Last week’s ruling did not vindicate Texas Tech or anyone else. It did not mean that a court had ruled that Texas Tech and its employees had done nothing wrong. It simply means that no monetary damages can be awarded against the university or its employees.

Leach brought civil lawsuit against the university alleging that his contract was improperly voided without due process and that he was, thus, wrongfully terminated by Texas Tech after the 2009 football season. Leach has also sued ESPN, its college football analyst Craig James and public relations firm, Spaeth Communications, for airing and publicizing allegations against Leach that he improperly treated James’ son, Adam.

Meanwhile, Ted Liggett, the lead attorney for Leach, has indicated that he intends to pursue the case as far as possible. This means that he will file a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that a basic state constitutional right is at stake and the nation’s highest court should take the case because of the potential to set precedent in an area of constitutional law.

Mike Leach

Aside from any lofty goals involving constitutional principles, Mr. Liggett knows this will keep the case in the public eye and can do nothing but help the second case earn a financial reward.

The Texas Supreme Court last week issued a ruling, without written comment, in the case involving Leach, who now is the Washington State head coach, and Texas Tech. The Court let stand a lower court ruling in the civil lawsuit brought by Leach against the university.

The trial court judge in the case granted the university’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit based on the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The university and three top officials who were also named as defendants were all removed as defendants as a result of the Court’s ruling. The judge had ruled that Leach could move forward and try to prove the facts of his case. However, he could not recover any monetary damages based on the Texas statute covering sovereign immunity.

The University and Leach had both appealed the parts of the ruling that went against them. The 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals for Texas had upheld the trial judge’s ruling in an opinion issued in 2011.

Sovereign immunity is an old English common law concept that prohibited anyone from suing the Crown since the King was ordained by God.  In the United States, state legislatures have passed statutes that provide broad protection for “state actors” who commit an act within the ordinary and normal course of doing their jobs.  Such employees, and the entities that employ them, cannot be sued for damages because of their protected status.

The rationale for these statutes is that government bodies need such protection to properly govern. Acts of government bodies (and the individuals who make up government bodies) will always offend someone. Governments would be hamstrung if every time an official acted someone could bring a lawsuit. Leach and his attorneys argue that, if sovereign immunity applies in this situation, any contract entered into by a public, government entity would be void because it could never be enforced in a court of law.

Courts in various states have carved out narrow exceptions to this doctrine. The Texas Supreme Court ruling essentially holds that no such circumstance exists in this case.

Leach sued the university after he was fired for alleged mistreatment of a football player named Adam James. Leach allegedly ordered James banished from the football practice fields to an equipment shed because of actions that Leach deemed inappropriate. He allegedly made James stand in the dark for long periods of time.

Adams and his father, former Southern Methodist and National Football League running back Craig James, alleged that Jones had suffered a head injury and that Leach inappropriately and inhumanely punished the younger James because Leach thought the young man was malingering and because Leach wanted him to quit to free up a scholarship. Adam Jones did transfer to UTEP where he just finished playing his senior season as a tight end for the Miners.

Craig James is employed by ESPN as an announcer and studio analyst for college football.  When the allegations against Leach were made, the coach was fired a few days before the date a clause in his contract would have required the university to pay him an $800,000 longevity bonus.  Leach alleged that the real reason he was fired was that the school wanted to avoid paying him the bonus and simply wanted to hire a coach who would work for less money.  Leach claimed that the firing unjustly tarnished his professional reputation.

Leach’s second lawsuit against ESPN, James and Spaeth Communications was filed in early 2010 to beat the statute of limitations in Texas for libel claims. The trial court had delayed the case pending the outcome of the action against the university and its three officials. Leach can move forward now with the second case. The same attorneys filed both lawsuits for Leach.

Mr. Liggett has indicated that he will still seek a trial against the Texas Tech strictly on the merits of Leach’s allegations.  Both appellate courts have also ruled against the university on the issue of whether the case can proceed strictly on the truthfulness of the allegations in the complaint.

A trial involving the university could still be very important, because a jury in that case could find that Coach Leach was unjustly terminated and that the allegations against him were untrue.  Such a finding would do nothing but boost his remaining case.

Leach has already given a deposition in the Texas Tech case and done what he needs to do. As long as his attorneys are willing to pursue the case on a contingency fee basis (attorneys get paid only if they win), it isn’t costing him any money.  He is free to attend to his duties as coach at Washington State with few distractions from the court.

