SEC Commissioner: We Have Lost The Benefit of The Doubt

Wow. Very interesting. A lot of that sounds very good, and I wouldn’t expect it coming from an SEC rep.

What happens if they do make it harder to get into college? I have a number of friends and family in education, and they say one of the biggest problems is that not every HS student is meant to go on to a four year college, but that is what is being pushed. Some are better suited for a technical school, some for the military. And I would say some are meant to play football (or basketball). I’m sure there are kids every year that get lost in the shuffle because they can’t get into college. I wonder how many we’d have to lose before a real minor league football system got started up.

I’m down with it. All of it, surprisingly enough. The value of a scholarship ain’t what it used to be, so augment it with better scholarships and make sure the education part sticks. The multi-year stuff may drive Ol’ Ball Coach mad but the point is to make the award of it more valuable. Which either the NCAA needs to do, or they need to start paying players. Reviving Prop 48 makes sense if the minimum GPA is raised. And I never understood all the restrictions on social media and such anyway.

This, from the SEC? Wonders never cease. But Slive is a very smart dude.

ut-06 – a lot of those kids aren’t meant for high school either. But no one argues that getting that degree matters. Some kid who was “meant to play football” but isn’t good enough for the pros should have something practical to fall back on, even if it’s not his top skill in life. And universities offer plenty of useful fields that aren’t necessarily rigorous academically.

ACK “But no one argues that getting (a high school) degree DOESN’T matter.”

I wouldn’t expect it coming from an SEC rep.

Back in the day, it was known as “Nixon goes to China.”

So, Coach Spurrier, how many years is your contract?

Anything that helps cull a significant number of have-nots from siphoning off TV and other critical sources of income from those that deserve it most is OK by me.

If the scholarships go multi-year, there should be some sort of provision for players that don’t pan out on the field. They could retain their academic scholarship, even if they loose a place on the team. This would end the practice of under the table forcing kids to transfer. Maybe there could be an ‘active’ scholarship limit, while allowing a certain amount of players to remain on ‘inactive’ football scholarships?
I don’t know, just a thought, but I hate the way some players are forced to transfer to free up more scholarship space. It’s rough enough on your academic progress with all the time commitments of Div1 football practice schedule, and to derail the whole thing to transfer because a more talented freshman or sophomore comes along doesn’t seem right after giving so much of your time and health to a football program.

Maybe I’m just jaded but until I see actual rule changes all this looks like to me is posturing and propoganda to try and drown out all the bad press the SEC and NCAA has gotten of late for dirty behavior.

Ultimately these changes would have to be approved by the majority of institutions and I don’t see that happening. When the vast majority of them struggle to make ends meet with their athletic budget I don’t see them approving a significant increase in the expenditures for scholarships to cover other “cost of education” expenses.

Changing admission GPA I also don’t see happening. Too many schools rely on getting the kids that can’t meet the academic requirements of schools that independently have more rigid acceptance criteria.

Changing the rules with regard to social media is something they might actually get enough votes, but BFD. The vast majority of hanky panky we find out about involves things far worse than unauthorized tweets and facebook contact.

With any of these proposed changes I’m pretty sure they would have to pass a vote of member institututions. That being the case ask yourself how many schools would really be in favor of them.

And with regard to the “cost of education” stuff the other thing I forgot to mention is how that will work with Title IX. Either it will be taken to court and thrown out as unfair to just cover these extra costs for football and basketball or institutions are now looking at huge increases in cost to pay these extras for scholarships in every sport (both genders).

Longhorn in Canada nails the perfect response.

Dagga, I thought you had it right before the correction.

The problem with making everyone prepare for a four year degree is that most of my students want to start working as an electrician or mechanic or hair dresser when they are 14. Two years later they are sleeping in my classroom because their parents yell at them if they can’t ‘stay up late to bring money in for the family. Combined with the fact that if I don’t pass students at an 85% rate I could get fired, we have a huge dumbing down of regular curriculum.

If we want to pretend we are helping them that is fine, but don’t try and tell the teachers it is better for the kids. We know better. But who would listen to us about education? That is for the politicians and lawyers.

This reminds me of Bud Selig’s grandstanding about steroid use. He knew what was going on in the mid to late 90’s but didn’t say a word until the media and fans turned on him. The money and pub was good, imo.

This is very similar.

Thanks, Mike! But, where ya been?

N/A. Would be if he couldn’t be fired at all, with or without a buyout. Remove him from HC duties, sure… but you have to pay him, and you can’t hire another coach, ‘cause you’re at your limit on coaches, right?

