A bipartisan commission to reform amateur athletics is vitally needed now

Last week the NCAA, the cartel controlling college sports, received two massive shocks. One was self-administered: That was the ruling in the Big Five decision, when the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors approved a plan to give the five wealthiest athletic leagues—the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern, and Pacific-12 Conferences—the ability to provide extra benefits to their athletes. It was a plan that, had it not been approved, could have led to widespread defection from the NCAA itself. Next came the ruling in the O’Bannon case, in which the judge decided that the NCAA’s insistence that college athletes must be amateurs had violated the nation’s antitrust laws.

Anyone can see what’s coming next. The NCAA will certainly appeal the O’Bannon decision; other challenges to the NCAA will fill the dockets; and the current chaos in college athletics will drag on and intensify. Meanwhile, the charade of “student-athletes” and the blatant commercialism of college sports will continue for many more years; big money sports will go on corroding the core educational purposes and values of our colleges; and the tail will still wag the dog at U.S. institutions of higher education.

Nearly everyone recognizes the corrupting effect of money on college sports, but after decades of incremental reform—and despite the modifications of last week—too little has changed. There has been no real effort to curb the massive spending in college sports, which is financially and morally bankrupting our institutions of higher learning. What’s needed is not a chain of snail-paced changes but a fundamental restructuring of college athletics. Hoping this could happen may seem wishful thinking at best, but there is a precedent for such reform.

Although it’s hard to believe, given the current wild dysfunction in our government, there was a time when a president (Gerald Ford) and Congress worked together to settle a dispute among the various entities governing amateur sports.

After the dismal performance of the United States in the 1972 Munich Olympics, President Ford decided that the success of U.S. athletes in the Olympics and other international sports events should be a special priority. Intense differences of opinion on how to recruit and support the best athletes led Ford to create in June 1975 the President’s Commission on Olympic Sports to study the issue. The commission was bipartisan, with some members appointed by the president and others appointed by the speaker of the House of Representives and the president pro tempore of the Senate.

The commission eventually determined that squabbling among the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) was complicating efforts to recruit the most talented athletes.

This conclusion led to the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which granted the United States Olympic Committee monopoly status to govern all of our Olympic efforts, control all broadcasting contracts, and eliminate the conflicts between the NCAA and the AAU that were limiting U.S. Olympic medal successes and athletes. And one provision of the law gave the athletes themselves, for the very first time, a voice, voting power, and a framework for addressing grievances. Over the subsequent 36 years, this legislation has had great success in focusing and coordinating our Olympic efforts.

I believe that a similar presidential commission, focusing this time on intercollegiate athletics, is vitally needed now. President Obama could appoint a bipartisan committee, asking members of Congress to examine the imbalance between sports and academics at American colleges and universities.

There are many reforms that such a commission could consider. Should the distribution of NCAA revenue be based on the academic performance of the athletes, compliance with Title IX, and the breadth and diversity of the sports program overall, and not on the frequency of tournament appearances? Could a lid be placed on escalating costs, including the salaries of coaches, which at too many schools dwarf those of presidents and faculty? If a college leaves the NCAA and strikes its own media deal, would its athletic department lose its non-profit status?

Perhaps the most basic question is this one: Should Congress pass legislation granting an antitrust exemption to the NCAA, like the one granted to the Olympic Committee? This new monopoly would give the NCAA the authority to control all college sports television contracts, in contrast to the current situation in which TV executives can pit schools against each other, and powerful conferences that control astounding amounts of money can issue orders to presidents and public institutions. Under such a monopoly, never again would a television network dictate the game time to a college president or compromise a student-athlete’s ability to attend classes.

As Len Elmore, my fellow team member at the University of Maryland—a true student/athlete and a graduate of Harvard Law—recently said to Bloomberg News, “Congress may have a responsibility to invoke its power, provide the carrot of an antitrust exemption to let the sheriff come in, and tame the Wild Wild West.”