Leach earns enough money that winning a monetary judgment may be secondary for him. He wants to clear his name. His libel case may have been, in fact, negatively impacted by his hiring at Washington State for around $2 million per year because he no longer can argue that he has been “blackballed” in the coaching profession.

Meanwhile, Mr. Liggett also talks about wanting to overturn the doctrine of sovereign immunity once and for all in U.S. law. He said last week that: “We believe the doctrine of sovereign immunity has to be overturned. We feel that it denies due process, right to trial. It is fundamental constitutional issues at work here. The people are sovereign, not the state.”

Aside from the possibility of re-making constitutional law, an appeal keeps Mr. Liggett in the news and maintains a threat that could eventually help lead to a settlement in the second case.  Such are the factors that work just below the surface in our legal system. In the meantime, Texas Tech officials are trumpeting a “vindication” of their behavior in the matter and hoping that the case will just go away.

Last week’s decision represented several things but none of them was any finding that Texas Tech officials acted properly in the manner in which they fired Leach just before the team’s bowl game following the 2009 season. This case won’t be over until the U.S. Supreme Court says it is.

In addition to serving as The Sport Digest editor and teaching classes at the Academy, Mr. Tyler was formerly a practicing attorney. He teaches courses at the Academy in sports law and risk management. For more information on these courses, see http://ussa.edu.

“In America, a person is presumed innocent until proved guilty.  Unless, that is, he plays college sports”.  These words were written by Joe Nocera, a New York Times reporter who has written over 11,000 words about college sports since December, 2011.  (see, for instance, his article).  Nocera has apparently gotten the attention of NCAA leaders, who have recently taken to blasting him in various releases.

Are such criticisms of the NCAA fair?  An excellent book on this topic has just been published.  The Supreme Court and the NCAA:  The Case for Less Commercialism and More Due Process in College Sports, by Brian L. Porto is a detailed examination of two U.S. Supreme Court cases involving the NCAA that have shaped the current landscape of college sports.

The two cases were decided by the Court in the 1980s.  In Board of Regents v. NCAA (1984) the Court essentially ruled that the NCAA’s policy of controlling broadcast rights to all college sports was a violation of anti-trust law.  This decision directly led to various TV outlets broadcasting all sorts of college sports events.  The competition for the right to televise these events and the growth of cable TV has allowed NCAA schools to sign contracts worth millions of dollars per year.  Indeed, the Southeastern Conference in 2010-2011 distributed some $19.5 million to each of its 12 member schools, mostly money from TV contracts for football and basketball games.

The potential to bring in all of this money has led to intense competition among member schools to field winning teams.  Salaries for head coaches have increased to the point where the top coaches in football and basketball command salaries similar to those paid to professional team coaches.  This pressure to win has also, in the eyes of many, led to a major increase in incidents of schools willing to violate NCAA rules in the race to recruit and keep “student-athletes” capable of making teams into big winners.  College sports have become a billion dollar commercial enterprise.

The second important case was Tarkanian v. NCAA (1988).  That case grew out of the NCAA’s long investigation of men’s basketball coach, Jerry Tarkanian.  In that case the Court held that the NCAA was not sufficiently linked to public schools to be considered a “state player” and therefore was not subject to due process considerations of the 14^th Amendment when conducting investigations.  This case paved the way for the NCAA to use sometimes dubious investigative strategies when going after suspected cheating among coaches, players and boosters.

NCAA hearings are held before people who typically are college professors or administrators with little or no legal background.  Hearings are held in a compressed time frame.  Discovery opportunities for those accused of wrongdoing are limited and the standards of proof and evidence are not clear, and often seen as inconsistent.

It is hard to understand how an organization could conduct hearings whose outcomes can have tremendous ramifications on schools and individuals and yet use standards that are at best murky and at worst, clearly unfair.  A recent example can be found in the transfer case of Todd O’Brien (see the January, 2012 Digest article cited above).  O’Brien graduated from St. Joseph’s College in May, 2011 and wanted to play his senior year of basketball at UAB in Birmingham while pursuing a graduate degree not offered at St. Joseph’s.  The NCAA has had a rule for several years allowing these types of transfers without requiring a student-athlete to sit out a year.  Yet O’Brien has yet to play for UAB this season.  St. Joseph’s head coach, Phil Martelli, refused to sign off on the transfer.  O’Brien’s first appeal was denied without comment by the NCAA and his second appeal has simply been ignored.  No one involved with the NCAA has ever provided any kind of clear reasoning for the denial of the transfer rule waiver.

