College Sports at the Crossroads: Have things gone too far to be fixed?
“We can no longer brush the problems facing college sports under the rug. It’s systemic, it’s deep, and eventually it’s just going to cause the whole enterprise to blow up.”
Those are the words of David Ridpath, a professor of Sports Administration at Ohio University. Ridpath is an expert in intercollegiate athletics administration, governance, rules and compliance, and he’s on a mission to fix this completely dysfunctional system.
Gone are the once glorious days of innocence in college athletics. Many years ago, students were just that — students first — and were a member of one a school’s athletic program as a secondary distraction. While some did use scholarships to pay for the cost of their education, it was the education itself that was the end game.
Today’s world of college sports faces a lot of problems — misogyny, a system overwrought with scandals and discipline issues, and a governing body which varies from too lenient to overly intrusive — but there is no problem facing these institutions greater than what Ridpath calls the “eligibility maintenance” of the student-athletes.
"Player arrests used to be bold headlines, now you can just scan the local police blotter."
Recent cases of violent discipline problems at Baylor and Alabama, as well as academic fraud and grade-rigging accusations at North Carolina and Rutgers show that this is a two-sided problem. The athletes have become far too complacent and confident that any impropriety or infraction will be cloaked and washed away clean, while coaches and administrators seem to find coercion and intimidation as powerful weapons to keep their programs on course and their players eligible.
NCAA investigation used to be a feared term, now it has become a sad regularity. Player arrests used to be bold headlines, now you can just scan the local police blotter. In many states, football or basketball coaches are the highest paid employees in the state, begging the question of where the priorities truly lie.
Where the enterprise of college sports goes from here is unclear, and what’s at stake goes far beyond the dollar signs that corporate sponsors and boosters have dancing around their heads. David Ridpath sees two distinct directions, and he heads the organization known as The Drake Group, which promotes academic integrity within collegiate sports, and has an insider’s view about the disturbing reality of what truly goes on behind closed doors at these institutions.
“We’re essentially just practicing eligibility maintenance”
College sports, the NCAA and everyone attached to an athletic program in this country are at a crossroads, and the questions of how discipline should be applied, how do distrubute the money made by these schools with the players who bring in the dollars, and how to find a balance between educating young people and becoming a football or basketball factory, all hang in the balance.
There are no easy answers, but there are a lot of hard decisions to be made, and someone has to tell the truth to the people who matter and make those decisions.
The Drake group is a 15-year old collection of former coaches, administrators and college executives who are taking a hard look at the problems facing both athletes and institutions in the current climate, and coming together to form recommendations to the NCAA and the school athletic directors.
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“When you work in college athletics, you tend to rationalize behavior like this,” Ridpath told me. “You’re bound by immense power and money, quite frankly. Even the programs that don’t make money, so to speak, the schools and alumni view them as very important. They believe that it increases enrollment and lots of other things.
“Then you get those fleeting times, like when I was at Ohio University or at Marshall, when you’re a blip on the national radar and you get a lot of publicity, and schools just eat that up. So because of that power the highly paid coaches have to keep kids eligible, and that’s what it’s become all about.”
Professor Ridpath has the look of a college athletics man (and his deep, growling voice furthers that image), but his dedication to fixing this vast and seemingly unmanageable problem goes beyond any perception that might come from his obviously long-developed personae.
“Because of the power, the money and the desire to win, these kids have to remain eligible for us to be able to get all that value we perceive. So, here we are in a sense of, we’re not really educating these kids, we’re essentially just practicing eligibility maintenance, and if it’s not eligibility maintenance it’s flat-out cheating and manipulation to keep them eligible.”
"“We’re essentially just practicing eligibility maintenance, and if it’s not eligibility maintenance it’s flat-out cheating and manipulation to keep them eligible”"
But it’s not just the well-known coaches like the Nick Sabans, Kyle Floods or Jim Boeheims of the college athletics world who engage in this type of behavior. Even those coaches and administrators at schools who are not traditional powers become lured into the narrative of keeping things nice and clean looking, regardless of what goes on behind the scenes.
“I was part of the problem,” Ridpath openly confessed. “I tried to rationalize these things. Like if it’s a poor minority kid from the inner-city, I would say ‘Hey, he’s getting exposed to college and has the opportunity to play’. But once I realized that was the wrong attitude, I decided to fight back and try to change what I think are some of the inherent problems in college athletics.
You Just Haven’t Been Caught Yet…
One of the common reactions when a program gets investigated, disciplined, slapped on the wrist or found to be in violation of some draconian NCAA commandment is the “everybody does it, you guys just haven’t been caught yet” absurdity that spews forth from the mouths of fans. But as callous as that recoil may seem, there is apparently a lot of truth within.
Professor Ridpath agrees that this feeling is widespread, and that the targeting done by the NCAA can seem more focused on programs that are overtly successful and rich.
