National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)

C

Scandals

The growth in college sports revenue resulted in an equal growth in the potential for corruption and rule-breaking. The first major scandal in college athletics emerged in 1951, when key players from City College of New York (which won both the NIT and NCAA tournaments the year before) admitted to taking money from gamblers to “fix” the outcomes of some of their team’s games. Further investigation revealed more than 30 basketball players from New York-area schools had engaged in such activities.

Such scandals were not limited to gambling nor to large cities such as New York. Evidence of illicit recruiting techniques and illegal payoffs to athletes was uncovered in schools across the country. Even players from the University of Kentucky, a team led by future Hall of Fame coach Adolph Rupp, were implicated. At least partially as a result of these revelations, member schools voted to give the NCAA greater disciplinary power. For the first time the NCAA levied sanctions against a member school, putting both Kentucky and Bradley University of Illinois on probation for the 1952-53 season.

Even as the NCAA worked to adopt more stringent rules, harsher punishments, and stronger enforcement policies, cheating in college sports continued to flourish. A major source of problems involved athletic boosters, fans who often donate large sums of money to their favorite school’s athletic department. In addition to their school donations, boosters would sometimes also covertly pay recruits and current athletes or provide other illegal benefits.

One of the more extreme examples of such practices came in the 1980s at Southern Methodist University (SMU). An NCAA investigation of the SMU football program revealed a slush fund of $400,000 that boosters had provided to help attract and pay players. The scandal produced one of the few examples of the NCAA handing down the “death penalty” to a member school, as SMU’s football team was shut down for the 1987 and 1988 seasons. In response to these and other revelations during this period, the NCAA moved to reduce athletic scholarships, curtail some recruiting practices, and severely limit the activities of boosters.

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Comprehensive knowledge and enforcement of the NCAA’s many complex rules is a daunting task for both the association and its member schools. The NCAA does not have the resources to fully monitor the thousands of teams it governs, nor do many athletic departments have the ability to make sure all of their coaches and employees understand and follow every NCAA rule to the letter. The potential glory and financial rewards that success can bring to schools, administrators, coaches, and the NCAA itself are so great that there is also a lack of incentive for thorough compliance and enforcement. The discovery of NCAA violations and corruption within high-profile college athletics programs remains a commonplace occurrence.

D

Title IX

While men’s college athletics boomed, women’s programs were generally small and poorly funded. Until the 1980s, the NCAA did not run national postseason tournaments for women, citing costs and lack of broad interest. To fill this void, a separate organization for women’s sports, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), was founded in 1971.

The playing field changed in 1972, when the United States Congress enacted the Education Amendments Act. Title IX of this act prohibited any form of sexual discrimination at schools that receive federal funds. In practical terms, this meant that female high school and college athletes were entitled to the same resources and opportunities as the men received. The NCAA initially resisted the legislation, but at the same time it gradually began to provide greater support for women’s sports, including championship tournaments. By the early 1980s the NCAA had replaced the AIAW as the premier governing body for women’s intercollegiate athletics.

Title IX not only resulted in increased funding and participation for women’s college athletics, but greatly boosted high school programs, as well. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, participation in girls’ high school sports has risen from 2.7 percent of all students in 1972 to about 40 percent today. These girls, and their parents, can use the possibility of a college athletic scholarship as a motivator to excel. The fan base for women’s college sports has also grown steadily, especially in the case of NCAA women’s basketball; attendance has increased steadily, and millions watch the annual championship tournament on national television.

The change caused by Title IX generated considerable controversy. Advocates of the old approach to college sports argued that women did not deserve the same resources because their programs did not generate revenue. Some of these fans also noted that there was no women’s equivalent to football, which required the largest number of athletic scholarships of any sport. Supporters of smaller men’s college sports, such as gymnastics and wrestling, feared that the new emphasis on women’s athletics would reduce or eliminate the funding for their programs so that the money can be reallocated to women’s sports.

In the early 21st century, officials in women’s athletics continued to point out that a majority of NCAA schools were failing to meet the standards laid out by Title IX. The Women’s Sports Foundation cites studies showing female college athletes still receive significantly less money than men for athletic scholarships, recruiting, and overall opportunities and resources. A number of lawsuits have been filed on both sides of the issue, and working to interpret the rules and meet the requirements of Title IX remains a large challenge for the NCAA and its member schools.

E

Academic Standards

Another major challenge for the NCAA has been to define the academic eligibility standards for student-athletes, which have been variously criticized as too low or too high. Regulations introduced in the late 1980s and 1990s designed to strengthen these standards were viewed by some as discriminatory, since a large percentage of the players failing to qualify were African American. In an attempt to address these concerns, the NCAA lowered the entrance requirements for incoming freshmen in 2002.

In recent years the organization has also been forced to confront the low graduation rates among some groups of college athletes, particularly in football and basketball. Surveys have shown that many top football programs have much poorer graduation rates than their student body as a whole, and graduation rates for black athletes are particularly low. In early 2005 the NCAA board of directors passed reforms linking a particular team’s number of scholarships to the graduation rates of its players.

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