Porto has pointed out that school employees are often used as sacrificial lambs and have no right to mount a defense before the NCAA.  Schools frequently pick out younger employees with less time on the job and fire them to show the NCAA that they are serious about cleaning up their athletic departments.  Employees are branded as cheaters and never given a chance to defend themselves.  Their only recourse is the go to court, an expensive and time consuming process.

Professor Porto recommends that Congress pass a federal law granting the NCAA a limited educational exemption from anti-trust laws.   In exchange for this accused parties would be given greater procedural protections and the NCAA would have to adhere to some clear standard in terms of how hearing would be conducted and what evidentiary standards would apply.  Hearing officers would be drawn from a pool of retired judges used to hearing evidence in an adversarial setting.

This is certainly a debate worth having.   The current status of NCAA enforcement policies arguably does not consider the welfare of student-athletes.  Many critics believe that the NCAA really has little appetite for true reform.  The fear is that if student-athletes are granted certain rights they will want more; and that ultimately they will demand to be given greater financial benefits.  The people such as coaches and athletic directors who have a vested financial stake in the current system are always going to resist significant change.

Anyone working in the field of sports today must understand the legal environment that surrounds and influences sports.  These areas are explored in courses taught at every degree level at the United States Sports Academy.  For more information go to http://ussa.edu.

Less than 48 hours after the cradle of democracy and the Olympic Movement was turned into a battle-zone, the capital city of one of the more fiscally-challenged European countries pulled out of the race for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

According to early Italian press reports in the respected Corriere della Sera, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti – whose prospects of making a success of his new job hinge crucially on his reputation for fiscal prudence – took the decision to withdraw Rome from the high-stakes contest after careful evaluation of the costs and benefits.

“We arrived at the unanimous conclusion that in Italy’s current condition the Government does not feel able to take on the commitment to offer the [financial] guarantee [needed to host the Olympics],” Monti told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.

At almost the same moment as this story was breaking, representatives of the capital city of another fiscally-challenged European country were delivering Madrid’s Applicant City file to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne.

Bid leader Alejandro Blanco said that winning the Games would “represent a source of economic development” that would boost industrial and commercial activity.

In the light of Rome’s decision, though, many are likely to wonder whether it wouldn’t have been more sensible for the Spanish capital to decide likewise that, under present circumstances, discretion was the better part of valour.

The Italian city’s withdrawal will be a big blow to Mario Pescante (pictured above), the grand old man of Italian Olympism, for whom a Rome 2020 Summer Games would have made the perfect culmination to an illustrious career.

The move is also likely to be regretted by Jacques Rogge, the IOC President, both because it cuts the field to five applicants and, on a more personal level, because he knows the city well owing to his time with the European Olympic Committees.

In terms of the complexion of the race, Rome’s withdrawal should boost the prospects of Istanbul, which can now realistically aspire to collecting the votes of more Europe-based IOC members – should it be cleared in May to progress to the second and decisive phase of this contest.

The pruning of the field to five runners may also make it more difficult for the IOC’s Executive Board to pass over the very considerable attributes of Doha.

Should the Middle East city make it through to Candidate City status, there is every chance it would prove a formidable challenger for its rivals.

Doha handed in its Applicant City file yesterday, along with Tokyo, another of the front-runners.

Baku, whose bid shows every sign of being stronger than initially anticipated, submitted its file today, with Istanbul set to do so tomorrow.

The IOC is then due to announce the shortlisted cities at its Executive Board meeting in Quebec City.  Experienced Olympic observers think the ideal number of Candidate Cities from the IOC’s point of view would be four, although it is conceivable that all five remaining contenders could be nodded through to the race’s decisive stage.

The winning bidder will be decided in September 2013 in Buenos Aires.

In 1906, Rome was robbed of the opportunity of staging the 1908 Olympics by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

More than a century later, Romans may be reflecting that they have been deprived of their shot at the 2020 Games by its financial equivalent.

Contact the writer of this story at david.owen@insidethegames.biz The United States Sports Academy has founded in 1972 partly due to the belief by founder and current CEO, Thomas P. Rosandich, that there was a need to train Olympic coaches to help improve the performance of U.S. athletes in Olympic Games.  The Academy recently announced the winners of the latest Olympic Sport & Art Contest, which the Academy sponsored this year for the fourth time.  For more information on this country see the article on the home page of the Academy found at http://ussa.edu.

I have two suggestions for improving the Super Bowl.

The first suggestion refers to the Super Bowl’s half-time show.  After watching yet another spectacle in which an entertainer’s behavior (M.I.A’s. display of his middle finger during the performance) was an embarrassment to the NFL and the majority of its audience, it’s time to consider a change in format.  Of course, the other embarrassment which people remember was Janet Jackson’s “equipment malfunction” from a few years ago in which her top fell, instantly exposing her breast during the performance.