It may be that Congress is the only institution in the U.S. with the power to bring comprehensive reform to college sports. Without legislation to restore the balance between sports and academics at American colleges and universities, expect the money war to continue and escalate, with the values of education given no more than lip service.

C. Thomas McMillen, a former college and professional basketball player and a former Democratic representative from Maryland, is a regent of the University System of Maryland.

The post Could the Government End the Mess in College Sports appeared first on Tom McMillen.

From The Washington Post

It’s a done deal: On Monday, the University of Maryland’s board of regents voted to have the school’s athletic department leave the Atlantic Coast Conference and join the Big Ten Conference.

I am on the board, and I opposed this decision primarily because of the way it was made. Most important, a change of this magnitude should not be made over a weekend, with minimal documentation, little transparency and no input from anyone who might be opposed to it. The board did not hear from any of the constituencies that will be affected by this change — not the students, faculty, student-athletes or alumni.

Reasonable people certainly can discuss the benefits and risks of this move. But confidentiality agreements imposed by the commissioner of the Big Ten squelched any real debate. Public universities receiving taxpayer money are supposed to operate under shared governance, but what happened at Maryland was governance by secrecy and exclusion.

The 16 members of the Board of Regents were notified Thursday of the proposal, and we participated in a telephone call Sunday in which the details were verbally presented to us. On Monday morning, we had to vote on the move.

When we asked why we couldn’t hear from other stakeholders, we were told that the nondisclosure agreement signed with the Big Ten prevented such a discussion. We were further told that, under the terms of that agreement, Maryland could lose the offer and the university president could be held personally liable if details were divulged.

Maryland couldn’t even discuss the proposal with the Atlantic Coast Conference, to which it had belonged for nearly 60 years and had helped found. The board members were each given a single piece of paper outlining the proposal, and it was taken away when Monday’s meeting ended. I get more documentation when I buy a cell phone.

Given that Maryland cannot join the Big Ten until 2014, why the big rush? The Big Ten needs Maryland to finalize a new TV package drawing on the Washington-Baltimore market, which is the fourth-largest in the nation. It wanted Maryland two years ago, and it will want Maryland tomorrow. There was plenty of time to build a real case for a move if it made sense.

The real problem is that commissioners of athletic conferences can dictate terms to universities that effectively hijack the possibility of debate, and that is just plain wrong.

When I was a member of Congress, Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), Rep. Ed Towns (D-N.Y.) and I sponsored the Student Right–to-Know Act, which was passed in 1990. This legislation requires universities to disclose information previously not revealed — the graduation rates of all students, including student-athletes, as well as information on campus crime and other matters.

I believe we need new legislation — the Stakeholder Right-to-Know Act — that would prohibit universities that receive federal funds from executing confidentiality agreements on behalf of their intercollegiate athletic programs, which limit information regarding transactions that should be provided to important stakeholders.

Right now, universities and their boards are captive to a process controlled by the commissioners of the various athletic conferences. Commissioners managing hundreds of millions of dollars are extorting what they need from the universities, and the schools are powerless to stand up to them. We need a national solution to end this practice. What happened at Maryland is just another case where outside athletic forces dictated terms to a university. Once more the tail wags the dog; once more athletics distorts higher education.

The writer, a former member of the House of Representatives (D-Md.), serves on the University of Maryland Board of Regents. He played on the school’s men’s basketball team from 1970 to 1974.

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from The Daily Beast

In the chill of the Cold War, the 1972 U.S. basketball team went up against the U.S.S.R.—and was cheated out of a gold medal. Former representative Tom McMillen, who was on the team, offers a peace plan.

