NCAA On Life Support After Landmark Ruling

Just a few months after the National Labor Relations Board administrator’s shocking decision in favor of Northwestern football players seeking recognition as employees, yet another bombshell legal decision hit the world of college athletics Friday afternoon when Judge Claudia Wilken released her 99-page decision in O’Bannon v NCAA. Ruling in favor of the plaintiffs and finding the NCAA’s prohibition on compensation being paid to student-athletes for the use of their names, images, and likenesses, Wilken found the NCAA’s current model of “amateur” athletics to constitute a violation of § 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and thus placing the future of that model in serious doubt.

Although Wilken somewhat inexplicably ruled that the NCAA may still cap compensation while student-athletes remain enrolled at the full cost of attendance and may even cap post-graduate compensation at $5,000 per year of participation, the finding of an antitrust violation is real precedent that could have far reaching implications beyond the issue of compensation for the use of student athlete names, images, and likenesses.

When the NCAA decided nearly a year ago to fight on after both Electronic Arts and the Collegiate Licensing Company, co-defendants in the antitrust suit brought by a class of plaintiffs led by former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon, it was effectively gambling the future of its entire organizational model on the outcome of the case. With Wilken’s unequivocal finding that the NCAA is a cartel operating in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, it appears that gamble has been lost.

For now.

There is no doubt the NCAA will appeal Judge Wilken’s decision and her entry of a permanent injunction which effectively eliminates the capping of scholarships at “full grant-in-aid” where that cap falls short of the full cost of attendance. The Ninth Circuit, which has in the past shown sympathy for the NCAA model in contravention of its usual disdain for institutional blight, will have the next say on the matter and how they decide will, at least in terms of legal precedent, be of far great importance than what Judge Wilken provided last week.

The history of antitrust cases involving collegiate and professional sports does not bode terribly well for the plaintiffs. Although the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in American Needle marks a departure from the trend, the normal response at the appellate level is to find in favor of the status quo. District court judges like to make a statement and those at the appellate level love nothing more than to shoot that statement down as fast as possible.

But the real value of this case lies not in the remedy ordered, a smogasborg of pro-plaintiff and pro-NCAA conclusions Judge Wilken slid into the end of her opinion, but rather in the holding of the case: the NCAA is a cartel operating without adequate justification to render its price-fixing scheme immune from Sherman Act violations. With regard to that issue, Judge Wilken unequivocally sided with the O’Bannon plaintiffs and has now left the NCAA in a position where it will need to make major changes to avoid finding itself facing similar antitrust suits on more fronts than it could possibly handle.

Because they are usually fact-dependent, remedies, which are often a function of the requests made by plaintiffs who may be reluctant to ask for too much, do not provide tremendous value in terms of setting precedent.

On the other hand, the holding of this case does set valuable precedent that goes beyond the narrow scope of the fact pattern at hand. No longer will the NCAA be able to hide behind its claims of upholding a tradition of amateurism or of protecting the opportunities available to student-athletes in every sport to participate at the highest level. Judge Wilken has clearly rejected those claims and should her ruling be upheld on appeal, that would set just about as damaging a precedent as the NCAA could possibly face, perhaps damaging enough to force the NCAA to become a mere shell of itself.

The bottom line is that the O’Bannon plaintiffs have finally broken through the glass door and have set the stage for massive changes in the landscape of intercollegiate athletics, particularly at the high-major level. Although the remedies Judge Wilken ordered may lack a solid logical basis and may not cure all of the issues facing student athletes as this moment in term, her ruling that the NCAA operates in violation of the Sherman Act by preventing schools from compensating student-athletes for the use of their names, images, and likenesses is real precedent that the NCAA will now have to find a way to work around as it faces the inevitable flood of litigation that follows a landmark ruling like this one.

