Musings from Arledge: NCAA, enough is enough

In 2010, the NCAA hammered USC with some of the most punitive penalties in college football history, all on the basis of what was almost certainly the fabricated, self-interested testimony of a convicted felon who was encouraged to lie by NCAA staff. In the process, the NCAA destroyed the career and reputation of an innocent assistant coach, unfairly punished hundreds of student-athletes who had nothing to do with the situation, and made clear that it is an institution that simply cannot be trusted.

In the years since, the NCAA has fought to keep players from keeping any of the billions of dollars they generate and has been consistently inconsistent—you might even say arbitrary and capricious—in its enforcement of its own rules. 

For a while, it looked like the NCAA was on life support as federal court after federal court stripped the NCAA of its rule-enforcement authority and its unearned moral authority. Yet here we are 16 years later still watching the NCAA do its own version of “justice.” It is outrageous that the NCAA still has any authority at all.

The NCAA has long touted the importance of amateurism, which largely means the importance of generating about $1.4 billion a year for the NCAA itself, billions for television networks, hundreds of millions of dollars for each major university, tens of millions for coaches and television personalities, and—until the courts intervened—nothing for the players helping to generate that revenue. You know, because they’re amateurs.

The NCAA has enough money to act like a professional outfit. Instead, it takes its billions and runs an organization that has all the professionalism of Ron Swanson’s Parks and Rec department and all the integrity of a tin-pot dictator. For some reason, the organization that oversees one of the most popular sporting events in America—the NCAA basketball tournament—and arguably the second most popular spectator sport in the country, major college football, cannot afford to have an actual commissioner’s office with professional staff the way other professional sports leagues do. It does its work with a small staff of employees who do not seem particularly gifted or honest and a large collection of volunteers who sit on ad hoc committees. 

That’s right, volunteers and ad hoc committees; the NCAA is run like your local Little League. Except the NCAA’s volunteers often have an allegiance to other programs and conferences that suggest they might not have the objectivity to oversee major decisions about the alleged rule-breaking and penalties of their competitors. The way Paul Dee oversaw the railroading of USC while his players were neck-deep in booster-provided cocaine parties and strippers suggest that maybe the NCAA’s committees are only slightly more just than one of Stalin’s kangaroo courts.  

And even when the committees strive to be fair and honest—I’m assuming that happens sometimes, though it’s based more on faith than reason at this point—the fact that the NCAA does its work through ad hoc committees and pays almost no attention to precedent means that its rulings are arbitrary. The only clear principle is that schools willing to fight the NCAA tooth and nail, usually end up better off than those who, like USC under Max Nikias and Pat Haden, cower and lick the NCAA’s hands after each new blow like an abused puppy.

So, having watched the NCAA slap on the wrist or ignore the infractions of Ohio State, Auburn, Penn State, and a whole series of others, USC fans got to watch the NCAA give Michigan a stern talking to this past week. The NCAA concluded that Michigan broke the rules, that the rule-breaking almost certainly led to a competitive advantage, but that it is hard to know how much of a competitive advantage because Michigan destroyed the evidence. Sounds serious, no?

But the NCAA did not impose any limitations on Michigan’s roster because they did not want to punish future players—a remarkable piece of news to USC’s now-former players who were once future players and apparently in need of a tremendous flogging. And despite the dirty deeds of Michigan’s current head coach, who knew about, participated in, and benefited from the sign-stealing scheme and then intentionally destroyed evidence to hide his involvement before later admitting that he had done so, the NCAA didn’t see fit to take much action against him either. At some future date, he will have to sit out three meaningless games instead of two. I bet that ruling left red marks on his wrist for at least ten minutes.

Michigan is appealing. 

I wish that were the end of the recent NCAA news. But the NCAA wasn’t finished. Like Mayhem in those car commercials, there’s more stuff to break. 

The NCAA has long had eligibility time limits in place. Athletes can play four years, and they must play the four years in a five-year period. That’s not an unreasonable policy, necessarily. The NCAA does have a legitimate interest in setting and enforcing rules that make college sports actually college sports, and that means rules to ensure that athletes are going to school, getting good grades, and progressing towards a degree. That’s all reasonable. Allowing students to play four years in a five year span may not be necessary to achieve those ends, but it’s also not an arbitrary means of doing so.