Judging by the many blogs and posts following the recent Super Bowl, it’s clear that no matter who performs, there will be complaints about either the age of the performer, the type of music, the inability of viewers to understand the lyrics, etc.  Here’s the suggestion: Most football fans could care less about half-time entertainment.  We want replays and concise analysis regarding the first half, and then let the teams get back on the field.  To placate those who desire a half-time performance, go back to the original Super Bowl model and bring a college marching band onto the field at half-time.  I don’t know anyone who has a problem with college marching bands; in fact, most people appreciate that style of music.  If it’s extra time that the network needs to sell more ads, then invite two college bands!

The other suggestion to improve the Super Bowl is to get rid of the ridiculous naming of Super Bowls with Roman numerals.  When sports fans refer to championships, especially great championships, they refer to the year, e.g., the 1975 World Series, the 1958 NFL Championship, the 1998 NBA Finals, etc.  Using Roman numerals to identify Super Bowls is pretentious, impractical, and not used by anyone that I know.  It does make one wonder what the NFL plans to do with this foolishness as the Roman numerals get longer and more complex.  In 50 years, will the NFL really identify the 2052 game as Super Bowl MMLXII?   This has to stop at some point; now is as good a time as ever.

Dr. Craig T. Bogar is the Project Coordinator for Pre-Doctoral Training in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of South Alabama.  He serves on the Academy’s distance learning faculty and is also on the adjunct faculties of the American Public University System and Southern New Hampshire University.

Competition for the sports entertainment dollar is fierce.  There is less pie to slice up between the “big 4” traditional sports (football, baseball, hockey, and basketball), second-tier sports like soccer and lacrosse, other non-revenue scholastic and amateur sports, action sports, and sport’s newest darling, mixed martial arts.   With only a few exceptions, sponsorship revenues are down across sports at all levels. In high school and collegiate sports, budgets are getting slashed, and everyone is looking for ways to maintain their programs.  For many of these sports organizations, finding exposure opportunities is key part of dealing with today’s business climate.

Of course, sports fans have a host of media options to follow their major college and major league professional sports teams.  Those options include broadcast television, cable television, satellite television, the Internet, radio, newspapers, magazines, social media, and mobile services.  The options to get up-to-date scores and news related to sports at other levels (hereon known as the “other sports”) are not so plentiful, particularly for those who do not live in markets local to the teams or events in which they are interested.   However, there are options for the other sports, and technology can play a big part.

One example (and the focus of this article) is text messaging or Short Message Service (SMS) technology. Text messaging or Short Message Service (SMS) technology is available today on most mobile phones.    The SMS protocol provides the ability to send and receive short messages of up to 160 characters.    Most people refer to the act of sending a text message as “texting.”    Typically, wireless providers offer service plans that include a “bucket” of or unlimited number of SMS messages for a set monthly fee.

Text messaging as part of mobile marketing campaigns is quickly becoming a primary means of reaching out to customers.   People have become more and more comfortable with and reliant on their mobile phones for a variety of services.   There more than 2.4 billion mobile phone users today worldwide.  Those users exchange over 3 trillion messages per year.   Five hundred billion of these messages are commercial or marketing messages.  The associated mobile marketing campaigns have goals similar to other marketing efforts (for example, those utilizing television, radio, paper media and the Internet) and are designed increase brand awareness, increase patronage, improve customer loyalty, and increase revenues.

Mobile marketing is in fact the advertising industry’s fastest growing media channel, offering a cost-effective way to connect to an “opted-in” mobile audience with desirable demographics.  SMS technology provides banks, insurance companies, mortgage lenders, social networks, hospitals, publishers, and more with a direct, quick channel for instant customer communications, instant cost savings and an instant revenue channel.   Even during slow economic times, few believe people will give up their cell phones or texting.   People are tethered to their phones 24/7, and as a result, 97 percent of all SMS marketing messages are opened, and perhaps more remarkably 83 percent are opened within one hour.

Many of the world’s largest corporations and agencies use SMS to both advertise and communicate with customers.    However, until very recently, outside of a few services designed for NCAA Division 1 revenue sports and the “big 4” major league sports delivered by the likes of ESPN.com or CBSSports.com, there have been few efforts to leverage this technology for the other sports.