Both because this ruling will inevitably be appealed and because its scope is narrowed by the facts at issue, this is merely the beginning. But between this bombshell ruling and the traction CAPA is having in its petition on behalf of Northwestern football players, it is clear that we are entering a major period of change in the world of intercollegiate athletics, one that the NCAA and its compatriots will have to enter with an open mind in order to survive.

Delany Leading Big Ten Down Wrong Road and Its Time For A Change

As he nears his 25^th year as commissioner of the Big Ten Conference, Jim Delany has put himself in a position of immense power in the world of intercollegiate athletics. But while Delany is responsible for bringing millions of dollars to the Big Ten member institutions through innovations such as the Bowl Championship Series, the Big Ten Network, and NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament coverage, he is becoming more and more a threat to the very organization whose interests he is charged with representing on the national stage.

Since Delay became Big Ten commissioner in 1989, he has presided over the addition of Penn State University (1990), the University of Nebraska (2011), and now the University of Maryland and Rutgers University, both scheduled to join the conference for the 2014-2015 academic year. More recently, Delany has presided over the addition of Johns Hopkins University as an affiliate member for men’s lacrosse, bringing the Jays’ storied program into the fold as the Big Ten begins sponsoring competition in lacrosse starting in 2015.

But while all of this expansion has brought a treasure chest of fortune to the member institutions, it has done so while threatening the very brand upon which so much of the Big Ten’s value is built.

The conference’s own webpage describes how “even in its infancy, the conference established itself as the preeminent collection of institutions in the nation, where the pursuit of academic excellence prevailed as the definitive goal of all Big Ten universities.”

In short, for all the athletic prowess of Big Ten institutions, academics supposedly remain at the center of the conference’s mission.

Supposedly.

I say that because with the addition of Nebraska to bring the membership up to 12 in order to allow for a conference championship game in football, Delany signaled once and for all that the “pursuit of academic excellence” would no longer take precedence over the simultaneous pursuit of television contracts and football fortunes. Money talks and despite what Delany and company may say, everything else walks.

Clearly the Big Ten has decided that money is more important than reputation but even with that conceded, one has to wonder whether the conference can even compete in the football arms race it has decided to fight against the vaunted SEC.

Sure the SEC has inflicted some serious wounds on the Big Ten powers-that-be in its decade of drubbing on the gridiron, but they might in fact inflict the most damage as those powers continue to erode the prestige of the Big Ten conference in a futile response to try and compete for the title of nation’s best college football conference.

While the numbers actually point toward the Big 12 as the best football conference in the nation, it is considered fact at this point that the SEC holds the crown. Now winners of the last 7 BCS title games (carefully worded), the Southeastern Conference has a local talent pool, fan support, and popular reputation that would make it difficult for any conference of any size to effectively challenge its reign on the gridiron.

Yet that is exactly what Delany is attempting to do. Forgetting the basic mission of the Big Ten and the attributes that make the conference great (and different from the SEC), Delany has sought out any and all major football programs to join what has started to become a mass of teams and schools that leave much to be desired both on and off the playing field.

First there is Nebraska. While certainly a fine Midwestern institution and a flagship for the State of Nebraska, UN-L is not on the same level academically as the traditional Big Ten institution. Even the most ardent supporter of Nebraska would have to concede that the university is not on par with the likes of Michigan and Northwestern, traditional Big Ten institutions that hold permanent spots amongst the world’s leading research universities.

While Nebraska was a member of the AAU (American Association of Universities- a group of leading US and Canadian research institutions) at the time of the announcement they were moving into the Big Ten, the university was stripped of its AAU membership months prior to the official move. To think that Big Ten officials were unaware of this upcoming decision by the association is the epitome of naivety. They knew and they simply didn't care. Again, money talks.

