athletes’ rights and

11

well-being in American higher education.

References

Brown, G. (2011). Second GOALS study emphasizes coach influence. Indianapolis, IN: NCAA. Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Latest+News/2011/January/Second+GOALS+study+emphasizes+coach+influence

Fountain, J., & Finley, P. (2009). Academic majors of upperclassmen football players in the Atlantic Coast Conference: An analysis of academic clustering comparing White and minority players. Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, 2, 1–13.

Harper, S. R., Williams, C. D., Jr., & Blackman, H. W. (2013). Black male student-athletes and racial inequities in NCAA Division I college sports. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education. Retrieved from https://www.gse.upenn.edu/equity/sites/gse.upenn.edu.equity/files/publications/Harper_Williams_and_Blackman_%282013%29.pdf

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.

12

http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Latest+News/2011/January/Second+GOALS+study+emphasizes+coach+influence
https://www.gse.upenn.edu/equity/sites/gse.upenn.edu.equity/files/publications/Harper_Williams_and_Blackman_%282013%29.pdf
Acknowledgments

The development and advancement of my understanding of college athletes’ rights and well-being is a process in which many pioneering scholars and activists have played an important role and to whom I am incredibly indebted. In particular, I wish to thank sociologist and civic activist Dr. Harry Edwards for introducing me to this area of study as an undergraduate student and for his continued mentorship. I am also most grateful to all the contributors of this volume for providing attentive insights and fresh ideas, not least for meeting chapter submission deadlines, which has enabled me to deliver the manuscript in a timely manner. I have an awesome editorial team at Johns Hopkins University Press, and I thank them for their support and inspiration throughout the development and production of this text. Finally, I continue to learn and be energized my family, friends, students, and colleagues and thank them for helping to shape this volume.

13

INTRODUCTION

A Whole New Ball Game for College Athletes? John R. Thelin

A glance at the calendar suggests that the college football season starts with games in late August then continues with the bowl games throughout December and finally ends in January. Well, perhaps so. But football quickly resumes. Or, put another way, for American colleges and universities the football season never really ends. Each year in mid- February local television station crews and newspaper reporters gather at high school gymnasia for a press conference hosted by the principal and head football coach, joined by parents and classmates. It’s National Signing Day. Stalwart young players who have finished their senior year of scholastic football are hosted and toasted as they announce their plans for going to college—and, most important, commitments for playing college football. It forms a seamless web, as four years later a handful of these same energetic, optimistic players will have completed their college varsity competition for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and then are ready to be applauded and introduced when they are drafted by professional teams in the National Football League (NFL).

But what happens between the end points of those happy media events marked by the NCAA and NFL Signing Day press conferences? This is a rich, complex American drama—perhaps at times an American tragedy (Branch, 2011). For starters, the pyramid of success in high-profile American sports, such as football and men’s basketball, is defined by a steep slope. It’s exhilarating for those who persist and prevail—but often a trail of tears down the mountain for those who fall short (Nocera & Strauss, 2016). The pressing current issues about college athletes and their rights and welfare have acquired a visibility and urgency that is undeniable. Equally striking is how the present and past are fused. The characters and issues have been intertwined for a long time. It’s a story that has been evolving for at least 150 years.

There’s a complication in this snapshot. First, although football and men’s basketball are dominant, we must keep in mind that some

14

universities offer as many as 39 varsity sports. Second, does serious commitment to extending the rights and well-being of college athletes include NCAA Divisions II and III along with, for example, NCAA Division I? Furthermore, any analysis of college athletes should and must include women as well as men. It’s hard for a single picture to cover the panorama and make good generalizations about athletes across all college sports.

Although the college athlete has been a fixture in American higher education and in our literature and popular culture for more than a century, a focus on the rights and well-being of collegiate athletes is relatively new. This ignorance or neglect, however, is changing. The momentum shifts toward scrutiny and advocacy from a variety of places. This anthology is timely, because each chapter is written by an established researcher and influential leader representing a distinctive discipline. This collective effort results in a comprehensive assembly of participants-observers in the fledgling topic of college athlete rights that is not going to go away.

What fair and reasonable person could be opposed to providing and then protecting the rights and well-being of intercollegiate athletes? Who agrees on how to operationalize and define these rights and well-beings? The answer to both questions is “no one”—and that is a problem that a flourishing body of new research, policy proposals, campus incidents, and court cases is gradually and painfully trying to achieve. It is going to be slow and contentious, in some ways because of partisan and even selfish interests who may lose revenues and power if college athletes eventually were to achieve legitimate rights. But also, building a structure and culture of athlete rights will be tough sledding, in part, because the concepts and their fulfillment of a college student are fraught with contradictions.