The next logical question of course is “why not?”  The shortest answer is that the major media players have not been that interested in putting the work in to assemble the eyeballs in these markets, especially when there is other much lower hanging fruit.   While the numbers of interested fans of the “other sports” may seem relatively small, they collectively add up to be a significant target market for advertising various products and services.     Technology such as SMS technology provides the ability to package these fans in an attractive way for such advertising.

As of very recently, companies have emerged with comprehensive content management systems designed to do just this type of packaging.   These systems include the ability for teams to publicize their sports schedules, solicit subscribers, manage ad campaigns, and distribute game scores in real-time, among other functions. Perhaps most importantly, these companies offer the “other sports” the ability to monetize their sports content through a variety of ad revenue sharing or paid subscription programs.  There is no doubt that the sports business climate is tough right now.   But tough times, and in this case technology, can sometimes create opportunities.

Dr. Mark Janas is the Managing Partner and CEO of In3, Inc. a technology and business development firm based in Raleigh, NC with holdings in multiple minor league basketball teams and sport-related businesses including ScoreTrax.com. He received his doctorate in sports management from the United States Sports Academy.  Anyone interested in graduate programs at the Academy should go to http://ussa.edu.

The University of Connecticut has proposed reducing the number of games it will play next season if the NCAA grants a waiver to allow the Huskies to play in the 2013 men’s basketball tournament.

The school is currently barred from the tourney, a penalty for years of below-standard academic results, but it requested a waiver last month. That document, obtained this week by The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information request, outlines proposed self-imposed penalties that will be instituted if the request is granted.

Those include forfeiting the revenue awarded to the Big East for participating in the 2013 tournament, reducing the number of regular-season games played in the 2012-13 season from 27 to 23, and barring coach Jim Calhoun from meeting off-campus with prospective recruits during the fall 2012 contact period.

“Collectively, the university’s proposal will clearly send the message that the institution fully accepts the responsibility for past failings,” the school writes in its waiver request. “It will result in the economic equivalent of a postseason ban without harming the very students the NCAA is trying to protect.”

The schedule changes also would include eliminating exhibition games next season. The school said all hours that would have been spent in competition, will instead be spent in study hall, tutor sessions or advisor meetings.

The school said Calhoun also will bring a current or former NBA player with him to inner-city schools for at least five educational sessions on the importance of academic achievement.

The waiver request also outlines the school’s Academic Improvement Plan— new programs and penalties the school already has put in place in an effort to improve the team’s academic standing.

Among those are mandated sanctions for any player who misses three or more classes during the academic year and daily checks of course work for student-athletes who have a grade-point average of 2.3 or lower.

One player, whose name is redacted in the copy of the document released to the AP, was already benched by Calhoun this season after missing two classes.

In addition, school president Susan Herbst is now receiving a weekly academic progress report for all team members.

Under rules approved in October, a school must have a two-year average score of 930 or a four-year average of 900 on the NCAA’s annual Academic Progress Rate, which measures the academic performance of student athletes.

The defending national champions would be academically ineligible in 2013, because the NCAA plans to use data from the 2009-10, and 2010-11 academic years.

But Walter Harrison, the chairman of the NCAA’s Committee on Academic Performance, said that the body will be meeting on Feb. 20 to discuss whether to adjust reporting dates to allow schools to use their most recent data in qualifying for tournaments. For the 2013 men’s basketball tournament, that would mean scores from the 2010-11 and 2011-12 academic year.

UConn would qualify for the tournament under that scenario.

“I don’t know what to expect,” he said. “We could just decide to keep the current policy in place. Secondly, we could decide that we want to make a change, and that may require board approval, which would mean it wouldn’t happen until April. The third possibility is we might not make any decision, and talk about it again in April.”

UConn also has implemented new standards for incoming basketball classes. The goal is that each subsequent recruiting class outperforms its predecessors when it comes to SAT scores and grades.

For example, players enrolling next season will need to achieve a minimum 2.98 core-course grade point average or a 1020 on the SAT to meet the new guidelines.

Once enrolled, students also have new academic rules to follow including:

• Attending at least nine hours of summer school each year.
• Having class work checked daily as freshmen by a member of the basketball staff (this also applies to any player with a grade-point average of 2.3 or lower).
• Completing required course work before registering for elective courses
• Adhering to a “graduation plan” created to ensure each player is on a path to graduate, even if they leave school early for the NBA or other opportunities.

The report also notes that Calhoun’s contract calls for him to forfeit $100,000 to the University of Connecticut Foundation General Scholarship Fund for any scholarship lost due to an Academic Progress Report penalty.