Then there is the Penn State situation. Whether or not PSU was a good addition to the Big Ten seemed to have been settled as the university crossed the 20-year mark inside the conference. Until reality finality came to the surface. Not only does the Jerry Sandusky situation stain the reputation of Penn State, it stains the reputation of the Big Ten conference and every single one of its member institutions. While it has been reported that the conference considered expelling PSU for its actions (remember, football IS the reason Penn State was added in the first place), Delany and other conference leaders again chose to keep the money rather than taking a stand in support of the Big Ten’s reputation. Without Penn State, the conference would be down to 11 members and no longer eligible for a conference title game in football. No title game means no television deal and that was simply too high a price in Delany’s eyes.

Rutgers has brought forth another test of Delany’s devotion to reputation and as of yet, he has done nothing but fail. Continuing his obsession with bringing the conference to the New York City media market (ignoring the fact that several Big Ten schools have over 10,000 alumni in the market), Delany has tied the Big Ten in knots by sticking with a school whose athletic department has become the laughingstock of collegiate athletics in the wake of a scandal involving an abusive basketball coach and an incompetent search committee who eventually hired as the new athletic director a women facing allegations of abuse at not one but two different schools where she was previously employed.

But besides the scandals, Delany is betting the future of the conference on his belief that adding Rutgers will make New York City crazy for Big Ten football. As an alum myself, that is a bet I do not want the conference to take.

Although the additions of Rutgers and Nebraska were ill-conceived and the scandals facing Penn State should have resulted in the school’s expulsion from the conference, there is a way for the Big Ten to not only survive, but thrive as college athletics continues to undergo a major transformation headlined by conference expansion from coast to coast.

The solution comes from asking the simple question: What does the Big Ten do best?

Off the field, the answer is simple. No other major athletic conference boasts a collection of premier academic institutions even in the ballpark of the Big Ten. From a perennial top-15 school in Northwestern to “public ivys” Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, the Big Ten outpaces the other “BCS” conferences in the classroom without dispute.

Each and every “traditional” Big Ten school has a world-renowned academic program they can call their own:

·      Indiana’s Kelley School of Business ranks 11^th among undergraduate business programs according to US News and World Report

·      Iowa ranks 2^nd in Audiology and 1^st in Speech-Language Pathology programs while boasting a top-30 law school

·      Ohio State has the 5^th ranked Veterinary Medicine program and top-5 programs in Supply Chain Management, Vocational/Technical Education, and Interior Design

·      Michigan State has the top-ranked undergraduate program in Supply Chain/Logistics, a top-15 education program and a top-10 program in Veterinary Medicine

·      Minnesota is home to a top-20 law school and the 3^rd ranked Pharmacy school nationwide

·      Purdue boasts a top-10 engineering school and a top-20 program in computer science

Nebraska lacks a major program ranked inside the top 50 and Rutgers’ lone program inside the top 15 is in Library and Information Studies, not exactly the most robust and viable academic department as technology continues to progress.

The Big Ten has and should continue to excel in the classroom and thus academics need to be involved in the conference’s plans for the future.

Something else the conference does “better than most”, to steal a phrase from Gary Koch, is men’s basketball. Just as the SEC has dominated college football, the Big Ten dominates on the hardwood. While the nature of the game and of its postseason competition has left the conference without the national titles won by the SEC football powers (assuming you consider a BCS title to be a legitimate national championship), the numbers fail to lie when it comes to establishing the supremacy of Big Ten hoops.

Name another conference that relegated a team ranked in the top-10 nationally to the play in game at the start of conference tournament play. You cant.

The Big Ten may have lost its grip on football but there is no doubt the conference has the potential to solidify itself as the dominant power in men’s basketball.

This is where expansion should be focused. Rather than trying to win an unwinnable arms race for football supremacy against the SEC, the Big Ten should re-focus its energy on building its brand around domination on the hardwood. In addition to being a more realistic and equally as lucrative objective, basketball dominance would do more to attract the attention of New York media than any accomplishments on the gridiron. New York is not a college sports town and never will be. They do, however, have a soft spot for college basketball and if Delany wants to reign in the NYC media market for Big Ten exploitation, it will be on the hardwood where that battle is won.