“It’s more pronounced and visible in your high-profile programs,” Ridpath said. “Unfortunately, in my research in various schools and conferences, it would really stretch credibility with me if someone in any program said we are absolutely doing everything the right way. It’s almost virtually impossible to be ultra-successful year in and year out and not bend — if not outright break — NCAA rules.
“In many cases, when people say you just haven’t been caught, I think that’s probably true, and it brings up a larger issue which is that I don’t think people care. When Georgia and Florida are playing in Jacksonville, I would venture to say about 99 percent of the people in that stadium could care less whether the kids are going to school or not.
“They may want to believe they’re going to school and they want to see them wearing the uniform of that school, but I don’t think they really care if [players] are getting educated, but rather just maintained so that they can entertain us on Saturdays or during the week in basketball season.”
So why is this done? Why are the entertainment and bragging rights for fans placed above what is supposed to be an education for these young men and women? With the NCAA losing more and more control over the Power-5 conferences (which continue to grow in size and strength) the grasp of the organization designed to protect students has begun to be broken.
The NCAA’s volumized compendium of rules, regulations and bylaws practically takes a JP to understand, so its no wonder that so many coaches and players are caught unaware on minor violations. But it’s the big things, such as the grade-rigging and phantom classes that help keep these players eligible, as well as the recruiting violations and obtuse observations by those “in the know” which are the most troubling.
Ridpath agrees that the NCAA is hurting more than helping at this point, and that a drastic change in the way we assemble and maintain the revenue generating athletic programs at colleges and universities may have to take place for things to be made right.
And in truth, the only people suffering in the current model are the players. If this is to change and new ideas and solutions are ever to take root, the truth of what’s there has to be exposed.
Expose the truth, and remove the cancer
Part of what will initiate and bring about long-term change is transparency, and according to Ridpath, the laws are already in place to make that happen. However, the protection provided by local law enforcement, alumni groups and even the coaches often times prevent things from becoming public knowledge, as there always seem to be wheels in motion keeping us looking at the right hand while the dirt is being covered by the left.
Ridpath likes to do what he calls “pulling back the curtain” on college athletics, and making everyone see it for what it truly is. When you eat at your favorite restaurant, the last thing you probably want to do is open that kitchen door and take a look at the food as it’s being prepared and all that goes on around it. You just want your aesthetically pleasing and tasty dish placed in front of your face.
Most people don’t want to see or believe what’s going on behind the curtain of college athletics. They don’t want to be exposed to the ugliness. They just want their teams to represent the school colors and to have a few dozen excuses to tailgate.
“[The Drake Group’s] approach with disclosure is that it’s an institutional responsibility,” Ridpath stated. “It’s not just about athletes and their responsibility, it’s about what the institution is letting happen, and that they would have to show on a yearly basis what they are doing.
“So if 80 percent of your football team is in the same major with the same advisers and same professors, that probably tells me that they’re clustering those athletes just to stay eligible rather than to get an education.”
According to Ridpath, these athletic advising centers where players are clustered, particularly those who are under-prepared for the rigors of college life and classes, are a big part of the problem, and the aim of the Drake Group is the break them up and force athletes to go through the normal university advising centers.
Under current laws, institutions can publish – in comparison to the rest of the university – what athletes grades are, what their majors are, and who their advisers are. When these facts came to light in the recent case at the University of North Carolina, it shamed the administration into taking action.
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But how does as small group of former athletic staff members, administrators and even former college presidents (with a budget numbering in just the $1000s) have any chance of making a dent in this problem and swinging the gate the other way when there is so much money and power flowing against their fight?
Ridpath’s solution may look like a case of breaking something more until its fixed. The idea isn’t a new one and scares the bejeezus out of college sports traditionalists.
Change never comes easy, and it almost always comes with some bloodshed.
Student-Athletes, Or D-Leaguers?
“Why not just have kids play ‘for’ the universities and go to school if they want to?”
Yes, Ridpath is saying exactly what many have feared for a long time. The idea to turn college football and basketball into semi-professional or developmental leagues that are fortified with young players who may not even be enrolled at the college.
This really strikes a nerve in fans, and it may be what the young men a Northwestern University were driving at without actually realizing the full potential of their movement to unionize the players.
“We can go one of two ways,” Ridpath said. “We can either continue to run it as part of the educational enterprise and then manage it as an extracurricular activity — and we’d argue that people would still come and see the games — or, we just call it what it is and let it be a paraprofessional, outsourced operation of the university, with no eligibility connection.
"People want to say ‘That would outrage me because that’s not what college athletics is about.’ I say they should be outraged right now."
“Meaning, if [players] decide to go to school, they’re doing it on their own time, they don’t have a minimum number of hours to take and we don’t have to spend millions of dollars every year to try and keep some of these kids in school.”
Nobody would ever agree to this from an alumni or booster standpoint would they? And fans…would fans actually still support the team if they weren’t students at the university? It seems to go against everything that college sports has come to mean in this country.
