The Miseducation of the Student Athlete

How to Fix College Sports

Kenneth L. Shropshire, Collin D. Williams

• Publisher: Wharton School Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781613630815
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

2018 DIGITAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST SOCIAL IMPACT BOOK The student-athlete's life: practice, gym, weight room, film review, repeat. Simply put, sports come first. Academics is a distant second. As the revenues generated by big-time college sports continue to skyrocket, virtually all of the debate involves whether (and how much) student-athletes should be paid for play. Kenneth L. Shropshire and Collin D. Williams, Jr., argue that "student" has to come first in student-athlete: the focus should be on prioritizing a meaningful education.In The Miseducation of the Student Athlete: How to Fix College Sports, Shropshire and Williams draw on new research to reveal that it has become increasingly difficult for college athletes to balance school and sports, much less a social life, leading to serious economic, professional, and emotional consequences for young people. Given that fewer than 2% of all college men's basketball and football players will play at the professional level, the other 98% of student-athletes must be prepared to find and perform well in jobs outside of their respective field of play.In this bold call to action, Shropshire and Williams explain how we got here and what can be done about it. They lay out The Student-Athlete Manifesto, a roadmap to increase the likelihood that student-athletes can succeed both on and off the field. They also offer a Meaningful Degree Model, which ensures education pays for everyone, along with stories of success that show it is possible to be both a student and an athlete.A critical read for student-athletes, sports leadership, policy makers, and anyone who loves college sports, The Miseducation of the Student Athlete has the potential to disrupt college sport and create lasting change.

Chapter 1

Money and College Sports

People are playing for jobs and bonuses. I think it’s a part of the story, and we try to act like it’s not. It should be educationally driven. I 100% agree with that. It should be, but it’s not. Guess what? I can recite a million lines of Shakespeare, and that’s not going to make the school multiple billions of dollars. But if I can get ten sacks in a season, put a jersey number in the bookstore, and create more exposure and money … It trickles down. It’s all about money. That’s why it’s not an amateur sport.⁹

Two great college sports powers prepare to do battle. Ever-loyal fans are bombarded by messages from sponsors on their way into and during the event. They tolerate the abundant messaging knowing the competition is going to be entertaining and advertising is simply a part of the price, in addition to admission, they pay to enjoy the festivities. In fact, the alums know those advertising dollars will ultimately benefit their alma mater. On this particular game day, there is a hint of scandal, as there are murmurs and rumblings about the eligibility of one of the players on the field. Nonetheless, the fans want to see him compete. He is a great athlete, after all. More on this familiar scene in a moment.

Due to the recent onslaught of lawsuits involving the NCAA and amateurism, some of the stories around the roots of ethics in college sport are not new. By now most who follow sport know that the past common conceptions of amateurism are false. In both O’Bannon v. NCAA, which focused on athlete likeness and image rights, and Jenkins v. NCAA, which decided whether the fixed compensation NCAA athletes receive violates antitrust laws, amateurism and money were the driving issues. The dispute about amateurism in NCAA sport is now such a part of popular culture that even casual observers have opinions.

But the problems inherent in college sport that go beyond amateurism and money are not new either. The scenario described in the opening paragraphs of this chapter is not a big-time modern-day football rivalry or bowl game, but rather a sporting battle from nearly two centuries ago. In 1852, a savvy businessman named James Elkins paid two schools—Harvard and Yale—to compete in a boat race as a means of promoting the hotel he built along his famous Boston, Concord, and Montreal railroad line. Desperate to beat their rivals from New Haven in this fancy eight-day boat race, Harvard hired a professional boatman and disguised him as a student. All the while, the wealthy attendees drank and gambled on the outcome.¹⁰

From the very start, companies have used college sports to advertise their services, just as teams have bent the rules on academically eligible athletes.¹¹ And of course, from the beginning, scandals surrounding the money involved in intercollegiate athletics have distracted us from focusing on whether student-athletes graduate and whether the degrees they earn are of any use. Simply, cheating, sponsorship, and academic fraud have plagued college sports from the outset.

Why hasn’t the popular discourse been more focused on this student achievement issue? In this chapter, we address the contradictions at the core of college sports, detailing the myth of amateurism, the origin of the term “student-athlete,” and the NCAA-supported transitions to professionalism and commercialism. At the core, we ask, With the infusion of cash, shouldn’t we step back and reprioritize college sport spending for the greater good? Specifically, the greater good being college degrees that provide the springboard for a life beyond sport.