As an added bonus, basketball prowess can be achieved without sacrificing in the classroom. While an expansion that is football-minded will inevitably and has already soiled the academic reputation of the Big Ten, the conference can expand for basketball while boosting that reputation to even greater heights.

So what exactly am I proposing Jim Delany do after all this rambling?

Simple, forget Rutgers and ditch Nebraska. Do that and then take a page out of the Johns Hopkins book by grabbing Georgetown and snatching Cornell. Sound crazy? Maybe, but at least hear me out.

A Big Ten Conference composed of Minnesota, Iowa, Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Maryland, Cornell, Georgetown, and Penn State[1]would have the potential to send between 8 and 12 teams (out of 14!) to the NCAA Tournament on an annual basis while reaching a level of academic supremacy unparalleled among division 1 conferences.

As for football, the conference would still have perennial title contenders in Michigan and Ohio State while also boasting common top-25 teams from Wisconsin, Northwestern, Michigan State, Iowa, and (post-sanctions) Penn State. Even in such a setup, the Big Ten would arguably have as many teams truly capable of running the table as does the vaunted SEC. But that's another discussion.

Reinforcing the academic reputation of the conference by adding Cornell and Georgetown (while re-classifying University of Chicago to the same “affiliate member” status as Johns Hopkins) would not only add value to the Big Ten brand but more importantly would boost the inherent worth of a Big Ten degree.

Think about it this way: Brown is a member of the Ivy League. Brown is also ranked just 15^th among national universities and boasts exactly zero graduate programs placed inside the top-10 according to US News/World Report. Yet because of Brown’s membership in the Ivy League a degree from the school automatically has attached a level of worth that surpasses the quality that is actually present in the classroom. Membership in the worldwide fraternity that is the Ivy League has its perks and it is the perfect time for the Big Ten to start its own.

Why would Georgetown and Cornell join the Big Ten?

For Georgetown, the answer is fairly simple. With the end of the Big East, the school is in a state of flux when it comes to athletics, gambling on the success of the new “Catholic 7”/Big East both in men’s basketball and in so-called “non-revenue” sports. But the new conference lacks the meat of the former Big East and its potential to generate competition and revenue simply does not match that of the Big Ten and its television network. Additionally, Georgetown would benefit from having a natural geographic rival in Maryland and a potential rival in fellow private school Northwestern to replace lost conference foes Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

Adding Georgetown would further cement the conference’s presence in the Washington market while sealing its fate as the preeminent power in college basketball.

Cornell is probably the most outlandish of my proposed additions to the Big Ten. After all, the Big Red compete in the sacred Ivy League and are currently subject to the conferences’ infamous ban on athletic scholarships. But while Cornell is among the premier academic institutions in the world, it is far from a typical Ivy League school.

While the other seven Ivy League schools average just 6,518 in undergraduate enrollment, Cornell enrolls 13,931 undergraduates in Ithaca. Cornell is also the lone Ivy League school founded after the American Revolution (1865- in line with most Big Ten institutions) and is the only Ivy school that began as a land-grant institution, a history Cornell would share with many of its Big Ten brethren. Joining the Big Ten would allow Cornell to upgrade its athletic and academic facilities while expanding the geographic reach of the school in a way that isn’t currently possible as the “little brother” of the Ivy League.

From the conference’s standpoint, the addition is a no-brainer. The Big Red are a national power in wresting as well as in hockey and lacrosse, helping to provide tremendous value to the conference’s two newest competitive offerings. More importantly, Cornell is the real link to New York City that the conference should be pursuing. In addition to having a graduate campus along with many other academic and research facilities in the city, Cornell has nearly 75,000 living graduates living in New York state, with over 50,000 of them residing in the City itself. New York City has two major college connections: Syracuse and Cornell. Adding Rutgers is not going to get New Yorkers interested in the least.