The school said the academics of the basketball team are improving. It notes in the waiver request that the team attained perfect APR eligibility and retention scores for the Fall 2011 semester. The school also noted that it currently has just one player on the team left from the group that scored low enough to warrant sanctions.

“Although unintended, the implementation of the new criteria has the effect of punishing innocent students for the failures of a past administration, former student-athletes and others no longer employed at the university,” the school writes. “The university’s proposal, however, will allow the institution to bear the brunt of the repercussions, rather than the current student-athletes who made their decision to attend before this new penalty was even conceived.”

The above article appeared on the Yahoo sports blog.  It can be found at http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/news?slug=ap-uconn-apr.  The article is reprinted here with the express permission of Yahoo Sports, provided that there is no attempt by The United States Sports Academy to use this article for any financial gain. Follow Yahoo! Sports’ college basketball coverage on Twitter.

The bill would essentially limit allowing players to return to play the same day and would require schools to have “qualified medical persons” (to be determined by the State Board) to approve any return to play for an athlete diagnosed as having sustained a concussion.

Supporters of the bill want to include provisions for requiring high school and youth coaches to receive educational training about concussions.  NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and NCAA Executive Director Mark Emmert have both sent letters in support of the bill.

This bill is an example of the growing movement across the country to increase awareness of the dangers of concussions at all levels of sport.  It is perhaps not coincidental that a number of former NFL players recently filed a federal lawsuit against the NFL that contends the NFL know for several years about the long-term dangers of traumatic brain injuries, of which concussions are one type of, and downplayed and covered up this information.

Readers can find more about the bill by clicking here.

The school had self-reported the violations to the NCAA in the summer of 2011.  The NCAA characterized the violations as “major” but “narrow in scope”.  The NCAA charged Nebraska with a “failure to monitor” violation because of the number of student-athletes involved and because the events took place over several academic years.

The probationary period will last until January 31, 2014.  Any further violations committed during this period could be considered for repeat offender status and result in harsher penalties.

Nebraska thus joins the ever-expanding list of NCAA Division I football and basketball programs on probation.  Approximately 25% of the 120 Division I Football Bowl Subdivision Schools have run afoul of the NCAA over the past 3 years or are currently under investigation.

These stories’ reach goes beyond the normal sports world.  The Nebraska story was reported on by The Chronicle of Higher Education because cheating in college sports is a uniquely American pastime with potential implications for higher education as a whole.

Perhaps these violations should be reported in the same manner as the scores of athletic events are reported, a kind of “box score” of shame.

NCAA executives have discussed for some time now their desire to come up with more consistent and understandable penalties that would create a situation where more people feel that the “time fits the crime”.   Member schools have complained that the process takes too long between the time a school is first notified of an investigation until it receives the letter notifying it of the Committee on Infractions decision.

An NCAA working group recently unveiled preliminary recommendations that would produce clearer penalty guidelines, create four levels of violations, and add at least eight people to the 10-member Division I Committee on Infractions. Changes could happen by August as college sports tries to dig out from a rash of recent high-profile scandals that have occurred over the past 18 months.

“I think we’ve all heard from time to time that the process needs to be faster and more nimble, but we also can’t compromise fairness and integrity,” Julie Roe Lach, the NCAA’s vice president for enforcement, said in an interview last week.

Perhaps the biggest change could be adding more members to the infractions committee so smaller panels handle more cases. This also could create more diversity within the committee, which conducts hearings and hands out penalties.

Roe Lach said past or present university presidents, athletics directors and even coaches could be added to the committee, which right now isn’t represented by any people in those current jobs. The working group has not made any firm decisions yet on recommendations for change.

“We’ve heard from several coaches and others that their perspective would really provide a different angle that is needed,” Roe Lach said.

The idea of having athletic directors and coaches serve on the Committee on Infractions seems a bit like having a fox watch the henhouse.  In just the past two days the public, for instance, has been reading stories about how the recruiting tactics of new Ohio State coach Urban Meyer have angered his Big 10 colleagues.  One head coach went so far as to say that the Big 10 would not tolerate the sleazy tactics used by coaches in the Southeastern Conference.

How long would it take member schools to start howling about penalties handed down by panels that include a coach of a rival school?

More independent members with fewer potential conflicts of interest were considered for the infractions committee, she said. Three out of 10 committee members right now come from the public.

Consideration was given to various ideas, such as using independent arbitrators, federal court judges and juries, and even the Boy Scouts of America’s approach to discipline. The working group decided it wants most of the infractions committee filled with people familiar with NCAA issues and who have a shared responsibility in cleaning up violations, Roe Lach said.

