While I was enjoying the thrilling parliamentary wrangling of the South Dakota Democratic Party’s state central committee meeting last month, a fellow Democrat turned to me and said with great excitement that the Jackrabbit women had won.
I stared back, probably more blankly than politeness would allow, and said, “Oh, basketball?”
Beyond acknowledging its impact on our economy, culture, and public policy, I pay almost no attention to young people playing sport (and the handful of lucky sport experts being paid more than any professor to direct that playing). But I find it worth noting that my alma mater’s athletics director, Justin Sell, tried to impose a little rationality on NCAA rules this week by advocating a rule change on “graduate transfers.”
I am surprised to learn that the NCAA allows athlete-students who have completed undergraduate degrees but are still eligible to play sports to transfer to new schools, enroll in graduate school, and play for new teams. Sell looked at the stats, found that only 20% of these graduate transfers in Division I men’s football and basketball players actually complete graduate school, and said something isn’t right. He thus proposed that teams accepting graduate transfers commit two years’ worth of scholarships to these students, to increase the chance that they’ll actually finish graduate school rather than just come, play for a year, and then bail.
The NCAA rejected Sell’s proposal, but it sounds like a reasonable idea amidst an utterly unreasonable program. Let’s be serious: very few people finish a master’s degree in one year, even if they aren’t traveling the country playing sports full-time:
“This [proposal] has been in the works for a while,” said Gregg Clifton, a Phoenix-based attorney. “The concern, frankly, is you’re seeing kids not doing it for the right reason. They’re not doing anything to pursue a degree….”
…One-year graduate programs are available, but they require condensed, intense study. Day said the one-year program at Iowa State would mean a student attending class from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. “every day for a year to get your master’s degree.”
A quick check of the top one-year online graduate degree programs shows those “one-year” courses of study actually last 12-24 months [Dennis Dodd, “NCAA Proposal That Would Curtail Graduate Transfers Not Expected to Pass,” CBS Sports, 2019.04.17].
Even Stanford football coach David Shaw, who opposed Sell’s rule change, admits that calling graduate transfers “grad students” is a “farce.”
Athlete-students spend far more time practicing and playing sport to boost their universities’ brand than they do studying to boost their own intellect and career skills. Maybe instead of continuing the farce, instead of making them pretend to be things they aren’t, we should call athlete-students what they are: university admissions and marketing employees, working to bring more students and alumni dollars to campus. And just like the workers who do school visits, lead campus tours, design college mailers and social media campaigns, and set out the cheese and wine for far-flung alumni fundraising events, those athletes should be paid for their labor. In the case of the graduate transfers whom Sell sought to curtail, those athletes would likely end up better off with a nice five-figure paycheck for their labors than they are with a year of skipping classes and adding no hirable degree to their résumés.
“those athletes should be paid for their labor.”
Yup. Better yet, drop intercollegiate sports entirely. Stick with intramural. Students who desire to become professional athletes can join club teams. Those clubs will scout high schools, just like they do now, and offer free or reduced memberships to athletes they want on their team, just like they do now.
[Disclaimer– I lettered in 5 intercollegiate sports, playing all through college. Way back then, 1971-76, one sport specialization wasn’t so much of a thing and women weren’t offered scholarships, only males.]
Five letters? Remarkable!… and a sign of how different college athletics is now, how far removed it is from playing a role in whole-person education offered to every student and how far it is merely now an entertainment industry.
Intercollegiate sports appear to conflict with rather than directly support our universities’ educational mission. The primary rationale for the big-time entertainment sports our universities offer is financial, at which point the criterion for keeping traveling sports is the same as the criterion for admissions mailings: do they bring in more money than they cost?
Debbo, when you played your five(!!) sports, how much time did you spend at practice? How often and how far did you travel for contests? How long were the seasons for each sport, and how did you keep up with your studies during your various playing seasons?
Cory – The fabulous Debbo states that she lettered in 5 varsity sports. Given that she attended ’71-’76, she may well have earned more than just a measly 5 varsity letters for her jacket. I will wager even money she earned at least 10.
Thanks Cory and Curt. It was pre-NCAA for women and pre-Title IX, so women’s sports was an afterthought. Our seasons were shorter than men’s and our financial support was minimal. Our practice facilities were whatever we could rustle up and we had one uniform for every sport.
I lettered in basketball, volleyball, field hockey, tennis and softball. Golf and track & field were also offered but I didn’t participate in those.
Practices were usually 2-3 hours. Outdoor sports depended on the weather of course. Basketball season was under 20 games and I believe VB was less than that, though I’m not sure.
Twice we went to the College World Series. At that time women’s sports were governed by the AIAW– Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. (The sexist NCAA didn’t consider women worth their time.) So there were no classifications or divisions.
Little Northern State faced off against the likes of the University of Texas Longhorns, the Florida Seminoles and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, among others. We were so outspent, practiced, coached, facilitied, equipped, etc., that we always considered it a point of pride that we were never 10 runned, never shut out and never out of the game. We never won a game either, but I’m okay with that.
That’s a brief of my college sports history. I was pretty good and had a great time. 😁
It seems we forge better memories when we enter a fight utterly outgunned yet fight on than if we enter the arena as the outgunner.