College Recruiting
...f higher learning broke the laws set forth by their governing body indicates that this is a very serious and prevalent problem in today’s environment. A further consideration is that it is not only the coaches, athletic directors and the athletic programs that are at fault, but also the students who accept the illegal perks are violating rules clearly set forth in the NCAA Guide for the College Bound Student Athlete. (4) One of the apparent reasons for breaking the rules is to attract the top athletes who will in turn provide the school with a winning season. A successful team will theoretically encourage the alumni to buy more tickets and to make more donations to the institution. It is not only the alumni from whom big time college athletics are seeking support. College sports are big business. Ray Ratto, staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle states, “College athletics over the last 20 years or so has become expert largely at chasing down money from people and companies that have it.” He goes on to say that some schools “already have plenty of rich people and companies waving money at them.” However, “in other places, the chase is exhausting.” (7) In order to attract funding from Nike, Adidas or McDonalds, a program has to have a winning season. Of course the key to a winning season and a financially successful program is having the best athletes money can buy. The question arises, who is actually hurt by these unethical recruiting tactics employed by college athletics coaches eager to improve their facilities and fatten their paychecks? Concern over this issue stems primarily from the fact that the current practice of recruiting college athletes is a poor reflection upon our society. College sports teams and athletes in general are looked to as role models by our children. Our society holds athletes in high regard and is willing to pay exorbitant sums of money to our professional athletes. Athletes who have turned professional after at least some college have grown to expect six or seven figure salaries, in part due to the special treatment they received not only in college, but through promises they were made during the recruitment process. If our athletes have been recruited through illegal or unethical practices, it will send a message to our youth and to our society as a whole that whatever you can get away with is considered to be acceptable behavior. “You never know what you can get away with until you try” is not an a tolerable way to conduct the business of recruiting our youth into college. Of further concern is the position in which it puts the school. If an athletic program goes after a recruit too aggressively, with expensive gifts, big parties, fancy dinners and other incentives, it can look as though the school does not have enough to offer the players as a university. If they have to promote the image of the institution rather than the actual substance of the university in order to get the athlete to choose their school over that of a competitor, perhaps that is not the best choice for the student. In the ideal world, a student would choose the university first and then decide to play for the team. In the real world, a students’ decision to attend a certain college is often driven by how much the player likes the coach, his future teammates and the win-loss record of the team. Scholastics come a distant second. In fact, athletes often do not have to meet the same academic standards as the rest of the applicant pool. Poor SAT scores can be waived and lower grade point averages are often acceptable in a sought-after athlete. Once the students enroll in the school, they may find they are in over their heads in terms of the academic rigors of the school. The potential student athlete’s chance for academic success is an area that coaches should be obligated to discuss with their potential athletes. Coaches should be required to inform recruits about graduation rates or their athletes which often may fall below the rest of the university’s numbers. (8) The common practice of offering some recruits more money than others is questionable in terms of creating team unity, a concept that should be strongly promoted by any athletic program. Players with more skill are likely to get preferential treatment because of their athletic abilities. This may cause poor team chemistry when players learn that some teammates are getting a higher level of support than others. In order to combat this alarming trend of increasing instances of recruiting violations by college athletic programs, several strategies have been proposed, most of which I fully support. These include a review and possible revision of the current NCAA rules (9, 10, 14), new state legislation governing college athlete recruiting rules including harsher punishment for violation of the rules (11) and formation of a task force to study the issue in greater depth (12). Some coaches and universities have even called for complete elimination of athletic scholarships to allow them to fairly compete with the other bigger, better funded programs. (6) The NCAA rules are revised on an annual basis and coaches are kept up to date with intermittent changes through the NCAA Newsonline service. (13, 14) Some promising changes that have been proposed to “clean up” the currently tainted recruiting process include increasing academic requirements for admission, and requiring schools to provide “an adequate opportunity for recruits to evaluate both the academic and athletics components of a school while also requiring standards of appropriate conduct and accountability.” (14) Further reforms include specification of the types of transportation, housing and allowable entertainment for the recruitment process. Other proposed changes that show great potential to improve the current recruiting process include requiring schools to use coach commercial airfare, providing standard hotels and meals for recruits and their parents, limiting incentive items and prohibiting “game-day simulations (for example, personalized jerseys, or personalized audio or video scoreboard presentations) during official visits.” (9, 14) Another positive recommendation for a new rule is that the hosts during official visits must be current student athletes from the same sport so that the school does not use a “celebrity” from one sport to recruit a player in another sport. (14) In an interview with a highly recruited college volleyball player, I learned that this is a common practice. (15) A second positive approach to improving the recruitment process is that the Council of State Governments has developed suggested State legislation addressing the issue. An Act has been proposed that will require consequences for “violations of college athletic recruitment rules and regulations.” (11) As long as the coaches, schools and athletic programs do not have to suffer great penalties for infringements, they will continue with business as usual which may include unethical practices. If, as proposed in the 2004 Suggested State Legislation, Part III, the schools are subjected to “loss of scholarships, loss of television revenue, loss of bowl revenue, and legal and other fees associated with the investigation of the activity and the representation of the institution before the sanctioning organizations in connection with the investigation and resolution of such activity,” they may rethink their actions beforehand and chose the more ethical and legal course. (11) In addition, the person who initiated the illegal activity may be dismissed from the institution, a further deterrent to individual infringements of the rules by unscrupulous coaches or staff members. A further provision of this proposed legislation is to place a limit on the financial value of incentive items provided to potential student-athletes. This will help the smaller schools compete on an even level with the bigger schools. The NCAA is a self-policing organization and, as such, has formed a task force to study the issue of recruitment violations. (10) While one might argue that the NCAA should not be trusted to self-regulate its activities, the organization represents all college athletic programs in this country and should have its good standing in the public eye in mind when it conducts its business. The task force was formed in March “in light of recent allegations of abuse,” notably the University of Colorado at Boulder football recruit party sexual abuse case. (9, 10) This was the first time that a task force had been...