The Culture of Sport and the Future of Intercollegiate Athletics

ADDRESS TO THE ASSOCIATION OF GOVERNING BOARDS
Boston, Massachusetts
April 22, 2002

Dr. Thomas K. Hearn, Jr.
President, Wake Forest University

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

It is an honor to appear before this distinguished assembly. I want to thank Tom Ingram for this invitation, and for his active concern for these issues as a member of the Knight Commission and within the leadership councils of higher education.

I also want to recognize, with appreciation, the presence of my board chair, William B. Greene, Jr., Chairman of the Bank of Tennessee. Bill was a two-sport athlete at Wake Forest, and he has provided our board consistent leadership on these issues.

In response to the growing pattern of abuses in college sports during the 1980s, the Knight Foundation, under the leadership of its president, Creed Black, created the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics in 1989. The Commission was chaired by two of America’s most distinguished university presidents, William Friday of North Carolina and Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame.

After extensive hearings and deliberations, the Knight Commission’s first report, Keeping Faith with the Student-Athlete, recommended reforms reflecting four fundamental principles. First was presidential control. Athletic departments, conferences, and the NCAA itself were variously governed and presidential authority was often mitigated. The NCAA, in particular, was an enormously complex and decentralized body and was not under the direct governing authority of presidents. Second, the principle of academic integrity aimed to prevent the widespread exploitation of student-athletes, who often were admitted without adequate preparation for college and kept eligible in a cafeteria assortment of courses that had scant educational purpose or outcome. Third was the principle of financial integrity. It was not uncommon in those not-so-distant days for athletic fund-raising by boosters to take place outside the university. These funds were collected and distributed occasionally without appropriate safeguards and without university control. Fourth, the Commission recommended a peer certification program for athletic departments, reflecting the accreditation procedures and processes that are established mechanisms of quality control in higher education.

Measures reflecting these principles were, in various degrees and guises, adopted by the NCAA. Most significantly, the NCAA came under the governance of a presidential board of directors. As a general outcome, the Knight Commission brought renewed attention to the areas of conflict between the athletic program and the academic mission of the universities of America. That conflict itself, however, was far from resolved.

In the year 2000, the Knight Foundation decided to assess the status of intercollegiate athletics a decade after publication of its first report. Once again, with the leadership of Presidents Friday and Hesburgh, supported now by Hodding Carter as president of the foundation, a restructured Knight Commission was convened. Its report, A Call to Action, was released in June 2001.

In some respects the system of intercollegiate athletics has never been stronger. In most of our institutions, most sports programs function appropriately. In the effort to diversify our student populations—ethnically, socio-economically, and internationally—the contribution rendered by athletics is substantial. The doors to academic and athletic competition are opening to women with all the attendant positive results.

However, what our study found about the situation of football and men’s—and to some extent women’s—basketball, was disturbing. The circumstance of these major “revenue” sports in the major programs poses a growing threat to the entire system of intercollegiate athletics. The status of these major programs determines the welfare and outlook for the entire athletic enterprise.

This threat has to do with the position of these so-called “premier” sports as part of a continuing and dramatic revolution in the culture of sport in America. Historically, the culture of sport in the nation was defined by local community organizations—schools, summer and church leagues, and the YMCA and the YWCA. Across the nation, these sponsors uniformly regarded sport as an educational and developmental undertaking. The values of fitness, teamwork, and fair play were such that sport was universally regarded as a metaphor for moral endeavor. Athletics as an integral element of learning and personal development was axiomatic. Given this conception, athletics is appropriate to the university as a place of learning, the university being the culmination of this community-based athletic culture.

Recent decades, however, have brought a profound revolution in this view of athletics. It now seems quaint and naive. The culture of sport today is defined by professional teams, which are part of the media and entertainment industry. In this professional context, games are played, not for love or for learning, but for money, fame, and stardom. The games that professionals play are not, in the primary sense, games at all, but businesses that operate according to the inexorable laws of the marketplace. Sport as learning and as moral education has no foundation in this setting.