The Myth of Amateurism

Broadly speaking, we are in our current state because college sport did not grow out of the typical American capitalist model. Indeed, in a sense, college sport has been a uniquely regulated sector of our society. Despite being shrouded in mythology, the amateur ideal has always been about money, so in that sense capitalism is omnipresent.

During the Middle Ages, the emergence of residential colleges increased the amount of free time European students had, and that time was eventually filled with games. As British campuses were reserved for the elite, so too were the competitive sports played on them. Wealthy and unconcerned with profit, the gentleman-aristocrat of those times participated in sports merely for “the love of the game.” By contrast, because the working class might use sports for personal gain and may have had an advantage because their vocation involved physical labor, the elite used the guise of amateurism to keep them out. The rich avoided investing too much time, effort, or energy into a single activity. For them, sport was a hobby, and by no means was it to be considered a central focus.¹²

Though few were aristocrats in England, American colonists adopted many of their customs. By the Revolutionary War in 1776, over two dozen British sports were embedded in the budding American culture. Organized by students, campus athletics, which took root in the middle of the 19th century, continued in the amateur spirit. It is commonly noted that the first “official” game of college football took place between Rutgers and Princeton in 1868, but games similar to American football had been played on college campuses for years before that. These collegiate sports were instantly popular, and over time, most northeastern schools recognized their importance in the campus experience and created departments dedicated entirely to physical activity. Supported by colleges, competitive sports grew into an obsession.¹³

By the turn of the century, college football was too popular, corrupt, and dangerous to ignore. After 21 deaths and 200 injuries in the 1904 season alone, university presidents and faculty were not just looking to reform college football, but calling for its outright termination. In order to restore, or some would argue instill, positive conduct, president Theodore Roosevelt invited select leaders in the game to a White House conference in 1905. A football admirer and strong believer in amateurism, Roosevelt believed that no student who had ever been compensated for his athletic ability should be allowed to participate in college sport.¹⁴ As player deaths and corruption continued, New York University (NYU) chancellor Henry MacCracken convened a national conference to decide whether football could be reformed or should be eliminated altogether.¹⁵

This larger meeting resulted in the creation of a Rules Committee. Later that year, representatives from both the White House and NYU conferences met to formally establish a set of firm college football rules. The Intercollegiate Athletic Association, renamed the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1910, was formed as a regulatory body to ensure both fairness and safety. The amateur ideal adopted from the British aristocracy was among its founding principles.¹⁶

Notably, the primary language then, as it is now, was not about academics. Little in the rules implemented at the time had anything to do with student-athletes earning degrees; rather, the focus was on safety and amateurism. In retrospect, then, at its very formation, we can make the case that collegiate football, and by extension collegiate sports, had no real plan to assist the key participants in accomplishing what now has proved to be one of the most difficult tasks in the academy: to play sport at the highest level and also earn a meaningful degree.

From Amateurs to Professionals, 1910–1984

The next 70 years saw the powers that be in college sport embrace, albeit reluctantly, the unique form of “amateur” sport we see today. This was also the era when the greatest struggle to understand the role of academics in this enterprise was, without positive outcome, contemplated.

In the beginning, the NCAA actually played a minor role in the governing of college sports. For the first 20 years, students remained in control, as they had been from the earliest days of college sport and were rarely, if ever, monitored by faculty. In the 1920s, the arrival of radio broadcasts of games, the building of stadiums, and the spreading of college football to the south and west allowed for greater fan interest. The game became a nationwide sensation. The 1927 Rose Bowl, which pitted Stanford against Alabama, was the first-ever coast-to-coast US radio broadcast, turning college athletes into local, regional, and national heroes.¹⁷

College sport’s rapid growth also opened it up to more criticism. A national debate over whether college athletes should be paid was launched in 1929 when a Carnegie Foundation report revealed that out of 112 schools surveyed, 81 of them had recruited athletes and paid them in a variety of prohibited ways, from disguised booster funds and illegal athletic scholarships called “subsidies” to no-show jobs.¹⁸ The discussion would return to the forefront in 1939, when first-year athletes at the University of Pittsburgh actually went on strike because their upperclassmen teammates were getting paid more than them. That report raised, without resolution, the question of why college sport existed as this unique extension of the American collegiate system. Many, for the first time, came to realize that the phenomena of sport associated with college campuses was uniquely American. Few, however, fully grasped that there were no rules or precedents as to what an enterprise like this should look like, or what it should prioritize. It was, especially then, a shrouded mush of capitalism, amateurism, and somewhere in there, education. With no precedent to follow, it is easy to look back and understand why so many mistakes were made.

