One of the British invasion bands among the early and mid-1960s, The Who, recorded a song, The Kids Are Alright, the seventh track on the Who’s debut album, My Generation, in 1965.
As far as college sports go, the song title rings true… kinda… sorta.
The college kids ARE alright, but at college sports levels, some decisions affecting them in recent years needed to be implemented more proactively with governance in mind.
Roger Grossman’s Penalty Box column piece Wednesday was thought provoking.
He discussed the watchability of football’s bowl games, and the expanded CFP field due to opt-outs and transfer portals available to athletes in midseason.
He has also shared salient points about name, image, likeness (NIL) issues in college sports in previous weekly columns.
Roger’s columns are most thought provoking when I glean a takeaway nugget guiding me to a spur off his main topic’s highway.
Thanks, Roger, you’ve done it again. I give credit where credit is due this morning, folks.
My takeaway from the aforementioned topics led me to think about symptoms of poor governance in college sports, especially since the revenue sports (football, basketball) are playing a bigger part in the athletes’ collective pocketbook – not just the athletic department budget in whole - and making them more mobile than ever through the transfer portal.
College athletes don’t even have to play out a contract to become free agents like the pro athletes do.
The NCAA made rushed decisions to save college athletes in the non-Olympic sports from the trappings of receiving their fair share of $100 handshakes from overzealous boosters. Consequently, they failed in the required diligence essential in constructing a framework of governance before implantation.
What a concept, eh?
NIL, the transfer portal, opt outs and the inevitable plain old paid contracts college football players will likely receive in the near future have all – or will be – moved forward with little or no proactive, and (in this life-stage-appropriate instance) prophylactic steps to administer these significant changes in college sports.
College football, and men’s and women’s college basketball, need a sport specific czar and a board of directors, simply put.
Warning – boring but relevant accounting sidebar approaching.
I remember the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation in the early 2000s, daunting as it was to implement at the start, seemed to have better guidance through consistent guidance among public accounting firms and consultants helping publicly traded companies implement and comply with the measures to assure company shareholders their executive leadership would better serve as holders of the public trust better than they had in the days of Enron and other troubled companies were managing large companies’ resources.
The NCAA, if it took a fraction of the pages from the Sarbanes-Oxley book, would have less chaos on their hands by taking additional time to diligently create guardrails before announcing and quickly implementing the aforementioned major changes in revenue-producing college sports.
February’s winter sports season’s natural attrition is three Saturdays as wrestlers enter regional competition, girls’ basketball winds up its sectional play, and swimming is also amidst its postseason run during February’s first Saturday.
Just when you feel revved up and deeply invested in enjoying high school sports as a parent, coach, or athlete the inevitable halving of kids’ practicing each Monday feels like it pops up more quickly than expected no matter how many years and how many ways you’re involved in scholastic sports.
Short as each season seems, and no matter how quickly the postseason rears its head in each scholastic sports season, a quick trip is far better than nothing going on at all.
I still think about the graduating class of 2020’s spring athletes among our area schools, especially this calendar year as many of those athletes were still able to move on to the collegiate level and pick up an extra year of eligibility in some cases.
Recent high school graduating classes were affected by the COVID spring void and the immediate shutdown in the March postseason stretch of basketball because those athletes holding roster spots at the college level not only had redshirt seasons still available to use, but they also were granted an additional COVID year of eligibility.
Ask affected kids among the classes of 2020 through 2023 about the dearth of scholarships available in collegiate sports for two reasons:
1.) The aforementioned kids picking up at least one extra year, and
2.) The transfer portal.
The latter impacted men’s collegiate sports immediately. Now, coaches have one more year to benefit from freshman boys’ availability for additional future years (known, proven entities to boot within the program as well as in the transfer portal) as they progress physically and mentally into men.
Most female athletes’ growth, height-wise, peaks in high school (the norm) or in underclass collegiate years (the exception), but the women in college sports are also benefitting from another year in the weight room, and another year of wisdom in their sport.
I believe these recent seasons have made college basketball a little more watchable in recent seasons, and some double-digit seeded hoop squads are increasing among the field making runs to the Sweet 16 brackets.
There seem to be the regular top-flite schools who are surprised by their March Madness defeats at the hands of the double-digit seeded teams whom casual fans overlook their roster of juniors and seniors who aren’t one-and-done on their way to the NBA, and instead, are increasing their collective basketball IQ, and hitting the weights for – again – at least one extra season.
Women’s college basketball has benefitted even more from these extra years of eligibility afforded to its players. The most recent NCAA tournaments have rewarded fans with better quality of games as the additional seasons build athletes’ strength and improve shooting accuracy.
The heights tend to be set for good among most of the fields in the athletes’ underclass seasons, but they are certainly playing solid basketball, and the action appears more physical than pre-COVID.
The kids are alright, but they still need significantly improved governance.