Here is the full report:
https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2018CCBReportFinal_web.pdf
I believe a major part of the solution is to pay athletes.
The real solution is to create an actual professional minor league, and use that as the talent pool instead of colleges. What in the world are big-money sports doing associated with schools in the first place? They have nothing to do with each other.
Agreed, both basketball and football should do this.
That’s obviously a fairly complex topic, with a long history, but the capsule version, as I understand it:
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Intercollegiate sports in the U.S. (particularly football and basketball) became a big thing long before the professional leagues really took off. Up until the 1940s or 1950s, the college games had far bigger followings among sports fans than the professional leagues (and the NBA didn’t even start until 1946).
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College sports (again, particularly football and men’s basketball, and particularly at Division I schools) wind up being a big motivator for the interest of alumni (and residents of the area) in their schools. Administrators at the schools see it as a way to increase their school’s visibility, and to encourage alumni support. (That said, football operations, in particular, are apparently often net money-losers for the schools.)
The NFL and the NBA don’t have a lot of motivation to invest strongly in minor / developmental leagues, when the best athletes in those sports who are coming out of high school are already being highly recruited by (and developing their skills in) college programs.
Which looks like they get all of the benefits of a virtual minor league with none of the costs. Perhaps the NCAA should find a way to pressure the Pros to work out a revenue flow from Pro sports directly to colleges?
Atamasama:
Yes, they have, but, as I understand it, most of the players in the G League (as it’s currently known) are either players who didn’t make it in college ball (or couldn’t stay in school), or had been waived off of an NBA roster during training camp. Each team can have two players that a “parent” NBA team has under contract, but assigns to the G League for seasoning / development.
While a not-small number of D League / G League players have made it into the NBA, and seen some success there, the G League isn’t the primary source of NBA players, and the vast majority of successful NBA players are coming to the league directly from college, and aren’t making a stop in the G League on the way.
Indeed so.
I don’t care much whether minor leagues are created or not but I do support the idea of colleges divorcing themselves from big time revenue sports. But, if they insist on having them (and they will), then it’s really important to me that they abandon their anti-trust violations and treat the players with fairness and equity.
That’s excellent thinking, because the lack of influence from pro leagues and shoe companies has really corrupted college sports. Did the altruistic TV networks also contribute some ideas for reform?
Yes, absolutely. The college football championship was on three or four ESPN channels at the same time; regular coverage, another feed with no announcers but lots of statistical data, a round-table of coaches, and maybe one more. Don’t tell me this isn’t some massive cash cow for all kinds of people, except for the athletes who actually play the game.
#4 might be the sticking point, although the committee’s “answer” to #1 seems to be, “Unless the NBA lets high school players be drafted in the upcoming draft this June, the NCAA should look into freshman ineligibility, at least in basketball.”
The recommendation is that “Level I” penalties should last as long as five years, with a forfeiture of any NCAA tournament revenues during that period. The response will almost certainly be, “That is punishing the current players for something they did not do. Even if they are allowed to transfer and play immediately (which is what almost always happens, at least for players who would lose their eligibility before the ban ended), what schools are going to have scholarships open for them?”
As for the money, unless they are including the money received based on how many sports a school has and how many scholarships it gives out, the money goes to the conferences, not the schools, and you would have to punish the conference if it decided to give any of its money to the violating school (my idea: the conference loses its automatic tournament spots in the NCAA and, if applicable, the NIT - then again, you’re punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty). Even if you do take all of the money taken from the basketball TV contract away from the school, you’re punishing the school’s other sports - does anyone really think they wouldn’t siphon money from the other programs to keep men’s basketball at its current level?
kenobi65:
Entrenched systems don’t change overnight. But change is happening, and the NBA is indeed footing the bill for a minor league.
This is true, though it’s by no means new news: the NBA started the NBDL (the forerunner to their current G League) in 2001, and, prior to that, they had an arrangement for several decades with the now-defunct CBA to serve as a development / minor league.
Despite this, NCAA basketball (particularly during March Madness) is as big as ever, and the role of the “minor professional basketball league,” be it the G League, the D League, the NBDL, or the CBA, hasn’t really changed in all that time.
I don’t think that the G League (or anything like it) is going to become anything close to a primary source of NBA talent unless the NCAA were to radically change how intercollegiate sports works, and it was no longer where the most talented players coming out of high school preferentially choose to go.
Harsher penalties for transgressors seems a little like arresting opioid abusers – nowhere close to addressing the real problem. No one, least of all the schools themselves, has capably explained yet why it’s necessary for the athletes to be prohibited from making money on their skills.
It’s for business reasons - if players had to be paid, the smaller schools would be priced out of competitiveness with all of the best players going to the highest-budget programs, er, excuse me, “schools”. That’s pretty much what happens anyway, though.
It would really be refreshing to drop the “scholar-athlete” pretense and be explicit about NCAA Division I basketball and football being professional entertainment businesses that happen to be sponsored by educational institutions. So I hope that part passes.