Nearly 40 years ago, shortly after midnight on Sept. 10, 1972, the U.S. men’s basketball team, of which I was a member, took the floor in a sports hall in Munich to play the Soviet Union for the gold medal in the Olympics, a game that would be broadcast worldwide. Everyone in the Olympic Village had witnessed the horrifying events that had played out just five days earlier—the hostage-taking of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists in which two Israelis were killed. Later, we watched as three helicopters lifted off from the Olympic Village, carrying the hostages and their captors toward the airport. I hoped, as everyone did, that the crisis would end with the Israelis safe and freed unharmed; instead, all nine were killed in a rescue attempt.

Like most of the world, I was deeply shocked at the deadly intrusion of politics into sports. In the aftermath of the attack, the mood at the Games was sad and somber. The tragedy was never far from our minds, but none of us could have imagined that, in the years since, the kind of brutal attack we witnessed would become all too familiar—that terrorism would spread and scar our lives.

But in 1972, it was the Cold War that was on people’s minds. It was at its height—the U.S. and the Soviet Union threatened each other with thousands of intercontinental missiles. Although President Richard Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union had signed Salt I, the historic arms-limitation agreement, in May, the rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was at its peak.

I knew the Olympic Games were not free from politics, that the antagonism between the two superpowers played out in sports such as skating and wrestling. But I thought of basketball as a safe zone, with the outcome of the game depending on what I thought were clear-cut rules, and I was happy to put politics aside and suit up for the game. Little did I realize I was about to find myself in the middle of a Cold War skirmish.

Although we were the youngest U.S. Olympic team ever, competing against a very mature, professional Soviet team, we were favored to win. The U.S. had dominated men’s basketball since its inception as an Olympic sport in 1936, had won every gold medal up to the 1972 games, and we all felt tremendous pressure to maintain the winning streak. We desperately wanted that eighth-straight gold medal.

When the game began, the Soviets, with their deliberate style of play, dominated. They led by five points at the half, and, with 10 minutes to play, were ahead by 10 points. With six minutes remaining, our team began to press and hustle, and with only three seconds on the clock, we were down by just one point. Doug Collins, now coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, had been fouled and was ready to take perhaps the two most important free throws in the history of the game. Doug made both shots. That put the U.S. up 50-49. Three seconds left. The Soviets put the ball in play, made a wild shot at the basket, and the buzzer went off.

Then everything got crazy. We thought we had won, but then the referees let the Soviets make another inbounds play with one second on the clock. The buzzer rang again; we’d won again! American fans crowded the floor in celebration. I saw R. William Jones, then the secretary-general of the International Basketball Association, come out of the stands. He was holding up three fingers. I had no idea what he was doing but learned later he was telling the officials to put three seconds back on the clock. As Jones himself would later admit, he had no authority to make such a decision. Once the court was cleared and some order restored, the Soviet player Ivan Edeshko was ready to put the ball in play. A referee waved me back as I guarded Edeshko. No rule said I had to move, but my coach, Hank Iba, had said earlier that the world was out to get us. Don’t expect a fair shake. So I stepped back, worried I’d get a technical foul if I didn’t. Edeshko was then clear to make a pass down the court to Aleksandr Belov, who made a layup. U.S.S.R. 51, U.S.A. 50.

In the ensuing chaos, we returned to the locker room, still not understanding what had happened, and when told to appear for the awards ceremony to accept the silver medal, we refused. Afterward, the U.S. Olympic Committee protested the Soviet victory, but a group composed largely of judges from Soviet bloc nations rejected the appeal. The U.S. team did not accept the silver medals. We still haven’t accepted them. I believed then—and believe now—the U.S. team had victory taken away from us, that our basketball game ended up as proxy war between two superpowers.

Forty years later, the Berlin Wall is down, the Cold War has ended, the borders in the former Soviet bloc countries are open. Relations between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union are not always smooth, but our political détente holds. Perhaps it’s time for easing of tensions about that controversial game as well.