Or… Make it gander sauce. Kids must retain their scholarships as long as they perform academically, but if they’re dismissed from the team, they no longer count against the “active” limit (and they can’t come back to the team… although perhaps they could run track or miss free throws). If they leave school, whether by transfer or otherwise, same-o same-o like now.

Scholarship contracts with performance requirements and incentives? As someone said in an else-thread, I smell lawyas. Gonna be tough to claim a 17-YO HS kid can’t bring his own lawya or other adviser.

This is just like Saban wanting to get tough about NFL agents. Slive is slick and if the SEC didn’t stand to gain somehow from this, he wouldn’t be doing it. I’m at a point that when anybody in the SEC starts playing to public opinion, my first instinct is to guard the back door.

Grandstanding or not I like the line of thinking, even if I don’t necessarily care for the messenger.

The NCAA rule book is way too large, way to nit picky and unfair in a lot of places. Boise, for example, did nothing other than extend a little common decency to recruits on their trip and they get whacked by the NCAA. GT has one guy get $300 in clothes and they lose their conference title. Meanwhile, Oregon and Auburn are undoubtedly paying players (or their handlers) large sums of money and they play for a national title.

It’s time to blow it up and make a few reasonable rules that everyone can follow.

Here’s what I’d do:

1) Early Signing period for football- summer before senior year until Labor Day. A lot of hijinks would be cut out I would think if kids could sign on the dotted line when they become comfortable with their scool situation, and it is a hedge for players if they get injured.

2) Guaranteed scholarships for 4 years- full value of whatever USNEWS and World Report or financial times or whatever survey says is the cost of putting a kid through that school reasonably, or come up with your own (NCAA) cost of living index. Medical Scholarship still available for kid getting hurt and you get to re-use that

3) No work of any kind- if you are getting full value of going to school you don’t need to work- and that is just rife for corruption. If the scholarship has full value it’s not necessary, and summer job programs are a ceaspool.

4) You can take an official visit after January 1 of your junior year (not sure if this is allowed now, and I know kids camp, but let them do the whole official visit thing).

5) No payment to anyone associated with the player- that means no coaches get honorarium’s, not street agent types, no scouting services paying for clips etc- must get clips directly from players, schools, youtubes, recruiticosm or video it yourself, but nothing the member institution pays for itself

6) Add 1 more coach as a full time recruiter as a position- no gameday responsibilities but he can handle all the leg work

7) No money to players (duh)

8) Bring back a partial qualifier or two if the member school wants it, in the revenue sports

9) Raise scholarship limit to 90

10) Do away with oversigning/greyshirting- you get 25 LOI’s to sign a year and 90 total- if you recruit a bunch of guys that don’t qualify then that’s on you- recruit a higher caliber of athlete

11) Workable APR where kids are on pace to graduate- no penalties for transfers, deaths etc. Whatever the standard is failure to comply for 1 year is a loss of 2 scholarsips, 2 years in a row is 5 and 3 years in a row is 10 scholarships. Something with a lot of teeth so coaches will focus on getting kids who can make it in the program.

12) Severe sanctions for all this stuff. Death penalty for knowingly violating financial stuff by the member institutions. Bowl Bans and serious loss of scholarships for stuff that doesn’t work otherwise.

This is just the top of my head, if you want to nit pick here and there that’s fine, but I love the idea of simple rules, easy to enforce and then killing schools that don’t do that properly.

The biggest problem with the NCAA is that there are too many rules, many of which are unfair, so that makes for an attitude that compliance is impossible, random and not able to be adequately done. Make it simple and make the consequences dire for not complying.

So basically he wants to make it easier to get kids qualified (Prop 48 type system) and in schools. He knows the diploma mill schools in his conference will keep the dummies eligible no matter how high they raise the minimum GPA.

Reminds me of how Nebraska used to brag about how 95% of their partial qualifiers would “earn” degrees (to justify them helping out the poor downtrodden ones who could not qualify but could run a 4.4). I’m sorry, but if you are admitting kids who cannot meet NCAA minimums, what does it say about the difficulty of obtaining a degree if 95% graduate.

I believe the Big 10 and SEC commissioners are letting everyone in the NCAA know that if they don’t get their way with these things then the Super Conferences are going their own way.

“He knows the diploma mill schools in his conference will keep the dummies eligible no matter how high they raise the minimum GPA.”

This was my first thought as well.

uttuck – I know exactly what you’re talking about; I used to be a public school teacher, once upon a time. But I’d say it’s counterproductive to simply shrug and say that pretending to help kids is the best we can do.