With Syracuse leaving the Big East for the ACC, the door is open to anyone who wants to be “New York’s college team”. Cornell is best positioned to be that successor, having already established both a well-developed alumni base and an actual campus footprint in the city. With the injection of Big Ten television revenue and other financial support into Big Red athletics, there is no reason Cornell cannot compete on a high-major level in men’s basketball. After all, the Big Red are just three years removed from a Sweet 16 run that was made at the expense of none other than Wisconsin, one of the conference’s most consistent men’s basketball powers in the past decade.

Adding Georgetown and Cornell to the Big Ten at the expense of Nebraska and Rutgers would bring the conference its much-desired entre to the eastern seaboard in a manner that does not put in jeopardy the reputation built by the conference over its hundred-plus years in existence. Adding these two institutions (along with Johns Hopkins) would give the conference not just a couple isolated outposts out east but a true base of operations, with Cornell, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Maryland, and Penn State comprising a true eastern consortium within the Big Ten.

The way Jim Delany and the Big Ten are currently embarking on expansion is detrimental to all who are connected to the conference and its institutions. The addition of relatively mediocre institutions devalues the degrees of student athletes, regular students, and Big Ten alumni alike, while the over-reaching geographic expansion forces student-athletes out of the classroom and into the airport unnecessarily. Adding Maryland and Rutgers will only add marginal interest in both DC and New York while boosting the Maryland addition with Georgetown and Cornell would represent a notable splash into both media markets. Finally, Georgetown and Cornell bring to the Big Ten the one thing it has over other major conferences: academic prowess. The futile search for a way to compete with the SEC on the football field has placed that very important feature of the conference in danger and its time we reign these efforts in and re-direct them toward additions that could provide even more opportunity for financial growth and media exposure even if that growth is achieved outside the realm of college football.

Expansion can be a good thing but the way Delany and other conference commissioners have gone about implementing it has thus far been detrimental to the long-term viability of major collegiate athletics. By focusing on shared interests rather than shared profits, commissioners such as Delany can begin to truly represent the interests of their constituents.

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[1] Sadly I believe we are stuck with PSU. However, I would ideally like to see Penn State expelled and replaced by Vanderbilt

Keep College Athletics In College

I, like the rest of college basketball fandom, cannot wait to see North Carolina take on Michigan State friday on the USS Carl Vinson docked in San Diego. But the more I sit and think about this game, the most it honestly repulses me. I have no problem with having a marquee game on Veterans Day to honor the troops, but I think the "carrier game" is way over the top. Think about it: Two east coast teams traveling across the country during the week, during the middle of the first semester, to play one basketball game lasting 2 hours on an aircraft carrier that is charged with the defense of our nation. When you take away the novelty of the whole thing, it is quite honestly a crazy idea. What it definitely is is simply another example of college athletics getting too big for its own good. To have these student-athletes travel across the country for an exhibition like this is an absurd waste of resources and an even more absurd waste of the student-athletes' time. The two teams could have just as easily honored the troops with a game played in Washington, DC, our nation's capital, in front of an all-military crowd. And guess what? That could have been done without the time and expense of cross country travel and without the added distraction from the academic obligations of these student-athletes. For an NCAA (and a BCS, for this point) that time in and time out talks about keeping time in the classroom in mind when scheduling or setting up games, tournaments, or a potential FBS playoff, this is where the grand hypocrisy begins to rear its ugly head. Because the Quicken Loans Carrier Classic is not really about honoring the troops on Veterans Day, it is about making money. For the schools. For the promoter. It might be politically incorrect to say it, but they are simply using the military backdrop as a means by which to add to the intrigue and the money-making potential of the game. Again, if it was simply about the troops we would have no need to take the teams across the country to an aircraft carrier. Never mind the enormous diversion of military resources that the game requires. So the hoopla that surrounds the carrier game, to me it is a disturbing sign of the influence money has come to have on collegiate athletics. Its not about the student-athletes, its about the money. Solution? Keep college athletics in college. No more NIT in New York. No more Maui Invitational. No more bowl games in resort areas. No more final fours in New Orleans. UNC-Michigan State should be played either in East Lansing or in Chapel Hill. Not San Diego. Not New York. On campus. That's how you clean up collegiate athletics. Keep them in college.