Ten years ago, I asked the IOC to award the 1972 U.S. team dual gold medals to rectify the errors of that game. The precedent for my request was the figure-skating scandal at the 2002 Winter Olympics, which led the IOC to award duplicate gold medals to the silver-medal winners, Jamie Salé and David Pelletier from Canada. The IOC decided that the pair came in second not because of their performance but because a judge had been unduly pressured by one of the sport’s governing bodies. I argued that Jones’s unauthorized intervention in our game brought similar pressure upon the officials. I never received a response to my request. But when I brought up the issue with my former teammates, all were willing to accept dual medals.

We members of the U.S. team have a 40th reunion scheduled for August. I intend to propose a “grand compromise” then. If the members of the Soviet team agree to the awarding of dual gold medals to our team and the IOC approves, the U.S. team will donate our medals, worth a great deal as sports memorabilia, to a Russian charity for orphaned children. With the help of other donors, we could raise millions of dollars to help build a bridge between our nations. This gesture could bring us closer together—and could show that, even in a world increasingly marked by partisan strife, sportsmanship and good will can sometimes trump geopolitics.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/05/an-olympic-d-tente-for-the-1972-men-s-basketball-team.html

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C. THOMAS MCMILLEN,
former college and professional basketball player and former member of Congress, Ellicott City, Md.

I certainly agree with Joe Nocera that basketball and football players are treated like chattel in the present system. Denying players a basic stipend when coaches are making ridiculous amounts is the height of inequity. But paying football and men’s basketball players isn’t feasible, given Title IX regulations and politics. If you disconnect moneymaking sports, women’s sports will very likely lose financing. Paying basketball and football players will not address the core problem of an unsustainable arms race in college sports. The proposition that the N.C.A.A. is in charge and can control college sports is a canard. If the N.C.A.A. pushes too hard, top conferences could create their own basketball playoff and challenge the N.C.A.A. tournament, which is currently a huge windfall for the N.C.A.A. Then the decentralization of power that began with the Supreme Court decision will only get worse. Your proposal offers an important contribution to the debate by arguing for stipends to players, the right to counsel and a defined scholarship term and the opportunity for lifetime health insurance. But getting there isn’t going to be easy.

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by C. Thomas McMillen

The real problem with major intercollegiate sports programs is that the NCAA is powerless to effect meaningful change in the finances of college athletics. If it tried to exercise its dwindling power to seek real transformation rather than short-term palliative measures, the most powerful conferences and colleges could simply leave the organization—and college sports would devolve into a Darwinian struggle in which only the richest programs would survive. But, in truth, there isn’t much interest in change—there is just too much money involved in salaries for coaches and administrators.

So, despite the horrific events coming to light at Penn State (and apparently less egregious scandals on other campuses), I don’t think the way the NCAA functions will change until one of these three catastrophic events occurs:

1. Multiple athletics programs go bankrupt because of escalating costs.
2. Student-athletes win court cases that give them full rights as employees, including the right to hire counsel.
3. A multicollege gambling scandal that involves players, coaches, and boosters is exposed.

I am convinced that one, maybe all, of those will eventually happen­—and that the system will consequently implode. Then it will be a question not of what the NCAA will choose to do, but of what it will be forced to do.

Once it becomes clear that problems are systemic, and that the NCAA cannot institute fundamental change, Congress must force the issue. It has intervened in this way before, when, with the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, it granted the U.S. Olympic Committee a monopoly—so there is precedent. I would like to see legislation—with provisions for mandatory reforms—enacted to reinstate for five years the antitrust exemption the NCAA had before a Supreme Court decision overturned it, in 1984. This is the ruling that, in his dissent, Justice Byron White, a former college athlete himself, accurately recognized would lead to an escalating race for money: “No single institution could confidently enforce its own standards, since it could not trust its competitors to do the same.”

Such legislation would require revenue sharing among all members of the NCAA in the collectivist model that has worked so well for the NFL, whereby a significant portion of the pooled revenue is shared among the 32 teams.