Concerning Texas-quality football players in particular, one problem is that they don’t want to be an electrician or hairdresser. They want to be pro football players. The kids in your class who sleep through half of it because earning a min-wage paycheck is more important to them than school? Well, that’s a minor problem in the grand scheme of things…or at least, by the time they’re old enough to hold down a job, the only solution for that problem lies between their ears. In any case, when they graduate they can be a full-time electrician or hairdresser, no problem, as long as they have their degree. They don’t need to do well in school; they just need to avoid being in the bottom 15%, or learn just enough to pass the GED.

D-1 level football players are different. You’ve got to develop at least a basic level of discipline and abstract thinking to attract the eyes of D-1 schools. Except for the most extreme cases simply being big or fast isn’t enough. So on some raw level, even the least academically-inclined football stars are showing the capacity for college-level work. Problem is, they’re exercising that discipline developing skills that aren’t marketable off the playing field, and they’re not entering a job market like hairdressing where an average Joe can easily pick up a regular paycheck. And for the most part, they’re not being encouraged to develop interests outside of sports. These kids generally have a lot of promise but most of them are setting themselves up for failure in exchange for an NFL lottery ticket.

If colleges use that talent to make millions and only compensate it with partial progress toward a degree, without imparting any of the academic development needed to complete the degree on their own, well, that’s a ripoff. Exploitation. Because these kids aren’t lost causes; they’ve shown enough discipline to prove they’re generally capable of doing something more than living wage work. But our system encourages an NFL-or-bust mentality, and that’s a disservice.

in high school there are similar problems, but the solutions are far harder. Getting schools to not automatically pass 85% of their students, for example; that’s a problem no one person is in a position to solve. But the athletic conference commissioners are in a pretty good position to force schools to take academics seriously, and if they want to use that leverage (even just for PR reasons), I think that’s a good thing. These kids usually need to learn that discipline isn’t just important in the weight room; it’s an important life skill. The average player will get a lot more out of their college experience if they’re forced to be more academically disciplined to stay on the field.

Not too long ago, I took on a high-level educational challenge at night. I had ties with those people because each of us knew why we were there and everyone acknowledged that and went through it together. There were day students also, and they treated it a lot more like I sometimes treated college — something to be endured. When you don’t realize what you’re missing, you don’t get out of it what you can.

I’d posit that pro-level prospects who are spending time in training at college are motivated by sports, not school. If we had a system that allowed them to work at their sport and then return to school, whenever that was, there would not be an issue with people not working as hard as they could while on campus. If someone didn’t want a degree, it would be on them. I’m convinced that the schools don’t want non-student athletes on campus at least in part because it would expose for all to see what it is that colleges have established in the name of marketing. On the surface, there’s no reason for Duke to accept basketball players whose SATs barely crack the NCAA minimum, but they do.

Using sports to teach life lessons are fine, but the people who would learn the lesson at the time are the ones who in effect are relearning it — the athletes who already understand that their future is not in the game but outside of it. I always recall the story of Mark McBath, who was a QB at Texas until he decided that becoming a doctor was more important to him. It was always was, I suppose, but he didn’t have trouble dropping football when the time came.

Better to have the athletes concentrate on what they would do anyway, rather than pose as concurrent students.

randall watson gets it. let anyone in, and raise the bar for the schools which really attempt to educate their players.

Do as I say, not as I do, will be proven yet again by the SEC if this were to come to pass.

Strikes me that none of his suggestions actually go to remedy any of the most recent controversies (street agents, paying daddy not son, selling memorobilia etc.).

Is this a case of him suggesting changes to get the headlines of “SEC Chief Proposes Big Changes in Wake of Scandals”, but making sure those changes don’t actually curtail the SEC recruiting cesspool?

I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually found DeLoss Dodds’ fingerprints on some of these proposals. Dodds, Jim Delaney, Swarbrick and some others have been agitating for change for quite a while, and maybe they prevailed on Slive to be the one to propose them because that’s the only way we’ll ever get buy-in from the recidivist offenders of the SEC. Sort of Nixon-to-China strategy. Maybe not, but I smell a backstory to this.

Didn’t Slive and the SEC recently propose some “reforms” to resolve the oversigning issue back in late-May or early-June?

According to oversigning.com, it was simply posturing that would continue to allow SEC schools to oversign. My general rule is that I expect all SEC proposals to be effectively the same thing:

Enough “change” to put in the “Accomplishments” section of your resume without actually impacting the status quo.