But in recent years, the NCAA has walked away from a strict interpretation of its five-year rule. The NCAA has made exceptions for players who lost years due to injury—the most famous example, of course, being former Utah quarterback Cam Rising, who began his college career the same year as Marcus Allen (I think) and was wandering the college football landscape like Moses in the wilderness for near 40 years. 

But the NCAA being what it is, these exceptions almost always seemed random and unpredictable; players, parents, coaches, and fans sat around waiting with bated breath, wondering whether the NCAA would do what it has done for players at other schools or would, once again, exercise its prerogative to treat like cases differently.

Recently the time limits have been under attack in court. Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia persuaded a federal court to give him an extra year of eligibility under the theory that his time at a junior college should not count. He won. The NCAA conceded that other players should get the benefit of that ruling.

But the NCAA didn’t budge on the five-year rule, which is apparently sacrosanct unless Cam Rising is asking, in which case the rule is irrelevant. 

This five-rule has also been challenged in court. Some federal district courts have ruled in favor of the players, including recent decisions involving Indiana and West Virginia players. And some, of course, have not, including a recent decision by District Judge James Selna in a case involving USC player DJ Wingfield. Or I guess I should say former USC player DJ Wingfield.

I don’t take issue with Judge Selna’s order. It was a reasonable application of the law. Judge Selna is not bound by orders of other trial judges, and many of those judges are in different circuits and are obligated to enforce different legal interpretations. Selna is right that many higher courts, including the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court, have drawn a distinction between eligibility rules and compensation rules. Having reasonable rules about who can compete is not facially anti-competitive. Again, colleges have a legitimate interest in making sure that their student athletes are legitimately students. (Not that they all do; I’m looking at you, Oregon and the SEC.)

The rules that have gotten the NCAA in trouble are largely the rules that keep players from making money so the schools, the NCAA, coaches, and television people can keep it all. As Justice Kavanaugh argued in his brutal beatdown of the NCAA in a concurring opinion five years ago, the NCAA’s compensation rules are good, old-fashioned collusion to price-fix labor and would be unlawful in any other industry. Rules designed to ensure that players are actual students progressing towards a degree have not received the same type of scrutiny and for good reason.

I’m not saying Judge Selna got it right. But I think he probably did, and I think these other district courts probably got it wrong. I don’t take issue with Judge Selna’s order, especially in the context of a preliminary injunction hearing (which are very difficult to win) and especially in light of Wingfield’s apparent lack of diligence in seeking “emergency” relief after delaying many months.  

I don’t even take issue with the NCAA’s five-year rule. As I said, it strikes me as reasonable enough. 

What I do take issue with is the NCAA’s insistence that it will enforce this five-year rule against some players even when courts have prohibited it from enforcing the rule against others. 

The NCAA has consistently argued to the courts that one of its primary goals is promoting competitive balance. But how, exactly, does the NCAA promote competitive balance when some programs are allowed to play under different eligibility rules than their opponents? Right or wrong, once some federal courts found the five-year rule to be anticompetitive, the NCAA should have applied that ruling to everybody. There is no justification for the arbitrary application of even a reasonable rule against some players and programs when it cannot be applied against other players and programs.

I can only assume that the NCAA has become so accustomed to making arbitrary decisions that benefit some people and injure others that it can no longer recognize when it is doing just that.  

The major conferences have long been discussing breaking away from the NCAA, at least with regards to major-college football and maybe basketball. It’s about time they did so. The NCAA is allowed to continue its reign of arbitrariness and unprofessionalism because the universities continue to allow it. Stop allowing it. 

College football needs a governing body. It needs rules to regulate eligibility and free agency. It needs a body to enforce rules designed to maintain a level playing field. But the NCAA has proven time and again that it is not the organization to do that. It seems to be corrupt, inept, and run by fools or crooks. Its staff should be fired (and maybe deported—where is ICE when we need them?), its office razed, and the earth salted where it once stood. 

Enough is enough.