It would allow the NCAA to again become a benevolent dictator, by giving it the power to approve all TV and radio contracts for basketball and football. In return for this power, the NCAA must enact major reforms, such as a fairer distribution of revenue that would depend not on win-loss records, but on efforts to control costs, including coaches’ salaries; the academic performance of student-athletes; and compliance with the provisions of the federal Title IX law.

If, within a year, the NCAA is unwilling to enact those reforms, then the Internal Revenue Service should treat and tax college sports as the big, cutthroat businesses they are.

What has happened at my alma mater, the University of Maryland, points directly at the dead end where college sports is headed. Recently the university cut eight sports teams because the cash-devouring giants of basketball and football could not keep up with the escalating costs of intercollegiate athletics.

Choices like that signal that the true purpose of college sports is to make money; such decisions will eventually destroy the grass-roots sports infrastructure in this country, and only the major sports will survive at the college level. Eventually, the United States will be unable to field a strong Olympic team. Maybe when, in a future Olympics, America wins no gold medals, we will have our “sputnik moment” and realize that college sports should not produce highly paid coaches and administrators in just one or two sports, but should provide opportunities for many. Sports for all, not sports for money, should be our national mission.

http://www.chronicle.com/article/eliminate-the-profit-motive/130070

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by Tom McMillen

After November 23 when the Congressional Super Committee must send its recommendation to Congress or face automatic cuts, the federal procurement landscape will never be the same. To reach approximately $1.2- $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years will require extraordinary discretionary cuts. Maryland and Virginia are particularly vulnerable because of the significant federal procurement contracts. There will be growth in some limited areas: cybersecurity, health care, the cloud,etc but it will be a difficult environment for most contractors. Similar to the defense cutbacks in the 90s, the avenue for growth for many large contractors will be consolidation and acquisitions. We just sold our last government contractor and our divestiture decision was largely based upon the coming fiscal environment. The rock song, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” is a prescient warning for government contractors in the turbulent times ahead.

http://www.washingtonexec.com/2011/11/tom-mcmillens-2012-outlook-you-aint-seen-nothin-yet/#.WA44tJMrKCQ

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by C. Thomas McMillen

What is one thing you would do to fix college sports?

How to Fix College Sports The source of the present problems can be traced to 1984 when the U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark decision NCAA v. Oklahoma, stripped the NCAA of its monopoly power over broadcasting rights to college athletics events. Justice White, in his dissent against the decision, supported the NCAA’s right to monopoly power. White argued that the NCAA monopoly “fosters the goal of amateurism by spreading revenues among various schools and reducing the financial incentives toward professionalism.” Justice White wisely understood that the NCAA’s loss of monopoly broadcast power would lead to an escalating competition for money among schools. White feared that no single institution could confidently enforce its own standards, since it could not trust its competitors to do the same.

The result: Coaches and athletics administrators are constantly pressured to spend more; to recruit successfully so they can win; to win so they can fill stadiums and go on television and to the playoffs; to make more money so that new, state-of-the-art arenas can be built, salaries can be raised and so on.

In 1991 when I was in Congress, I introduced legislation to restore the NCAA broadcasting monopoly in return for a college president-controlled NCAA and revenue distribution that was not dependent on win-loss records but on a school’s diversity of programs, including Title IX compliance and the academic performance of its student-athletes. Schools that did not want to be part of this collective NCAA (similar to the NFL) would lose the non-profit status of their athletic departments. My bill would have provided a living stipend for student athletes and would have insured a five-year term for their scholarships.

I believe that if Congress restored this “benevolent monopoly” status to the NCAA that the juggernaut of commercialism would be dramatically weakened.

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by C. Thomas McMillen

In “The Shame of College Sports,” Taylor Branch writes that the NCAA has “an unmistakable whiff of the plantation” and that student-athletes are denied their Constitutional right to due process. Agree or disagree?

How to Fix College Sports I agree with his assessment that the NCAA operates a paternalistic system in which the athletes have no rights and the coaches and administrators make millions of dollars through pure exploitation of outstanding basketball and football players.

