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One year after highly touted legislation designed to lessen time demands on Division I college athletes was suddenly tabled at the National Collegiate Athletic Association's annual meeting, the leaders of the association’s most competitive level will once again attempt to adopt new rules meant to reduce the time athletes spend on their sports.
“We are looking forward to the different time-demands legislation meant to enhance student athletes' full experience on campus,” said Erik Hardenbergh, a spokesman for the Pac-12 conference. “We think the legislation will be a big step forward for student-athletes as they strive to balance academics and athletics.”
The legislation, if adopted at this week's meeting in Nashville, Tenn., would prohibit athletics-related activities other than competition during a continuous eight-hour period between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.; require a weeklong break after a season ends and 14 additional days off during a season; require a day off per week during preseason and campus vacations periods; and prohibit off-campus practice during vacation periods.
Both the Division I Council and the Power Five leagues -- the 65 wealthiest institutions in the NCAA, which have autonomy to adopt their own rules -- will hold a vote on the new legislation this week. The Ivy League adopted similar rules on its own last year.
The Pac-12 Conference proposed time-management legislation at last year’s convention, but the proposals were tabled hours before the Power Five leagues were expected to vote on them. One of the tabled proposals would have created a three-week discretionary period following the championship segment of a season. Another proposal also aimed to prohibit athletically related activities for a continuous eight-hour period between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The decision to postpone voting on legislation related to time demands disappointed many of the athletes in attendance at the meeting, as well as the Pac-12 Conference’s commissioner, Larry Scott, who said at the time that “there’s no question that the things we put forward are going to be voted on in the following year, but I am frustrated, as I have a bias for action.”
Other leaders within the Power Five -- which also includes the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big Ten, the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conference -- said they wanted to see more research on the issue before taking any action.
The NCAA’s own team of researchers had already been studying the issue during the previous year, as part of the NCAA’s ongoing GOALS study. According to those findings, football players in the Football Bowl Subdivision reported spending 42 hours per week on their sport. Two-thirds of Division I athletes reported spending as much or more time on athletics during the off-season as during the season. Nearly one in three FBS football players said their sport prevented them from enrolling in a course they wanted to take. At the same time, more than 40 percent of male Division I athletes reported that they would prefer to spend more time on athletics, not less.
Soccer players, swimmers and divers reported spending the least amount of time on their sports, though at 29 hours, even they still surpassed the amount of required athletic activity allowed by the NCAA. The findings indicated that existing time-management rules were being widely flouted. Currently, NCAA rules only allow athletes to devote 20 hours per week to athletically related activity.
The results were not surprising, with a 2010 NCAA survey previously finding that more than three-quarters of Division I baseball players reported spending “as much or more time on athletic activities” during the off-season as during the competitive season. About 70 percent of men’s basketball players reported the same, as did 70 percent of football players. It was a similar picture for the remaining men’s sports. About half of women’s basketball players reported spending equal or more time on athletic activities during the off-season, and about 60 percent of athletes in all other women’s sports said the same.
A 2006 NCAA survey had comparable findings. “Athletic time commitments for student athletes can be very high and there is little downtime, even in the off-season,” NCAA researchers wrote in a report about the survey. “This issue is crucial to developing the balance that should be a goal for student athletes.”
The NCAA commissioned yet another survey focused on time demands in response to the Power Five’s concerns at last year’s meeting and a Division I Council meeting in February. That survey, which included responses from 50,000 Division I coaches and athletes, found that there was broad consensus on reducing time demands for college players, including requiring a minimum eight-hour overnight break and mandating a no-activity period at the end of a season. Following the new survey, the Division I Council and the Power Five announced they would reconsider new time-demand proposals at this year’s meeting.
“Getting time management re-established is big,” Connor Donnelly, co-vice chair of the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and a member of Sacred Heart University’s golf team, said in a statement. “We hope we can get some wins at the convention.”
David Ridpath, a professor of sports administration at Ohio University and president of the Drake Group, an organization pushing for more emphasis on academics in college sports, said the proposals don’t go far enough, however.
In a position paper published last year, the Drake Group recommended that the NCAA revise the definition of “countable athletically related activity” so that it includes all commitments arranged by an institution’s coaches or administrative staff members, including promotional appearances; to eliminate several loopholes found in the association’s rules limiting athletic activities to 20 hours per week; and further limiting athletic participation of athletes who are struggling academically.
“What really needs to be addressed is the off-season,” Ridpath added, pointing to a recent off-season workout at the University of Oregon that was so strenuous it left three football players hospitalized. “I think the [proposed legislation] is more window dressing. We are spitting on a fire when we really have some obvious buckets we can use.”
Independent Medical Care
Division II members will vote this week on proposed legislation that would require its members to give “unchallengeable authority on medical management and return-to-play decisions” to team physicians and athletic trainers. Division III will also vote on adopting such a policy.
In a white paper published last year, the NCAA’s Sport Science Institute urged both divisions to adopt the rule, citing a 2015 survey, published by the Journal of Athletic Training, that found athletic trainers and team physicians felt “high levels of pressure” from coaches to prematurely return athletes to the field after they experienced a concussion.
“Independent medical care is important, because in recent years, the public has grown more aware of, and more concerned with, conflicts of interest in the medical decisions made for student-athletes,” the NCAA Sport Science Institute stated. “Conflict arises when influence is exerted by nonmedical professionals on the medical decisions of primary athletics health care providers.”
Division I and the Power Five conferences approved identical rules at last year’s meeting. At the time, Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer, said he hoped other NCAA members would move to adopt similar policies.
"I believe it's the most important piece of legislation in the history of the NCAA,” Hainline said.