Television is the primary agent of this cultural transformation. What television covers, it transforms to its own requirements. For example, how simpleminded we were to believe—as once we did—that television would enhance democratic political culture. Quite the reverse: television transformed our political system to the requirements of the entertainment ethos. Political conventions are now television shows, and politicians are increasingly television and media personalities. Political discourse is packaged in thirty-second sound bites for the evening news.

This change in the culture of sport is destructive of the aims of athletics as part of the mission of the university. Our athletic programs are increasingly regarded by players, coaches, the media, and our fans as part of the entertainment culture. Our teams wear collegiate colors and insignia, but the ethos of major programs is increasingly that of professional franchises. Therein lies the peril for the present and future of collegiate sports.

The implications of this cultural change are everywhere evident in major athletic programs. Let us examine briefly what this cultural change has wrought.

Despite our earlier efforts, graduation rates in the revenue sports are languishing. The most recent NCAA graduation rate report reveals that 51% of Division I-A football players and 32% of men’s basketball players earned degrees. These are full-time students who receive four to five academic years of full scholarship support, plus summer sessions if necessary. By any measure, these rates reflect our lack of academic resolve.

The ethical heart of the matter is: Are we providing student-athletes the educational opportunity for which the university exists? We might reconcile ourselves to the excesses of recruitment and commercialism if, as an outcome, students were being educated. If we fail in this regard, however, the enterprise loses its rationale as a university undertaking.

Graduation rates are not the best or only measure of our academic effort. The way these rates are calculated by federal regulation is flawed. A student-athlete who transfers in good standing and graduates on time still counts as a non-graduate for the school transferred from. Graduation numbers are not reported until six years after the date of the entering class, and thus do not provide adequate information about current academic standing.

But whatever indices we use, poor academic outcomes reflect this changed culture. Wake Forest’s legendary basketball coach Bones McKinney remarked that he never told a student to go to class or get a degree. “Why else would they be here?” he asked. “They didn’t need me to tell them to do what they came to do.” That is the message of a bygone coach and a bygone era.

Some coaches rightly conclude that their career aspirations depend on winning, and winning alone, and feel no career motivation to support the academic aspirations of their players. It is wrong to blame the coaches. We hire and reward them. But so-called “power coaches” are media stars oftentimes beyond the reach of presidents and boards. A chancellor remarked to me about such a coach: “It is fortunate that he cares about education. If he didn’t, there would be nothing I could do about it.”

From the student perspective, a growing number of athletes have no interest in education. Their goal is to play as a professional, and they are in school only out of necessity. The disconnect between their personal interest and the aims of the university is manifest in academic failure and behavioral problems that make the papers with alarming regularity.

These adolescent dreams of professional fame and wealth, of course, are deceptive and cruel, akin to those of impoverished families who believe their future opportunity dictates buying lottery tickets. A tiny fraction of Division I football and basketball players will be drafted by the professionals, and fewer yet will ever make a team. A college education is, in fact, what these young people need as an avenue to productive and useful lives – especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The entertainment culture, though, mitigates against the appropriate alignment of youthful aspirations and needs.

Perhaps the most evident outcome of this new culture is an unsustainable rise in athletic spending—what Cedric Dempsey has called the “athletic arms race.” In the pursuit of successful franchises, investments are being made in facilities, salaries, and programs at a rate that is unsustainable at best, suicidal at worst.

Popular opinion is, of course, that colleges make millions on athletics. The problem is that the millions we make, we spend, and we spend yet more. According to the most recent reports, just 48 of the 320 schools in Division I operate in the black. The average deficit for the rest is $3 million annually. If the full cost of athletic facilities—including construction and operation—were assessed fully to the athletic department, I suspect that no athletic program in the nation would be solvent.

Coaching salaries are another glaring indication of the spread of the professional outlook to our campuses. Football and basketball salaries routinely now surpass the million-dollar mark. Why? The professions of professional and major college coaching have merged. When coaches migrate seamlessly from the professionals to the collegiate ranks and back, they come and go bringing an outlook about the job along with escalating salaries.