I also agree with Mr. Branch that the courts will eventually strike down this “plantation system” and chaos will ensue. The players will win rights, Title IX will require proportionality for women athletes, and the whole system will come crumbling down. The NCAA and colleges and universities will then run to Congress for relief. This resort to legislative relief happened before, in 1978 when the US Olympic Committee was granted a monopoly over the Olympic Games by the Congress to end the feuding between the AAU, the NCAA, and the various sports governing bodies.

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by C. Thomas McMillen

A SERIES of recent scandals involving players receiving money, cars and other improper benefits, along with violations by recruiters and sports agents, has debased the already tarnished reputation of college sports. Schools like the University of Miami, the University of North Carolina and the University of Southern California, to name just a few, have been in the news more for abusing the rules than for teaching their students.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is supposed to hold colleges and universities accountable, but it has been reluctant to police with any stringency the growing number of violations. The assumption that the N.C.A.A. can develop safeguards and mete out punishment for those who violate its rules is wishful thinking. The N.C.A.A. is simply not up to the task; college trustees need to take charge instead.

In 1991, I introduced a bill in the House of Representatives aimed at reforming college athletics. My bill would have granted the N.C.A.A. an exemption from antitrust laws, which would allow it to constrain the extraordinary growth in athletic spending by schools. Under my proposal, the distribution of money from broadcast fees and other income would have been based not on winning or losing, but on the academic performance of the athletes, gender equity, and the breadth and diversity of the sports programs. The bill would have rewarded those schools promoting the values of higher education.

My attempt at reform failed, and in the 20 years since, things have gotten worse. There is just too much money involved in the multibillion-dollar industry that is college athletics to expect the participants to police themselves. Bloated college sports budgets, with coaches who earn millions of dollars, often more than college presidents, have created a situation where the tail is wagging the dog, with the result that colleges are losing control over their own athletic programs.

Moreover, once the N.C.A.A. does get around to punishing violations, the culprits have often moved on. To take one notorious example, the $4 million-a-year football coach at U.S.C., Pete Carroll, resigned in January 2010, just as the N.C.A.A. was investigating accusations that the former player Reggie Bush had accepted improper gifts from agents. Mr. Carroll was subsequently named head coach of the Seattle Seahawks with a five-year, $30 million-plus contract. By the time the N.C.A.A. announced sanctions against the U.S.C. football team, in June, he was safely gone.

Universities take pride in the success of their sports teams, but their reputations suffer when things go wrong. If they truly want to prevent scandals, they need to take control. And the people who can and must make this happen are the trustees and regents of these institutions, not the presidents, who are less equipped to stand up to the economic pressure from alumni and fans.

Currently, many boards are too cozy with athletic departments; their members forget that their job is to protect the institution — not the coaches, not the boosters and not the fans. But if they want to avoid embarrassment and scandal, they need to be much more involved in maintaining standards.

Many institutions have a laissez-faire attitude toward their athletic departments; given the profits from sports broadcasting and the fervor of alumni and fans, their reluctance to rein in athletic directors, coaches and players is understandable. But trustees and regents have both a legal and an ethical obligation to do what is right for their schools.

If more colleges and universities would adopt the recommendations of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, we’d see fewer violations of N.C.A.A. rules and of the law. Among the recommendations are these: regents should approve annual athletic budgets and significant capital expenditures; athletic departments should undergo annual audits by independent auditors; each school’s board should have a committee to monitor compliance with N.C.A.A. rules and student performance; and boards should approve compensation of coaches and directors.

Some schools are beginning to recognize the wisdom of these proposals. Regents at Kansas State University now conduct annual audits of the athletic department. Regents at the University of Michigan sign off on athletic departments’ operating and capital budgets. Both the University of Colorado and Georgetown University have panels dedicated to athletic issues. The boards at Texas A&M University and the Universities of Wisconsin and Oklahoma must approve any changes in compensation for the highest-paid athletic personnel.

