In what I believe to be an unprecedented incident in the history of intercollegiate athletics, members of the Metropolitan Collegiate Athletic Conference recently threatened to expel my institution, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University from the conference. The aim was to create a new “super” conference by merging Metro with institutions in the Great Midwest Conference.
We had done nothing to prompt this move by the presidents of the other Metro institutions. In fact, Metro members with win-loss records and athletic budgets similar to ours were asked to remain in the conference. The main differences between us and the universities asked to stay appeared to center on football and television. V.C.U.'s location in Richmond made our television market less appealing than those of institutions located in bigger metropolitan areas. And Virginia Tech’s major television draw -- football -- is affiliated with another conference and would not have gone to the new super conference.
The implications of this move struck me as so significant that I asked the National Collegiate Athletic Association to get involved. The N.C.A.A., to my dismay, declined. The N.C.A.A. traditionally has stayed out of conference affairs, viewing them as parochial matters and believing that getting involved might look like favoritism toward some member institutions over others. But I believed that the incident had far-reaching implications.
Increasingly, the athletic conferences representing members of the N.C.A.A.'s Division I are aligning not around regional or institutional similarities but around the potential for earnings from contracts to televise football and men’s basketball games. The Big Eight Conference will add four members from the Southwest Conference in 1996, creating the Big 12. Pennsylvania State University recently joined the Big Ten, which garners greater television exposure than Penn State’s old conference, the Atlantic 10. Groupings such as the Big East, Southeastern, and Western Athletic Conferences no longer really represent the geographic regions that their names imply, because they have added members from outside those regions. In fact, with the addition of four institutions, the Western Athletic Conference now stretches from Tulsa to Honolulu.
The public has come to believe that “hypercommercialism,” cynicism, and unscrupulous practices dominate intercollegiate athletics. The shuffling among conference members and the N.C.A.A.'s apparent indifference to it will do little to convince the public otherwise.
Nothing precludes the N.C.A.A. from confronting this situation. The N.C.A.A. is the most powerful body in intercollegiate sports and should not sit on the sidelines when member institutions are treated unfairly by their conferences. Left unchecked, the trend toward rich programs’ getting richer -- and moving ever farther away from the ideal of amateurism in college sports -- will sap the vitality of intercollegiate athletics at many institutions.
The presidents of the universities in the Metro Conference pursued creation of a super conference with unique fervor. To include V.C.U. and Virginia Tech in the new grouping would have meant creating a 14-member conference, which they believed would be too unwieldy in terms of scheduling games. To quit the Metro Conference, leaving V.C.U. and Virginia Tech as the only remaining members, would have meant that the departing universities would be assessed financial penalties for breach of contract, as stipulated in the Metro constitution. The presidents, therefore, arrived at a different solution: Remain in the conference, invite the institutions from the Great Midwest in, and kick V.C.U. and Virginia Tech out.
In my view, resolving the matter equitably came down to abiding by the constitution of the Metro Conference, which mandates that the conference act in the interest of all its members. Lacking the support of the N.C.A.A. in my dilemma, I filed suit against my colleagues and then offered to pursue mediation, to which the other Metro institutions ultimately agreed.
V.C.U. and Virginia Tech had financial equity in the conference. If we were not to be included -- and our view was that all the Metro teams should stay in -- then we felt we were due the assets normally distributed by the conference to its members for tournament participation and for sports sponsorship, which we had already earned. We were prepared to pursue litigation if mediation did not produce an acceptable settlement for V.C.U. and Virginia Tech. Although we, like other institutions in these tight financial times, like to receive television revenue, we did not feel that we or any other institution in the conference had the right to harm the interests of fellow members in guaranteeing appropriate playing schedules for their athletes and entertainment for their fans.
In our case, mediation produced an agreement under which members of the Metro Conference will pay V.C.U. and Virginia Tech $2.27-million for their financial equity in the conference. In return, we have resigned from the Metro. Virginia Tech is now part of the Atlantic 10, and we have joined the Colonial Athletic Association.