The rising demand to pay college players reflects not only the growing influence of the professional ideal—athletes play for money—but also the lack of regard for the value of education. Given the lifelong earning differential between high school and college graduates, an education should be the most valuable “payment” a student-athlete could receive. But in the “play for pay” culture of professional athletics, a free education is often not a valued commodity.

If the coalition/union that is attempting to organize student-athletes in California is successful—I am told we cannot discount that prospect—the outcome will be fiscal calamity. Indeed, the success of this coalition would possibly bring the end of intercollegiate athletics as we have known and loved it. The ironic result would be the closing of doors of opportunity for future student-athletes, defeating the purposes the organizers claim to serve.

There seems to be no comprehensive national solution to this looming financial problem. Efforts to limit expenses or salaries through NCAA or other mechanisms are likely to run afoul of anti-trust and other regulations. This crisis can only be averted through the responsible efforts of boards and presidents on your campus and mine.

Our instinct, however, in the face of rising expenses is to do whatever we can to enhance revenue. The resulting spiral of escalating costs chasing escalating revenues leads to abuses of every sort.

I, for one, am not optimistic that we have the resolve to tame this fiscal dragon. Financial excesses, however, have a way of self-correcting. When state legislators or trustees find themselves facing fiscal shortfalls—as we see across the nation—their willingness to subsidize sports enterprises at the expense of academic programs will be tested. That test may come soon.

Another casualty of the professional ethic is the decline in sportsmanship and rising levels of confrontation between and among players, coaches and fans. Years ago, my son played small-town tennis tournaments when John McEnroe burst on the scene. The next thing we knew, little boys were having on-court tantrums and shouting obscenities for all the world to hear.

This same degrading process is still at work in athletic programs from the youth leagues on up. In the world of professional athletics, the ideal of conformity to standards of personal conduct—any belief in the moral purpose of sport—has no relevance. Fists and Elbows Fly More Frequently heralded a recent headline in The New York Times about the NBA season. Taunting and trash-talking has spread from the fields and courts to the stands, and the conduct of our fans forcefully reminds us that “fan” is short for “fanatic.”

Sportsmanship could, of course, be supported by the rigorous enforcement of game officials, but the professional culture militates against it. Despite presidential efforts in the ACC to have basketball officials call technical fouls on players and benches for obscene language, we have not been able to eliminate that conduct. Several episodes involving coaches and players this year required later action by our Commissioner when forceful action was not taken by the officials at the time.

The fragmented systems of governance and control over intercollegiate athletics make our programs vulnerable. Colleges and universities are good-to-outstanding managers of the teaching and learning process. We understand what goes on in the classroom, the laboratory, and the library. But in the business that athletics has become, we are often not adequate to the task. The allure of athletic fame and money tempts us, and we often lack the capacity or the resolve to confront powerful athletic interests.

Conferences exercise a wide range of control over our programs, but they often reflect the desire of member institutions to enhance visibility and revenue.

The NCAA receives more than its share of criticism for the regulatory morass we have created. However, it is the organized reflection of our own collective will. Competition generates a climate of distrust reflected in the arcane and complicated rules about recruitment and student-athlete benefits. These rules are much complained of, yet they grow directly from the ethos of competition. The NCAA is divided along every fault – by individual sport, by revenue and non-revenue sport, by big schools and small schools, by women’s issues, minority issues, and every other imaginable interest group. In such a setting, it is virtually impossible to reach policy conclusions that are other than a collection of compromises.

The general outcome is that we do not have systems of governance over intercollegiate athletics that are comprehensive or uniform. In the absence of such mechanisms, various internal and external forces are exerted that do not support alignment with our academic mission.

If the influences of the entertainment industry continue to dominate the enterprise of big-time intercollegiate athletics, the resulting institutional and financial problems may one day bring about a schism within the NCAA, with the major conferences and programs pulling out. Estimates are that between 40 and 60 universities, primarily those with large public subsidies, could develop programs that “increasingly mirror the world of professional, market-driven athletics.”