New Years Day For College Basketball Fans

Its finally here. 216 days. 5184 hours. 311,040 minutes. Thats how long those of us who consider ourselves true college basketball fans have gone without anything to do. Sure, the college football season provides a brief distraction from the boredom, and baseball is always something to while away the hours with, but for true college basketball fans, the summer and fall is spent waiting for November to finally roll around. And tonight, it has. The lineup of games to start the season isnt star-studded (at least until Friday), but it isnt bad. First up is an east coast matchup between William and Mary, perhaps best known as one of the five remaining Division 1 schools to have never played in the NCAA Tournament, and St. Johns, a school fresh off a revival year under first-year coach Steve Lavin that found them in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2002. The story out of Carneseca Arena, however, is clearly Lavin's bout with cancer and the impact that it has had on his young Red Storm squad. Returning just one scholarship player from last year's 21-win team, the Storm do have the luxury of one of the nation's top recruiting classes but Lavin's illness has made it difficult for those freshman to become acclimated with the ins and outs of college basketball at the pace that St Johns would like. But assistant coach Mike Dunlap, formerly interim head coach at Arizona during Lute Olson's similar bout with cancer, is a capable replacement. Add in the presence of special assistant and former Purdue head coach Gene Keady and the Johnnies should be ready to go against the Tribe. That is, however, provided they are able to overcome a lack of depth in the face of 3 of those heralded freshman- Jakarr Simpson, Norvell Pelle, and Amir Garrett- being ruled ineligible for at least the fall semester. As a result, the Red Storm roster is down to just ten players, including walk-on Sam Sealy. Then again, William and Mary returns a young roster that produced only 11 wins last year and is projected to finish 6th in the CAA. An upset doesnt appear to be in the making. Next on the docket is Mississippi State and Eastern Kentucky. Again, the Bulldogs have a talented roster and should not face much adversity against EKU. But MSU is also facing issues with eligibility, losing Kristers Zeidaks for the remainder of this season and for 11 games next season. But with the Colonels just 1-32 all time against SEC opponents, I dont think Renardo Sidney and crew have much to worry about. The final matchup of the opening night trio pits Arizona and Valparaiso, no doubt the most intriguing of the three. Arizona is on the uptick under Sean Miller, having come within an eyelash of reaching the Final Four for the first time since 2001 last season and riding a wave of recruiting momentum that has Wildcat nation hopeful that the glory days of Lute Olson and company will return under Miller's watch. But the challenge for U of A is obviously replacing Derrick Williams. The #2 pick in the NBA Draft, Williams was Arizona last season and it will be difficult to replace his production, even with the addition of four freshman ranking in the top 30 at their respective positions. If you need anymore evidence of Arizona's vulnerability in the wide open Pac-12, look no further than their 69-68 exhibition loss to Seattle Pacific. Valparaiso is a team that might jump onto some people's radar screens this season and a win in Tucson tonight would certainly help accelerate that process. The Crusaders finished 23-11 last season, racking up a respectable 12-6 record in the competitive Horizon League. As the Horizon League continues to get more attention on the national stage with the success of Butler and the expectations of Ray MaCallum's Detroit squad, Valpo could become a household name with a few key victories. Tonights matchup with Arizona is the first of two non-conference dates with ranked opponents, the next coming on November 25th when Bryce Drew's squad heads to Columbus to face #3 Ohio State. A win in either game would thrust Valpo back into the Sportscenter queue. So while the real action starts on Friday with 126 games, including the "carrier classic" between Michigan State and UNC, tonight is an appealing first course. Its been 216 days and with just a half hour remaining, the college basketball season is just about here.