Moving the Chains
Recently, college athletics fans have observed a sea of change in support of student-athletes within NCAA legislation. Amended legislation now allows for unlimited meals and snacks; dedicated student assistance fund programs for those in need of clothing and supplies and full cost of tuition grant-in-aid stipends now compensate over and above the cost of full scholarships. However, the ability of NCAA member institutions to provide such support varies widely, and many argue that it will only lead to ever-widening recruiting gaps.
Despite these new manifestations of the NCAA’s dedication to student-athlete welfare, student-athletes at institutions across the funding spectrum have led high profile protests demanding increased commitment to student-athlete welfare, more respectable treatment from coaches, and challenging institutional brass regarding the continued existence of their programs. While The Nation’s Dave Zirin points out that the history of student-athlete protest is decades-long, the beneficiaries of those protests have been the students at those respective institutions. Student-athletes at Grambling State, Connecticut, Alabama-Birmingham and Illinois represent a new generation of athletic leadership that is not only student-led despite the risks, but is impacting NCAA legislation and the national college athletics landscape, and thus benefiting student-athletes across the country.
For decades, advocates for student-athlete rights were academic professionals. No other discipline’s professionals had been more engaged in student-athlete advocacy and college athletics reform than college composition. Encounters with student-athletes in first-year English courses provide an early and detailed glimpse into the daily lives, struggles and abuses of student-athletes.
In the 1980s, University of Georgia English professor Jan Kemp took on the NCAA powerhouse in the wake of the school’s 1981 football national championship to expose the fact that tutors were completing assignments for ill-prepared student-athletes. Her bravery exposed a university-wide conspiracy that tainted coaches, athletic staff, and university administrators. This led, eventually, to widespread reform in recruiting practices and student-athlete evaluation. But it also resulted in termination from the university.
Linda Bensel Myers, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee during the period of their rise to power in football in the late 1990s, took on a similar challenge. After blowing the whistle on the athletic department’s recruitment of students with little college preparedness in exchange for on-field success, the NCAA sanctioned the university severely. Bensel-Myers received death threats from fans and was similarly terminated from the university, afterwards relocating to Colorado and working with the influential anti-college athletics corruption nonprofit, The Drake Group.
At the turn of the century, composition professor and retired Drake University Provost John Ericson founded the Drake Group, inviting scholars, administrators and professors to a meeting to discuss solutions to end corruption in college athletics. Since its inception, the group has developed legislative proposals and written white papers that it has delivered to Congress, the NCAA and its member institutions, in hopes of developing strategies to bring balance, equity and fairness to the lives of student-athletes.
Around the same time, University of Indiana professor of English Murray Sperber, a long-time commentator on college sports, published Beer and Circus, arguably the most important and scathing critique of college athletics in recent decades. In it, Sperber not only highlights corruption and exploitation in college athletics, but also accuses it of causing a dramatic decline in the quality of the undergraduate experience in large four-year public institutions across the country as university presidents shifted precious resources from education to entertainment to promote and grow their institutions.
Two years later Ohio State University freshman running back Maurice Clarett stole the show as he led his team to a national championship. Unfortunately, he became the center of attention again as an academic fraud scandal emerged. Initially, his teaching assistant in an African American literature course alleged that he had, after poor attendance and work performance all semester long, received special assistance and extra work assignments from the course’s professor.
While all other TAs associated with the course corroborate her claims and even the professor in charge of the class attested that Clarett and other football players told her they had tutors to complete their work for them, the professor vouched for Clarett’s work. She could not, however, justify oral examinations that she administered to him without disability accommodations being filed. The TA, who only spoke to reporters under the condition of anonymity, learned the lengths institutions would go to to preserve the most viable athletic brands.
While no one accounted for Clarett’s absences, his walking out of tests without completing them, or the accommodations he was given, professors, compliance officers, and athletic administration officials carried the party line. The NCAA never investigated, university officials provided sufficient cover, and the TA later left her teaching post at the university. It is unclear if she was dismissed or left fearing reprisal. If the latter, there’s certainly precedent to suggest this course of action.
In conjunction with the work of these scholar-advocates, nonprofit organizations worked to identify better practices to ensure better treatment, more academic support and balance between athletic and academic exploits in higher education. The National Consortium for Academics and Sport, founded by noted activist Richard Lapchick, has examined sport as a fulcrum for social change for over three decades. Evolving into the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University and the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, Lapchick has supported and produced research addressing underperforming graduation rates and racism in sport as it pertains to the treatment of student-athletes and coaches and administrators of color. The aforementioned Drake Group and Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics represented cross-institutional blue ribbon committees, representing executive administrations of the NCAA’s biggest programs and conference offices. Both groups have petitioned the NCAA and legislative bodies pushing bold themes, such as the importance of presidential leadership and academic integrity.
The Tides Have Turned
For decades, student-athletes have depended heavily on the advocacy of faculty, administrators, and private foundations/private-public institutions. However, today’s student-athletes have seized new opportunities to influence positive change due to the advent of social media and proliferation of, interest in and access to student perspectives on being a student-athlete.