By 1946, the NCAA had grown so embarrassed by its inability to handle bribery, rampant gambling, and recruitment scandals that it again assembled conference officials to develop a code of ethics. Note that although the education of athletes was a matter of concern, the focus of reform was on minimizing scandal. Seeking to reach a compromise between the southern schools in favor of full athletic scholarships and the Ivy League schools that called for all students to be treated the same, the Sanity Code prohibited schools from compensating athletes beyond free tuition and meals. This 1948 legislation marked the first official step toward professionalism.¹⁹ The amateur ideal, as it existed among the British aristocracy, had been lost. The last vestige of a sporting model was dispensed and the formal creation of today’s priorities was under way. The concept of moving from the British aristocratic model was not the problem; rather, it was the lack of framing of the transition to be in the best interest of those participants who would come to be known as student-athletes.

During the 1950s, the NCAA began to flex its muscle, replacing the Sanity Code with the Committee on Infractions and appointing Walter Byers as its first executive director. Byers and the Committee on Infractions were tested almost immediately, as two major scandals—one involving grade counterfeiting in football and another involving point shaving and gambling in basketball—rocked college sports in 1951.²⁰ Their responses set major precedents. The committee handed the University of Kentucky and iconic head basketball coach Adolph Rupp the first-ever “death penalty,” barring the Wildcats from competition for the entire 1952 season.²¹ This moment displayed the power the NCAA possessed, and for the first time was beginning to wield. The NCAA as boogeyman was born. In some sense, this was when public criticism shifted too much to this entity rather than to the existing and growing problems within the endeavor.

The Birth of the Term “Student-Athlete”

Perhaps Byers’ most salient win was the legal battle leading to the creation of the term “student-athlete.” When Ray Dennison, a Fort Lewis A&M Aggies football player, died of a head injury, his wife tried to sue the NCAA for the workmen’s compensation death benefit. In a quick but calculated response, the NCAA placed the word “student” in front of “athlete” to (1) emphasize players’ status as students, (2) prevent them from being identified as employees, and (3) promote the amateur ideal of academics over athletics.²² By preserving the image of college athletes as students first, athletes second, and employees never, the phrase has been an extremely effective defense in court. By defining students who participate in sports in college as different from others in the student body, the term further distracts from the focus on degree completion. It is important to be clear that the creation of the student-athlete terminology was not a refocusing of the college sports enterprise but a shielding of its operations from lawsuits.

The NCAA quickly transformed into a self-sustaining bureaucracy under Byers. The revenue generated by televising college football’s “Game of the Week” ballooned after the NCAA forced football powerhouses the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Notre Dame out of their independent television deals. In 1952, Byers’ maneuvering resulted in NBC paying the NCAA $1.14 million for a restricted football package, enough to move the expanding organization from a shared space with the Big Ten conference in Chicago to its own new headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri.²³ By the mid-1950s, the NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament had become the sport’s premier invitational tournament, overcoming competition from the rival National Invitation Tournament.²⁴ It became increasingly profitable with the expansion to 48 teams in 1975, and in 1979, the storied rivalry between Indiana State’s Larry Bird and Michigan State’s Magic Johnson turned the tournament into a national phenomenon. The $100,000 the NCAA made in basketball revenue in 1947 reached $500,000 in 1967, $1 million in 1972, and $22 million in 1981.²⁵ Throughout the 1970s, the growing interest in and profitability of college sports increased the NCAA’s enforcement capacity so much that it was accused of unfairly exercising its power. To address these concerns, the NCAA added checks and balances, separating its member institutions into three competitively similar groups called divisions.

The Commercial Enterprise of Big-Time College Sports (1984 to the present)

Television watching as a national pastime, the value of broadcasting deals, and the popularity of college basketball increased significantly throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As gambling and the introduction of the point spread made basketball even more popular, NCAA officials quickly realized it was cheaper and easier to broadcast than football—and looked to maximize their profits. In 1984, CBS paid a staggering $1 billion for exclusive broadcasting rights for th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: Righting a Misguided Discourse
• Chapter 1: Money and College Sports
• Chapter 2: The Miseducation of the Student-Athlete
• Chapter 3: Time for Change?
• Chapter 4: The Solution: Constructive, Disruptive Systemic Change
• Chapter 5: Moving toward Change and Implementing Solutions
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Authors
• About Wharton School Press
• About The Wharton School