To bring a measure of coherence to analyzing college athlete rights and well-being, there are some conspicuous themes and landmark episodes that have surfaced as part of the history of American colleges and universities since about 1850. Foremost is that of the college athlete as both a campus hero and as an icon in popular culture and national media. Sports pages, Hollywood movies, popular songs, sheet music, fashion advertisements, and college brochures have long heralded the champion athlete as an “All American.” Future presidents of the United States, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan played college football and invoked its lessons of leadership, character building, and teamwork. President George H. W. Bush was the captain and first baseman for the Yale University baseball team, which played in the first College World Series in 1947. Ronald Reagan doubled the deal in the

15

acting role that vaulted him to Hollywood stardom in the early 1940s as Notre Dame’s legendary halfback, George Gipp. His melodramatic hospital deathbed scene in which he implored his famous coach, Knute Rockne, to tell Notre Dame players to “Win one for the Gipper” endures as a staple of American lessons and lore. Politics and college sports remain closely joined, as each year the president of the United States invites the national championship college football squad for a reception and press conference salute at the White House.

The flip side of this adulation is the equally strong image over time of a college figure that is conspicuous as the butt of jokes or as an object of either shame or pity. This is, of course, the omnipresent “dumb jock.” Starting in the 1890s, the caricature draws from a succession of minority groups, many of whom were recent immigrants, whose talent on the athletic field was accompanied by problems in the classroom. James Thurber, one of the most successful and famous writers ever in American literature, wrote in his memoir about undergraduate days at Ohio State University in 1919 and included a profile of “Bolenciecwcz”—the star lineman on the football team who struggles through an introductory economics class as classmates and instructor keep rooting for him, giving him easier and easier questions to try to answer so that he can be academically eligible for the big game on Saturday (Thurber, 1933).

Closely related to the dumb jock figure is that of the college star athlete who receives perks and privileges. Hugh McIlhenny, an All American halfback at the University of Washington who went on to be an all-pro halfback for the San Francisco 49ers in the early 1950s, gained fame and infamy for his observation that he had to take a cut in pay when he left college football to play in the NFL (Thelin, 1994). The irony was that his quip was not a wisecrack. It was less a reference to his lavish living as a college athlete and more a puzzled surprise at how low the salaries were for professional athletes in the 1950s and 1960s.

Official concerns between 1900 and 1970 were less about student athlete rights than they were about student athletes doing things right. And usually this meant doing what they were told to do by coaches and athletics directors. This ranged from the young NCAA imposing sanctions on illegal, dangerous play on the field, which had resulted in a barrage of deaths and serious injuries; and in 1948 the NCAA’s passing the so-called Sanity Code attempted to mandate regulations and restrictions on compensation for athletes, ranging from summer jobs to the award of scholarship monies.

The common denominator in all these images and episodes, whether

16

celebratory or critical, stemmed from the concept of the amateur athlete. Amateurism was at the heart of the ideal of the college athlete—and always with varying gaps between the ideal and reality. This schism was compounded by the fact that, although everyone invoked and ostensibly believed in amateurism as the defining code of college sports, the meaning of the term “amateur” varied from one governing body to another—and even within a college conference or the NCAA or the American Olympics Committee, the term had multiple and fluctuating meanings. At the very least, what constituted an “amateur” in one era could change formally and legally in another. It also varied from sport to sport. This was the harsh lesson learned by Jim Thorpe, considered the great American athlete of the first half of the twentieth century, who was an All American in football for the Carlisle School and a multiple gold medalist in track and field in the Olympics. All this was for naught, as he naïvely and honestly played summer league baseball and got subsistence pay, all using his own name. Meanwhile, numerous other college players also played summer ball for pay—but escaped scrutiny because they were sufficiently clever and devious to play under aliases.

Monitoring the academic good standing and the financial amateur status of college athletes became a regulatory battleground between colleges and conferences—and in the early 1950s pitted colleges against the US Congress (Thelin, 1994). The stalemate was that intercollegiate sports, by definition, cross campus boundaries—but many college presidents, board and athletic directors resented and resisted the right of some larger collective body setting standards that infringed on a university’s right of autonomy and self-determination. It was one thing to agree that every college football field would be standardized as a playing field 100 yards long appended by end zones. It was quite another for the NCAA to dictate and enforce how much a college could award to a student in the form of an athletic scholarship—or what grade point average allowed a student to be eligible to play in a varsity game.