In the fall of 2013 at Grambling, the once-tall tower of a football program Eddie Robinson built had crumbled into a heap. After an 8–4 finish and Southwest Atlantic Conference (SWAC) championship victory in 2011, the team proceeded to go 2–20 over the next two seasons and following Doug Williams’ untimely dismissal as head coach in September 2013, word spread that players were considering a boycott of their game versus Jackson State. Protesting, among other things, the condition of their athletic facilities, the effects of long bus trips for meager payouts earlier in the season, and the dismissal of their coach, players engaged in the first boycott of a game in Division I FCS history. Most interestingly, the serious faces and articulate voices featured most often in the media were not those of coaches and administrators, but rather those of the student-athletes. They risked, according to NCAA bylaw 15.3.4.2a/d, losing their scholarships.
Donations and expressions of support flowed in from across the nation, another interim head coach was named and a permanent head coach hired at the end of the season has led Grambling to an 11–7 record since taking over. Within months, an interim athletic director and president would be terminated, the school would be sued for breaching its contract to play the game and media and alumni petitioned Grambling and the State of Louisiana to provide more support.
In the days leading up to the 2014 NCAA Men’s Basketball championship, Connecticut star Shabazz Napier was asked about his expectations for the game. Rather than rely on clichés, he spoke honestly and openly, and in doing so, shook the college athletics fan base out of its slumber. When the future NBA star appeared on national television, hours before bringing billions of dollars of revenue to the NCAA and tremendous attention for his institution, and said “Sometimes, there’s hungry nights where I’m not able to eat, but I still gotta play up to my capabilities” millions of damning glares were cast at the NCAA for its occasionally tone-deaf rule administering. Within days after emergency NCAA Legislative Council meetings to address the media firestorm, new rules allowing unlimited meals for student athletes would ensure that concerned coaches and administrators would never again have to decide between ignoring under-nourished student-athletes and knowingly committing rule violations.
Increasingly, student-athletes are taking to social media to express their frustrations, capitalizing on their expansive followings and the power of mass online protests of powerful organizations.
In December of 2014, rumors circulated that Alabama-Birmingham would recommend disbanding its football program due to low fan support and hemorrhaging expenses. A firestorm of criticism erupted, much of it focusing on President Ray Watts’ enlisting a consulting firm the summer before the football season began to determine the program’s feasibility and the poor timing of the announcement, which was made amid a decade-long high of alumni and fan engagement and excitement about the program. Within days of the announcement, the #FreeUAB hashtag was initiated, alumni made substantive pledges to the institution, and students held protests on the campus.
A moment that truly captured national attention was Derek Slaughter’s commencement protest, in which the player donned his UAB football helmet and raised it triumphantly as he crossed the stage to receive his diploma and shake Watts’ hand.
The moment, captured on video, was carried by CBS, Yahoo!, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and USA Today. A starting linebacker and All-Commissioner’s List honor student, and now a graduate of UAB who transferred from Nebraska to live out his dream, stood proudly in support of the program that helped him achieve that dream. Considering that most institutions do not hand out actual diplomas and flag student misbehavior at commencement as reasons for delaying their delivery, Slaughter broke protocol anyway to ensure that the movement to reinstate football at UAB did not lose momentum.
It didn’t. UAB announced the program’s reinstatement later that summer.
Around the same time, another football team took to social media to demand accountability for the leader of their squad. The Big Ten’s University of Illinois has never had a reputation for bending NCAA rules or having insufficient resources for student-athlete welfare. However, following the model observed by student-athletes atRutgers, Huntingdon and high schools across the country, senior offensive lineman Simon Cvijanovic took his concerns regarding his and his team members’ treatment by head coach Tim Beckman to social media.
A litany of accusations regarding his mistreatment, poor medical advice and attempts to have his scholarship revoked by Head Coach Tim Beckman ensued. Immediately, his tweets were picked up by newswires across the country, prompting not only teammates to corroborate, but former players from Toledo who’d played for Beckman years before to join him. Within, weeks, calls for investigations emerged from the NCAA and NCPA. Within weeks, just before the start of the 2015 football season, Beckman was relieved of his duties.
A new generation of student-athlete activists is more capable than ever of communicating its needs to wide audiences to compel positive change. However, the infrastructure necessary to avoid such controversy is embedded within NCAA bylaws and best practices on each member campus. Faculty Athletic Representatives should address students’ academic needs, Senior Women Administrators should advocate for gender equity concerns, and Student-Athlete Advisory Councils on each campus should provide platforms for all student-athlete concerns across the board. While the aforementioned students have shown both skill and bravery taking on campus administrators, coaches, and the NCAA, proper care in staffing and providing resources for these positions will help campuses avoid disruptions in the first place. In the past decade, boards and presidents have emphasized fundraising, compliance and public relations as prized skills for athletic directors. Only when a keen focus on student-athlete development joins those focal points will student-athletes no longer have to play the role of activist on campus.
Will Broussard, Ph.D. is the Assistant to the President for Institutional Advancement and an Assistant Professor of English at Southern University-Baton Rouge. He is a former Division I athletic director, Division I student-athlete, and has been an athletic administrator, student life administrator, faculty member, and development professional in higher education for 15 years. He has also contributed to Athletic Administration, Athletic Management, HBCU Digest, and the Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics.