While the efforts to force V.C.U. and Virginia Tech out of the Metro Conference were unfolding in January, delegates at the annual N.C.A.A. convention concerned themselves with debates about whether to require slightly better academic credentials from freshman athletes or to loosen academic standards to allow more students to compete. It’s not that academic eligibility is unimportant. The point is that we should not let debates over eligibility lead us to lose sight of the fact that potent economic forces are distorting the landscape of intercollegiate competition. Consider the fact that the N.C.A.A. itself has just signed a $1.75-billion contract with CBS to broadcast its Division I men’s basketball tournaments for the next eight years.
Moreover, while college and university presidents at the convention were being exhorted by N.C.A.A. officials -- and were exhorting one another -- to strengthen their commitment to the welfare of athletes and to reaffirm the value of amateurism in intercollegiate athletics, some of those same presidents were attempting to maneuver their colleagues out of conference affiliation for the sake of bettering their institutions’ revenue prospects.
Such actions conflict directly with the principles proclaimed by athletic conferences, and the Metro constitution offers a case in point. In contrast to the machinations exhibited by my Metro colleagues at the N.C.A.A. convention, the conference’s constitution states that we are to treat our athletes in the same “sportsmanlike manner” that they are expected to display at all times. The constitution further states that we must not seek to protect our own institutions’ interests “to the detriment of other members of the conference as a whole.”
Sportswriters were quick to spot the self-interest driving the members of the Metro Conference who wanted to merge with the Great Midwest Conference. Headlines in papers throughout the region proclaimed, for example: “Fax shows Metro schools’ lack of ethics; Metro members can’t hide greed” Louisville Courier Journal ; “Shame on the Metro Conference” (Norfolk Virginian-Pilot ; “Reborn Metro dumps VCU, Virginia Tech” Charlotte Observer ; and “Bottom line in Metro break up cash, not class” Newport News Daily News .
Headlines such as these ought to bother the N.C.A.A. and all its member institutions. We are overestimating the benefits of television revenues, and members of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics have rightly called the lure of sports revenues “fool’s gold.” Not only do the riches of big-time sports benefit only a select few, but the money-driven decisions of conference realignments are eating into athletics departments’ travel budgets and into the time athletes have to study and attend classes. The growth of televised competition also means that fewer fans are attending games at some institutions. And students and faculty members are growing weary of student fees’ being increased to help support Division I budgets.
Most presidents believe that college sports play a valuable role in higher education, and that reform of intercollegiate athletics to protect that role is long overdue. They think that their athletics departments ought to uphold the amateur principles set forth by the N.C.A.A. and focus on athletes’ academic, rather than athletic, standing. They see conference affiliation as a source of stature for their institutions. They also believe that athletics programs help build ties between institutions and surrounding communities. However, when the N.C.A.A. holds presidents accountable for running clean athletics programs and then fails to support them when their legitimate financial interests and the interests of their athletes are at stake, those presidents are forced to stand alone against the forces of the marketplace. And that sets them -- and reform -- up for failure.
Stabilization among conferences is needed, and the N.C.A.A. must get involved. To begin with, the N.C.A.A. should change its official position of maintaining neutrality in conference disputes. It should require conferences to submit their bylaws for review, to guard against provisions that could be used to disenfranchise member institutions. It also should consider ways to help its members enforce the protections contained in conference charters when some conference members are unwilling to do so. Such checks will help prevent presidents from undercutting their colleagues for the sake of television revenues, leaving the expelled institutions out in the cold and unable to plan for the future.
It also is time for the N.C.A.A. to become as concerned about the eligibility of conference members to participate in college sports as it now is about the eligibility of individual athletes. The N.C.A.A. might, for example, require conferences to certify that they are complying with N.C.A.A. and conference principles before they can receive bids to tournaments.
Even if the N.C.A.A. decides to take an interest in what is happening on the conference front, presidents should not hesitate to take whatever measures are necessary to protect their institutions. Reform of intercollegiate athletics will fail if the N.C.A.A. ignores the appetite for television exposure among some Division I teams and the resulting distortion of intercollegiate athletics. The commercial interests of a few teams are proving to be antithetical to the welfare of the rest of college sports. We need some new thinking about intercollegiate athletics -- and it is time for some of that thinking to come from the N.C.A.A.
Eugene P. Trani is president and professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University.