This historical survey provides good, necessary background. But by now it should also lead readers to ask, “What is wrong with this picture?” The answer is that, although the college athlete is the center of attention, one searches in vain for any allowance for athletes to gain a voice or a seat at the table in shaping their own educational experience and professional futures. Although active on the field, for years they had been blocked out, essentially passive in policy and programs. An important sign of change started to surface in the late 1960s and continued in the 1970s with the initiative and publicity surrounding a group that had been used and often

17

abused: namely, African American athletes. It came to be known as the Revolt of the Black Athletes (Edwards, 1969). In some ways, even though their message was strong, it was too little, too late. For example, Jesse Owens was long hailed as an American hero for his four gold medals in the Berlin Olympics—and as the nemesis of Adolf Hitler’s Aryan racial superiority claims. But look again—in those same years Jesse Owens as an undergraduate student and track star at Ohio State University was prohibited from eating in campus dining halls or living in campus dormitories.

If the revolt of the Black athletes represented heightened consciousness for some student athletes starting in the late 1960s, then the next landmark event was Title IX, the federal legislation passed in 1972. It brought rights and protections to women as students and as athletes. Slowly this led to inclusion in the NCAA and, sadly, triggered the demise of the long- established Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. In this same era one finds athlete accounts of their campus experience as being treated by some legendary coaches as expendable “meat on the hoof” (Shaw, 1972). These accounts gradually opened the door to some reforms and demands for changes which now were undeniable and could not be revoked. The cumulative result of these reforms and research is that we inherit the question, in connecting the past and present, whether such bodies as the NCAA have gone from allegedly protecting to later exploiting college athletes (Leitch, 2016; Nocera & Strauss, 2016).

A recurrent, stock feature article in popular magazines and newspapers deals with the saga of the highly recruited high school athlete who is wooed by college coaches, boosters, donors, and alumni. Then, after signing with a particular college, the star athlete faces problems involving some combination of low grades, which threaten academic eligibility, allegations of criminal charges involving misconduct, and/or use of prohibited monies. Typically, the story has a bad and sad ending. Often the athlete is required to drop out of college without a degree and an uncertain professional future. Meanwhile, even when the college officials— including coaches, the athletic director, the president, and the board—may face some reprimand or self-imposed penalty, the university and its sports program come back to play another day (Michener, 1976).

A dilemma for an earnest reader is how to best make good sense out of this ritualized story of woe. At some point the succession of these stories over time lessens their dramatic impact, because they tend to saturate and then desensitize even an attentive, concerned audience. What is one to do? Who is to blame? What are the solutions? A complication is that, in one

18

case covered prominently in 2016, an athlete recruited to play men’s basketball at Southern Methodist University was used and abused (Powell, 2016). But the detailed story left open the question: Does he bear any responsibility? Is he completely victimized? His mother cooperated and collaborated on deliberations for changing high schools and working with various youth league basketball representatives, as did his high school coach, his school principal, and a long roster of university officials. The university admissions committee gave him special consideration and decided to offer admission based on a “holistic” appraisal of his activities and record. So, sorting out heroes and villains and victims gets bogged down in nuances and complexities. What responsibility does the university president, for example, bear? Interesting to note is that in this case, the president was a longtime member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.

A major source of tension, even among advocates for college athletes, will be the distinction between rights and well-being versus compensation. Providing support services for academics, health insurance, medical treatment, career planning, nutrition, time management, and other dimensions of a balanced life might be accomplished while still being silent on the matter of salary and compensation beyond the customary scholarships and grants-in-aid. A further complication is that some athletes and their representatives essentially want things “both ways”—to be treated as “normal students” but perhaps at the same time wanting special treatment and perks as valuable “athletes.” Such logical binds are going to usher in long discussions.

The answers and reforms will become less obvious when one incorporates the findings of such systematic studies as William G. Bowen’s co-authored books, The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values (Shulman & Bowen, 2001) and Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values (Bowen & Levin, 2003). One provocative finding in these studies is that college athletes are not the only ones who devote a great deal of time to extracurricular activities. Editors of the campus newspaper and performing artists such as musicians, dancers, and actors also balance a demanding schedule of excellence in their activities as well as their studies—often with far less in terms of institutional support services and systems than do athletes. Furthermore, systematic studies of college students indicate widespread stress of having to work long hours at low-paying jobs while also going into deep debt with student loans in order to pay bills to stay enrolled. Is the plight of college athletes any more difficult than these? So, if the concern is with athletes as

19

part of the category of rights as students, these larger spheres of campus life warrant consideration. Otherwise, the risk is a partial gain and a Pyrrhic victory for genuine reform of college life and activities.