No one, I think, wants this division or is actively seeking it at present. However, the outlines of such a split are already drawn in the so-called Bowl Championship Series (BCS), comprised of six major conferences that presently control post-season football. The NCAA, of course, would like to govern post-season football and the revenue it generates. If and when push becomes shove between the BCS and the NCAA, no one knows what will happen. A football playoff would bring millions, perhaps billions, into the contest for control. Should those six conferences—which largely dominate NCAA basketball—decide to start a BCS post-season basketball tournament, it would mean the swift end of NCAA. It would also mean a great deal of money to these major programs—which they will tell you, in private at least, that their institutions generate.

Many schools now participating at the highest levels of athletic competition could not afford or would not accept the compromises this new alliance would entail. This outlook is sober, not only for those schools that will sacrifice the opportunities their present programs offer, but also for members of this possible new alliance who would find themselves dividing, as professional sports franchises do, into the successful and the struggling, the haves and have-nots. There is no utopia ahead for the survivors or the casualties if the present system is not maintained.

Such a scenario is not, of course, inevitable. A constructive future can be built if we act to control the forces that threaten our academic and fiscal well-being. The present system of broad-based programs in schools of every type and size is a platform from which many thousands of young people are given tools for a better future. This system is worth preserving.

To pursue and sustain reform, the Knight Commission’s recent report recommends creation of an Institute for Intercollegiate Athletics. The Institute would “keep the problems of college sports visible, provide moral leadership in defense of academic integrity, monitor progress toward reform goals, and issue periodic reports cards.” The Commission identifies the Association of Governing Boards (AGB) as the organization best suited to play a major role in the start-up and operation of this proposed institute.

In the meantime, other reform initiatives are in various stages of development. The so-called “Group of Six”—representatives of the BCS conference presidents and the commissioners – under the leadership of Robert Sloan of Baylor, is considering a range of initiatives to strengthen academic performance and outcomes. In principle, this group has endorsed a key Knight Commission suggestion—that competitive incentives and disincentives should be tied to academic performance. That means that poor academic performance might mean loss of scholarships or access to post-season championships.

The NCAA Board of Directors is also leading a parallel effort to address a reform agenda. The board’s areas of concern largely mirror those outlined by the Knight Commission. Constructive changes may be in the offing.

What we have learned, however, is that reform is a continuing process, not a matter to be resolved by a series of regulatory changes. The cultural conflict at issue will be waged on many fronts. It is, of course, a civil war, taking place on our campuses and in our boardrooms. The entertainment ethic has many friends and allies in our own quarters. Only an uncompromising commitment to the primacy of the educational mission of the university can create and sustain reform.

Finally, we face an additional risk—not a new risk, but one now more pernicious and dangerous. Intercollegiate athletics has been visited by gambling scandals throughout its history. Due to the influence of the gaming industry in Washington, the NCAA has been unable to bring to the floor of Congress legislation to make illegal gambling on college games.

Beyond the threat legal gambling represents, the Internet has brought gambling on athletics to every college residence hall in America. In an environment where some student-athletes are disgruntled that they are not paid, and the person offering a fee for controlling the spread is not a Mafia-type but a student in the next room, the risk of scandal affecting the integrity of our games cannot be minimized.

As night follows day, scandal is followed by government regulation. Federal regulation would make us yearn for the simplicity of NCAA rules. We must take steps everywhere to guard against this frightening possibility.

Student-athletes arrive on our campuses possessing remarkable gifts. They have developed early in life a passion that demands the fullest measure of life’s supreme requirements – dedication, self-sacrifice and commitment to excellence. They have risen above the passivity and apathy that can accompany adolescence in America. Their youthful passion may be sport, but history reveals that games are avenues to lives of service and achievement in other fields of endeavor.

It is our opportunity—and our responsibility—to see that in intercollegiate athletics this passion for play becomes attached to the other callings of life—career, service, and citizenship. We must not fail these young people of such talent and promise.

The boardrooms and presidential and faculty offices of America are filled with men and women of supreme intelligence and good will. There is no issue affecting the future of intercollegiate athletics that we cannot, with common resolve, set right. I urge you to make this resolution our common purpose.