These are encouraging changes. The N.C.A.A. should be more rigorous in keeping colleges compliant with its rules, but true accountability rests with individual boards. The schools would then not need to respond to the disgrace of violations and penalties, but could prevent the scandals in the first place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/opinion/how-to-referee-college-sports.html

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by Tom McMillen

Fairness Demands That College Athletes Be Allowed Adequate Representation in Pro Negotiations

Last week, longtime University of Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams announced his retirement, and very quickly Maryland announced that Texas A&M Coach Mark Turgeon will replace him. No one doubts that during contract negotiations, Turgeon had lawyers advising and representing him.

Coincidentally, just days before Mr. Williams made his announcement, Jordan Williams, Maryland’s star sophomore basketball player, lost his eligibility to play college basketball. What crime earned this penalty? He signed with an agent to represent him in upcoming NBA negotiations, a violation of NCAA rules. Once an athlete hires an agent, there’s no going back — even if he’s only exploring his options, even if he doesn’t get drafted. He’s forever ineligible to play college basketball.

Why is counsel fine for the coach but wrong for the player?

Though most of us consider access to legal advice a right, the NCAA prohibits student-athletes from meaningful legal representation. They can talk to a lawyer, but that lawyer or agent is not allowed to negotiate for them. The NCAA argues it is protecting athletes from unscrupulous agents. The real motives are probably less admirable. With access to competent counsel, many players would try to head to the NBA earlier. The quality of NCAA competition — and the income from lucrative TV contracts — might drop off. But perhaps the key reason for the sanction is that allowing student-athletes counsel would demolish the argument that there’s no employer-employee relationship with athletes on college campuses. If the NCAA loses that claim, athletes could have representation every step of the way: from signing a letter of intent in high school to negotiating appropriate compensation. If players ever get that right, the whole NCAA chattel system will come crashing down.

Student-athletes should be able to hire representation and not face ineligibility until they actually sign a professional contract. They need advice during negotiations — and if the NBA decides not to draft them, they shouldn’t be banned from returning to their team. Right now, the threat of ineligibility keeps them from even investigating their opportunities. Do these kinds of constraints restrict any other profession?

When I was a student at Maryland, I was a first-round draft pick in the NBA but chose instead to go to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. While I was at Oxford, I traveled back and forth to Italy to play professional basketball for a team in Bologna. Dean Smith, the coach of the Olympic team in 1976, invited me to play in those games, though professional athletes were prohibited from playing. But through the convoluted policies of the International Olympics Committee, I was still considered an amateur, even though I had an agent and was getting paid. Only players actually playing in the US were required to be amateurs. Eventually, this double standard ended, and since 1989 professional players from the U.S. have competed in the Olympics.

The NCAA needs similarly to acknowledge the injustice of its rules. Colleges profit from the skills of student-athletes — yet treat them like chattel. The NCAA should encourage athletes to seek counsel, not ban it. Allow student-athletes to hire agents to negotiate for them. Have colleges take responsibility in preparing elite athletes to become professional players; let them get advice on avoiding bad agents, managing money, understanding contract law. For success in the future, gifted student-athletes need this information — and denying access to it is just plain wrong.

To be fair, the NCAA does work to maintain the student performance of athletes, but that’s not enough. Eventually, a court case will end the NCAA’s ability to enforce its arbitrary rules. But for now, NCAA policies highlight the inequity. Recently, the NCAA (a tax-exempt nonprofit, by the way) signed a $10.8 billion TV contract, and at least 25 Division I college basketball coaches earn more than $1 million per year. As long as the NCAA and coaches get rich off their services, student-athletes have the right to advice and representation. The current lopsided system is wrong — and the NCAA claim that the education student-athletes receive is a fair exchange for their services is just window dressing.

If coaches can bargain for their services and compensation, how can those same rights be denied to their players?

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-05-13/news/bs-ed-basketball-20110513_1_student-athletes-chattel-system-negotiations

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