Flexibility would be an important part of the new plan, which would have four levels (most egregious, serious, secondary and minor). Currently, a violation is labeled either secondary or major.

“There’s a whole lot that happens in between there, such as a really serious secondary (violation) that doesn’t feel right to categorize as major,” Roe Lach said.

Penalty guidelines would allow the infractions committee to consider mitigating or aggravating factors to help determine punishments.  That doesn’t really sound like much of change, since a common theme in any discussion of penalties handed down in recent years is whether or not a school cooperated with Enforcement Staff in helping the investigation proceed.  It is commonly believed, for example, that one of the reasons the University of Alabama was hammered so hard back in 2003 was because of its hostile attitude towards investigators and its lack of cooperation.

For instance, CBSSports.com recently reported on a draft of penalty guidelines that showed a significant Level I (most serious) violation could carry a two- or three-year postseason ban, a scholarship reduction of between 37.5 percent and 50 percent, a financial penalty based on the team’s total budget, and a show-cause penalty of five years or more on a coach before he works again. Various factors that haven’t been released yet could reduce or increase penalties.

Roe Lach said there’s no consensus within the working group on reestablishing TV bans and called it “an open issue.” There hasn’t been a TV ban since 1996 because it could impact lucrative conference TV contracts for schools that didn’t commit a violation. In 2008, the infractions committee recommended to the board of directors more use of TV bans.

One can’t help but wonder why member school can’t simply agree that a school being punished can still appear on TV; but must forfeit to the conference involved and to the NCAA its share of TV revenues.  Rather than stating that a team cannot appear on TV for one year simply rule that the school must forfeit all of its TV revenue share from the sport involved for one year.  Could it be that schools really don’t want to create rules that could potentially cost them millions of dollars?

Former infractions committee chairman Gene Marsh said case-by-case discretion will always be used in NCAA cases. But Marsh, who now represents defendants against the NCAA, said predicted outcomes would make it easier for schools and individuals to decide sooner whether to plead guilty or spend money to fight.

The NCAA would like to see more cases settled without hearings.

“That can happen if you’ve got incentives built into the model,” Roe Lach said.

In recent years, the average NCAA investigation has lasted 11 months. More cases have been concluding in four to eight months during the past year, Roe Lach said. The NCAA’s 55-person enforcement staff was restructured last July. The former enforcement director job now focuses solely on football issues.

The NCAA, which lacks subpoena power, spent the past year talking with schools and conferences about quickly involving the enforcement staff when issues arise.

Roe Lach’s speech to coaches: “We would never tell you to disregard an institutional or conference rule if you have to share information. But if you have information of wrongdoing, I would ask we would be part of that first list you would call. In the event we’d be the first call, we’d certainly appreciate it.”

Of course many feel that what really needs to happen is that member schools need to agree on an “NCAA Rules of Evidence” to govern how information is collected and what can and cannot be considered at hearings.  Most importantly, NCAA Enforcement Staff members need to be given what would amount to a power of subpoena.  Members could simply agree that they will comply with requests for information to the best of their abilities (and individuals will also do so as a condition of their eligibility or employment).  Disputes could be settled by a panel of people selected to serve as a kind of procedural court.

With so much money at stake and so much pressure to win, cheating is probably always going to be present in some form.  At least the NCAA is now openly discussing serious reforms to the enforcement process.  Let’s hope that next summer doesn’t bring a series of recommendations that get shot down by the membership as a whole.

Tim Collins is a junior at Ohio State and the president of Block O, the 2,500 member student fan organization, said much the same thing.  He told the reporter that the reason he applied to the school was “60 percent for the sports”.

Ohio State boasts that it has 17 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, three Nobel laureates, 8 Pulitzer Prize winners, 35 Guggenheim Fellows and a MacArthur winner among its alumni and current and former faculty members.  Yet sports seem to rule at the school whose athletic department budget is some $120 million per year.

The school recently hired Urban Meyer as its head football coach.  He will be paid some $4 million per year in base salary plus bonuses such as $250,000 for getting the team into a BCS National Championship Game.  He also has use of a private jet owned by the university.  Gordon Asbrecht is a physics professor at Ohio State.  He said the Times reporter, “It’s not, Oh yeah, Ohio State, that wonderful physics department.  It’s football”.  Dr. Asbrecht went on to say that his department did not have money in its budget to pay for attendance at professional conferences.  He admitted that he can understand from a business perspective why Coach Meyer was hired; but he said his payment package is just one more example of the “tail wagging the dog”.

