Big Pay Day for College Hoops Players? Don’t Count On It

Anyone who thought that the NCAA’s Commission on College Basketball would suggest that top players should get paid like pro stars was surely disappointed with the report the group released on Wednesday.

The commission, which promised bold recommendations to root out corruption in the men’s sport, clung to an ideal that some critics say big-time college athletics has rendered quaint: For most players, the commission argued, a solid education is compensation aplenty.

Led by the former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, the commission was formed in the midst of a crisis in men’s college basketball. An FBI investigation of corruption and bribery within the sport has brought into the light a shadow economy of agents and coaches who are profiting off the talents of a small cadre of elite ballplayers. While acknowledging the existence of that black market, and proposing measures to crack down on it, the commission embraced the NCAA’s central precept that college athletes are amateurs – not professionals.

“Given the undeniable impact of ‘big money’ on the college game, it is fair to ask whether the ideal of college basketball played by student-athletes who are part of the academic community – not hired guns for a season or two – is still viable,” the report states. “The answer is yes, and the effort is worth making.

“Transformative changes are necessary, but the goal should not be to turn college basketball into another professional league.”

Rather than envision a world where top college athletes are paid big salaries, the commission argued for tougher penalties for rule violators and called for an end to the so-called one-and-done rule, which requires players to be one year removed from high school and 19 years old before entering the National Basketball Association’s draft. That rule, which would require the cooperation of the NBA and its players’ union to change, is often blamed for forcing athletes who have no interest in completing degrees to attend college.

Punting on the Key Issue

The commission did not take a clear stand on a particularly contentious issue related to player compensation, which is whether marquee athletes ought to be given a share of the profits from their names and likenesses — think video games and jerseys. That matter is under litigation, and the commission said that the NCAA should let it play out in the courts before changing any rules.

The issue, Rice said in a press conference Wednesday, “should be taken up as soon as the legal framework is established.”

To some college sports observers, the commission’s decision to mostly avoid player compensation amounted to punting on the one issue from which much of the corruption flows. The black market exists, critics argue, because players are the only ones in the system who are not profiting from the big business that their talents prop up.

The commission argued, however, that the sort of compensation some have suggested, such as “modest salaries” or post-graduation trust funds, would never rival what the shadow economy of college basketball can offer.

“None of the contemplated payments would be sufficient to reduce the corrupt incentives of third parties who pay certain uniquely talented players in the hope of latching onto their professional futures, of coaches and boosters seeking to secure the success of their programs, or of colleges willing to undermine their education mission to ensure the eligibility of players,” the report states. “One would have to adopt a full-scale professional model to forestall that corruption or, as the Commission recommends, try instead to revitalize the college model.”

E. Gordon Gee, president of West Virginia University, agrees.

“I am one of those dinosaurs who believes that paying athletes, beyond all of the support we give them through scholarships, books, housing, etc. is not in the best interest of universities,” Gee wrote in a recent email to The Chronicle. “Whatever someone is being paid, someone will want to pay them more. It is the nature of the belief that winning is everything.”

Critics, however, quickly pounced on the commission for suggesting what they described as half measures. Dan Greene, writing for SI.com, dismissed the group as “true believers in an idealistic vision of college basketball that was long ago buried under a mountain of apparel and broadcast rights checks, a group unlikely to recommend the kind of true paradigm shift the sport needs.”

The disparity between what elite college athletes earn off their talents and the profits made by everyone else involved — colleges, shoe companies, agents, and coaches — is at the core of the problem, Greene continued.

“This is what opens the door for — and pushes under the table — every kind of payment generating the issues the commission was tasked with addressing,” Greene wrote. “In failing to truly address as much, they kicked the biggest can down the road.”

An End to Self-Policing?

Regardless of its lack of clarity on player compensation, the commission made a number of suggestions that were well received by those who would like to see college basketball — and college sports in general — clean up its act. The days of the NCAA policing its own, the commission argued, ought to come to an end.

Rather than rely on volunteers from member institutions to investigate and adjudicate the highest-stakes cases of rules violations, the NCAA needs an independent panel of professionals with the “authority to impose substantial punishments.”

Those punishments should include, the commission said, five-year postseason bans for programs that break rules, and a loss of revenue-sharing for postseason games, including the NCAA tournament, during such a ban. In extreme cases, cheating coaches could be banned from the game for life, the commission suggests.

“Everybody wants to win and there’s nothing wrong with that,” said Christopher B. Howard, president of Robert Morris University, in Pennsylvania. “What Secretary Rice spoke to is that it doesn’t hurt enough, specifically for big-time programs, to incur a penalty as long as they continue to win. They’re trying to tip the scale the other way.”

Beyond tougher sanctions, the commission recommended that the NCAA’s governing board, whose 20 members now include college leaders and athletics directors, should have at least five independent members.

Taken together, the commission’s recommendations suggest that there is, at minimum, a perception problem with the NCAA’s mode of self-governance and self-policing.

Scott S. Cowen, president emeritus of Tulane University, said that the inclusion of independent board members was “a very good start” — although he would have hoped for more than five. The NCAA needs to empower decision makers, regarding rules and sanctions, who are unencumbered by the parochial concerns of the universities who employ them, Cowen said.

“They won’t be held accountable to a university board or a fan base who is likely to crucify them if they make an independent decision about athletics,” he said.

Philip P. DiStefano, who serves on the NCAA’s Board of Governors, said he welcomed the recommended changes to its membership. “We should add outside members, as many nonprofit boards do, to give us counsel,” said DiStefano, chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder. “It’s not a majority; it’s a small number, but they’ll play an important role.”

Acknowledging What Everyone Knows

Beyond its recommendations, one of the lasting legacies of the commission’s report may be as an official recognition that cheating and corruption within college basketball is commonplace and “everyone knows” it occurs.

“That state of affairs — where the entire community knows of significant rule breaking and yet the governance body lacks the power or will to investigate and act — breeds cynicism and contempt,” the report states.

This may read like an acknowledgment of gambling in Casablanca, but it is significant in an NCAA-sanctioned report.

“It admits a lot of things that in the past the NCAA has had trouble admitting,” said Roger A. Pielke Jr., director of the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “Now Condoleezza Rice is saying there’s a shadow economy and everybody knows about it. That’s a big change in the discussion.”

For an organization prone to incrementalism, Pielke said, the report lays the groundwork for larger changes than its critics may recognize. One suggestion, for example, would create a fund to help athletes who want to return to college and earn their degrees after leaving early for the pros. This “opens the door for what some people have called lifetime scholarships,” Pielke said.

While holding fast in principle to “amateurism” as an inherent good, the report acknowledges that a fair number of college basketball players attend a university with an eye toward a professional career. Only 1 percent of these players will end up in the NBA, the report states, but there is a recognition from the commission that the NCAA needs to design and regulate a system where players can explore, without fear of penalty, the professional opportunities that their talents may afford.

“The NCAA doesn’t admit it, but they’re in a long-term negotiation on many fronts with athletes,” Pielke said, “and the athletes are pulling the NCAA toward a different model than the, quote-unquote, amateurism model the NCAA has. This report is another step in that direction.”

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.