“That’s a common reaction,” Ridpath agreed. “People want to say ‘That would outrage me because that’s not what college athletics is about.’ I say they should be outraged right now, because what we’re doing right now isn’t what college athletics is supposed to be about, so why not call it what it is?”
Truthfully, the idea of making these revenue generating college programs into developmental leagues may actually be the most logical path. Recruiting wars would eventually end, young players would be paid a fair percentage of the revenue they help generate, and there would be no need for NCAA regulations since there were no further ties between playing and being a student at the school.
It would also necessitate the use of a salary cap to keep the playing field level…something which has been nearly impossible to do under the current model. The College Football Playoff and NCAA Tournament could be expanded and/or tweaked in any way you’d like since there would no longer be a question of interfering with classes or school schedules.
Ridpath alluded to the fact that the NFL and NBA would both be forced to play a greater part in player development and to help financially subsidize these leagues. Everything we hate about what the NCAA does and how it oversteps and intrudes would be magically wiped away.
“These leagues are essentially benefiting from farm systems for free, and it’s time that they started to play a bigger part in the development of the players that have been helping to build their leagues and their profits for so long.”
Share the profits, remove the amateur model, and become true feeder leagues for the pros. It’s going to take willingness to change, and the old guard is running out of reasons to fight it.
Evolution may be inevitable
Maybe Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones (pictured above, left) got it right in the first place when he tweeted out, upon his arrival at Columbus:
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But therein lies the problem…if these kids aren’t coming for an education at all, why bother to pretend to give them one, and waste valuable resources and time that could be better spent on students who have a genuine interest in the school and receiving a higher education.
Worst of all, why continually cover the tracks of these student-athletes (because that’s technically what they’re still to be called) when they break the rules, the regulations or even the law?
It all comes back to money, and who’s being paid. When the athletes get suspended or dismissed, it hurts the program both financially and from a image perspective. But none of that compares to what the students don’t get and why they may feel the need to fight for attention.
“You know, all these coaches are making this amount of money, the schools are making this amount of money and the video game companies are making this amount of money,” Ridpath lamented. “Two years ago, I can remember Mark Richt and other coaches saying if we gave cost of attendance stipends that would be a slippery slope towards professionalism.
“We tend to evolve, and I can vividly remember the arguments when the Olympics were beginning to take professional athletes. Some people were emotional and going crazy that this was going to ruin the Olympics, because the Olympic spirit is about amateur athletics…it’ll be the end of the world. I don’t think anyone would argue now that the Olympics aren’t better than ever.
So change the model, change the system, but put the same quality product on the field or the court. It sounds like a win for everyone involved, and would save schools a lot of headaches and unnecessary bad press.
“In the end we [fans] might hem and haw, but we’d still show up for the games and cheer.”
But if this system is so drastically changed, which seems to be the direction things are headed, then the NCAA will lose what little power they have left, and a new governing body will have to be found to watch over the major sports, while the smaller, non-revenue generating sports would have to find a new model for sustainability within the university system.
It can be done, and The Drake Group is all for stripping the NCAA of their governing duties, according to Ridpath.
“Absolute yes,” he emphatically stated. “I think the NCAA should at least be broken up. It’s really become an unwieldy organization. Because you can’t forget that the largest membership in the NCAA is Division III schools, but yet most of the problems and money come from Division I.
“I think trying to govern three separate divisions of very disparate groups of schools is simply not working, and that’s why Division I has turned into a conference model, because the NCAA is just not able to handle governing them. But the NCAA, as its constructed right now, at the very least should be completely separated and reconfigured.”
Let Free Market Profit Happen
Part of the problem inherent in the current model is that the NCAA seems to believe they have oversight in the players’ personal lives and how those players are able to profit from their fame. The Drake Group is in support of the position that players should have the ability to market their likeness and fame, and let the free market (as opposed to the black market) dictate and regulate their profit.
Johnny Manziel and Todd Gurley were both guilty of nothing more than making a few extra dollars from the fame they had acquired through helping to make millions of dollars for their respective universities.
“It’s not going to make School A better than School B just because one of their athletes is allowed to make a commercial endorsing a product,” Ridpath chuckled.
There are several models that could be put into place, depending on how the Division I (in particular Power-5 conferences) decide to go with their sports. Becoming an outsourced, professional model would completely eliminate the need for a governing body, and would essentially turn it into a business model that receives support and funds from the professional leagues — NFL, NBA, MLB, etc — that benefit from the farm system.
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Ridpath and his group have the ear of Congress, conference leaders, school administrators and even some coaches who understand what is at stake, and want to move for change before the system collapses on itself.
As stated in the opening, the problems are many, the solutions are limited, and none of the choices are easy. But it’s clear that hard choices will have to be made and that major changes are abound for college sports as we know them, and David Ridpath is willing to pull back that curtain and expose all the ugly truths in order to save the institution of intercollegiate sports.
The fans will still come…schedule it, and they will come…but what goes on behind the curtain will be a vastly different thing.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing.