College Athletics' Rookie Mistake

The NCAA continually fails to address the rot in college sports, despite a 400-page phone-book-sized manual. There are rules to govern twittering, rules about "normal retail cost," and even rules for parking, yet none of them curb Lane Kiffin's mouth, John Calipari's ambition, or Derrick Rose's grade inflation. They're all nonsense, and it's time to throw them out. The NCAA needs only one good rule. It's a rule that would clean up a lot of the mess instantly because it would restate the priority of college athletics: Make freshmen ineligible. School comes first. Make them sit out a year while they find their classrooms.

Amazing, how that one rule would solve so many problems. For instance, it would solve Lance Stephenson's nagging little dilemma. Stephenson, arguably the nation's most overprized high school basketball talent, would have to decide whether a scholarship is a priceless gift or an unwanted obstacle; he'd have to either commit to an education or forgo the charade and play a year in Europe, where he could learn to insult his teammates and coaches in a foreign language before he skips to the NBA and becomes Commissioner David Stern's latest ward. The one thing he wouldn't be able to do is treat college as a tiresome expediency.

That would in turn solve Maryland Coach Gary Williams's problem, because he could pay a lot less attention to the so-called ratings systems of scout services, which create baby-monsters such as Stephenson by identifying him as "Born Ready" in the fourth grade. He wouldn't have to promise playing time to star-blown egos and could teach freshmen the fundamentals without questions from fathers about why their kid is sitting on the bench.

If freshmen were ineligible, it would help clear things up at Memphis, where Calipari's combination of slick and slack has left the program facing major penalties over Rose's academic records. The Memphis administration wouldn't need to worry so much about whether high school transcripts and SAT scores were fraudulent, because freshmen would have to show they could do the work over the course of an academic year. (And by the way, Rose seems a bright kid, and there's no reason to think he wouldn't have risen to what was demanded of him.) Make freshmen sit, and some of the systemic fraudulence by which they are pushed along might go away. High schools would have less incentive to falsify athletes' grades and more incentive to actually prepare them.

It would also help with the problem of predicting which recruits are more likely to succeed on campus academically. Make them devote a year to nothing but study and practice, and schools would find out which kids (and their parents) see an athletic scholarship as meaningful reward instead of an impediment. The marginal or inadequately prepared, who were willing to work, would have time to catch up, time in which their minds could catch fire. And they would learn how to deal with the combined academic and physical workload, how to sit up and read at night after practice, instead of crashing into bed.

Make freshmen sit, and it might lessen the corrupting influence of sneaker company reps, who would be a lot less interested in bench warmers.

Make freshmen sit -- an idea advocated by Bob Knight, Dean Smith and Lou Holtz -- and million dollar head coaches might regain some perspective and remember they're just gym teachers, and that their competitive pressures or problems don't come ahead of the university's purpose. It might even help restore the fiscal sanity of university presidents. Florida President Bernie Machen is lobbying to give football coach Urban Meyer a raise, despite facing $42.2 million in budget cuts. Kentucky hired Calipari away from Memphis for $31.65 million over eight years. The reason for such whopping deals is not because of their stellar grad rates, but rather because universities are terrified of falling behind in the recruiting wars, and a competitive slump could lead to deficits.

"Especially in a dynamic business like athletics, you invest a lot of resources and time in something," Machen was quoted as saying in the Orlando Sentinel. "It may not pay off for three or four or five years, but if you stop, then it's just going to slow you down."

Which leads to the most important reason to make freshmen ineligible: because it would be a clear statement that the NCAA is a nonprofit that puts education ahead of business. Freshman ineligibility was a healthy, time-honored policy in American collegiate sports from the turn of the century until 1971, when the NCAA voted it down. The reason? Money. Member schools no longer wanted to house, feed and educate players who weren't bringing in trophies or revenue.

"You're putting out money but getting no athletic productivity in return," sports economist Andrew Zimbalist said. "Coaches didn't think they were getting enough for their money."

There's nothing inherently wrong with the fact that college sports has become transactional. After all, bowl income and TV rights fees pay the tab for thousands of athletes in smaller sports to compete and get educations. The difficulty of reconciling sport, education and commerce has plagued campuses since Rutgers and Princeton played football in 1869, and Rutgers fielded three freshmen who were failing chemistry. The trouble is, over the years the rulebook has steadily tilted in favor of commerce, until it's become virtually a one-way transaction. As matters stand, Division I-A basketball and football have become "professionalized in every respect except paying the players," as Zimbalist said.

That doorstopper of a rulebook is not about enhancing education or enforcing clean competition, it's about enforcing competitive balance and profit-sharing. The players work 40 to 80 hours a week between weight training, practice, film sessions and travel. NCAA schools want the fruit of that labor and the profits they generate, without paying a price -- ethically or fiscally. When it comes to rules they split hairs and walk fine lines, pass picayune regulations about parking and the cost of a sandwich. It's time to pay a price -- and pass a real rule.