James J. Duderstadt is a former president of the University of Michigan and the author of an article entitled “Intercollegiate Athletics and the American University”.  He told the Times reporter that nine out of ten people don’t understand what a research university is; but  if he says “Michigan” to a person he or she will immediately identify with those blue helmets with the maize stripes running onto the field at Michigan Stadium.

Widmeyer Communications did a survey in November, 2011 after the scandal had broken at Penn State involving allegations of sexual abuse by a former assistant football coach and a lack of efforts by Coach Joe Paterno and others at the university to respond to a report of an incident in the school’s football facility back in 2002.  Some 83 percent of respondents blamed the “culture of big money” in college sports for fostering the scandal.  In addition, 40 percent said they would discourage their child from choosing to attend a Division I institution “that places a strong emphasis on sports” and 72 percent said Division I sports has “too much influence over college life”.

In China and Europe college campuses don’t have huge athletic facilities dominating their campuses.  The focus is on going to school to get an education.  Only in the United States do we have a culture of sports that dominates many college campuses.  There is an article in a recent edition of the publication, Athletic Business, that analyzes the career of college administrator named Rick Creehan.  He has worked at four small, liberal arts colleges in the Midwest where he has been involved in athletics.  He has developed and implemented plans that use the growth of athletic teams on a campus and the construction of new and renovated athletic facilities as a means to increase growth and revenue

Creehan has been able to use the expansion of athletic facilities for varsity and recreational athletes as a means to increase enrollment and funding.   He calls his plan an “admissions yield model” that uses additional spots on athletic rosters to generate additional tuition revenues, that in turn creates interest for prospective students and leads to increased student applications.  This success creates a positive atmosphere that in turn leads to increased fundraising.   To read the entire story go to http://athleticbusiness.com/articles/article.aspx?articleid=3841&zoneid=15.

A recent study at the University of Oregon looked at student grades from 1999 to 2007 and compared them to wins by the school’s football team.  The study concluded that there was a positive correlation in that as wins increased there was a slight decrease in student grades.  The study also found that this was most pronounced among male students.

Another study looked at teams in the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament and tracked articles downloaded from the school’s library website during the tournament.  The author found that 6% fewer articles were downloaded at a school while its team was in the tournament.  On the day after an upset or close win there was a 19% decrease in articles downloaded.

A 2010 Knight Commission report found that Big 10 schools spent a median of $111,620 per athlete (members of its varsity teams) versus a total of $18,406 per student on academics.  The same study noted that Big 10 schools in 2009 spent a median of $98 million on athletics as opposed to $69 million only four years earlier.

College athletics not only commands much more money than it did just a few years ago but demands more of its fans’ time.  Schools competing in the BCS National Championship Game have in the past few years cancelled some classes on the day of the game or even delayed the opening of a semester for a couple of days (Alabama in January, 2010).  ESPN has regular TV broadcasts of college football games on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights that requires adjustments in campus schedules to accommodate fans coming the games.  College basketball games routinely start at 9:00 PM on weeknights to fit into TV schedules.

Public colleges and universities in particular are facing greater scrutiny about how they spend money on athletics.  At a time when state money available to higher education is rapidly shrinking and tuitions are skyrocketing many people are angered by the rapid increases in spending on college athletics.  The time may be near when some state legislatures are going to start looking to micromanage athletic spending.

High schools are not immune to these issues.  Many people point to the Allen, Texas school district as an example of misplaced priorities.  This fall the system will open the high school’s new $60 million 18,000 seat football stadium.  Many high schools now send their football and basketball teams jetting across the country to play in games televised by ESPN and other cable sports networks.  High school football coaches in many areas of the country now earn well over $100,000 per year plus other perks such as the use of leased motor vehicles.

The United States now ranks outside the top 15 countries in the world in measures of academic performance of its young people.  It is perhaps not a coincidence that the U.S. is the only country in the world with an athletic system that places so much emphasis on scholastic sports teams.  We like to think that we Americans are the best at everything.  Perhaps our misplaced priorities are catching up with us.  Polls consistently show that parents in the U.S. believe that their children will have a tougher time economically in the future than parents have had.

Perhaps there is a message in there somewhere?

Anyone  wanting to read the New York Times story can find it at the following link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/how-big-time-sports-ate-college-life.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=How%20Big-Time%20College%20Sports%20Ate%20Life&st=cse.

These issues are important to anyone dealing with sports from the college level on down to youth sports.  These areas of study have been central to the mission of the United States Sports Academy for the last 40 years.  For information on the school with the largest number of graduate students studying these issues go to http://ussa.edu.