(Not Just) March Madness

The writer is a current president

Early in my career, I served as a department chair and the dean gave a dozen of us letters of reprimand. She felt that we had all handled a particular task poorly. Someone said—and it may have been me—that if we all failed, perhaps the problem was the task, not the people. 

I thought about this when I saw the Knight Commission suggesting that now was the time for university presidents to take leadership in intercollegiate athletics.

This is not the first time that the Knight Commission or other groups have looked to university presidents to take more leadership and solve one or more problems in intercollegiate athletics. In fact, the 1929 Carnegie Report, the first attempt to thoroughly examine college athletics, made that recommendation and almost every subsequent examination has done the same.

Many groups still feel college athletics has problems and university presidents need to fix them. So, if this approach has not been successful after such a long period of time, perhaps it is the task, not the thousands of people who have served in this role for the last century. And, given this, maybe we need a better recommendation.

For several understandable reasons, this has not been successful. 

University presidents, regardless of their path to the presidency, generally have no experience with athletics before they are put in the position of having athletics report to them. Given the obvious learning curve, and all of the areas on which a president must focus, it is easy to see it might be difficult for us to solve problems that have existed for so long. 

Even if we could figure out some solutions, we are not ultimately in charge and cannot make decisions without the support of the board that hired us and, obviously, could fire us. Boards are often filled with people who are fans of the athletic programs and are reluctant to do anything that might impact the institution’s success. And, even if they are not fans, they know others are and do not want to hear the complaints, very loud complaints, from that group.

In order to solve many of the problems with college athletics, we would either have to unilaterally do something that no other university is doing (significantly reduce costs), which is risky for all of the reasons above, make the current, generally bad, financial situation in college sports worse (give more of the money to athletes without reductions elsewhere), or work together as a group on some of these issues, which in many cases this would violate anti-collusion laws. So, it is difficult for one president to do it alone and doing it as a group also has real challenges.

This is not to say I do not think presidents have a role to play in any changes in college athletics. In fact, I would be uncomfortable if we did not have a significant role. However, it seems that we need to recognize that for change to happen, we need to change the task in some meaningful way. That may involve federal intervention or some other important to external change, so presidents could be successful in this task.

Of course, that will likely only happen if there is actually widespread desire for change. Despite all of the talk about the general public's unhappiness with NIL and the transfer portal, we have not seen any decline in fan interest. Recent attendance and television ratings would suggest that interest is as strong as ever. 

So, frankly I have my doubts that there will ever be the type of change some are seeking. And I am sure 100 years from now, some will still be suggesting that presidents need to fix the problems in college athletics.