The school said the football players represented 246 of 686 enrollments (36 percent) in the 54 courses within the Department of African and Afro-American Studies between summer 2007 and summer 2011. Those classes lacked appropriate supervision and were called “aberrant” or were “taught irregularly” with limited contact between instructors and students, according to a university report.

There were also 23 enrollments by UNC men’s basketball players during that same period of time.  That number represented 3% of the total number of enrollments.

The News and Observer of Raleigh first reported the athlete enrollment figures in early May.  The school’s investigation found fraud and poor oversight, including unauthorized grade changes and reports of grade rolls with what appear to be forged faculty signatures. The report found no evidence of favorable treatment for student-athletes or grades awarded without written work.

One of the classes was a class taught in a Swahili course.  That course was taken by a UNC football player named Michael McAdoo, who was implicated in the recent NCAA investigation of the school’s football program.  The investigation also found that McAdoo had recent impermissible tutoring and that he had turned in a final paper in that course that was later found to have been heavily plagiarized.

Julius Nyang’oro resigned as chairman last year and will retire in July. His name was on the grade rolls or he was listed as instructor for 43 courses considered aberrant or taught irregularly from 2007-09. He was also the instructor for the only two classes that qualify as taught irregularly after 2009, UNC reported.

The administrator, Deborah Crowder, worked under Nyang’oro and wouldn’t talk with school investigators. UNC found no aberrant courses or unauthorized grade changes after her September 2009 retirement, the report stated.

The report’s findings were considered such a blow to the university’s academic profile that school officials considered pursuing criminal charges for forgery in the changing of grades.  The local district attorney’s office ultimately advised the university that it did not feel criminal charges could be proven.

UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp had originally expressed confidence in the department chair.  He later admitted that he could not recall a more serious case of academic dishonesty and said it was a major blow to the university’s reputation.

UNC’s football program spends a lot of money on academic support for its student-athletes.  It is difficult to believe that then-coach Butch Davis and his staff did not have some idea of what was going on.  A similar situation came to light about a decade ago at the University of Georgia involving men’s basketball players.  Coach Jim Harrick and his son, an assistant coach, were ultimately fired over that incident.  Similar problems occurred back in the 1990s at the University of Minnesota under Coach Clem Haskins.

In the past five years, 11 of the 24 current members of the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conferences have seen their football or men’s basketball programs come under NCAA investigation.  In addition, programs at pending ACC member Pittsburgh and SEC member Florida have suffered through news reports of criminal behavior by scores of football players.

So, 14 of the soon-to-be 28 schools in those conferences have had publicized problems in the past few years.  It’s difficult to argue that all of these problems are not the norm at schools in these conferences.  The bad news just never seems to stop coming.

It appears that at least half of UNC’s football and men’s basketball players between 2007 and 2011 enrolled in at least one of the suspect courses.  It is difficult to believe that it was not common knowledge on campus that there were easy grades to be had by enrolling in courses that required little or no real work.

At what point will fans of college sports step forward and say they have had enough and then demand change in the system?  College sports seem to lurk somewhere between troubled and corrupt. Is the entire system about to fall in on itself?

There is evidence that football is causing major health problems for former players later in life. Some National Football League players have been quite vocal about post-career problems, which include depression, thoughts of suicide, family problems, bankruptcy, homelessness, and for some, like Dave Duerson and Junior Seau, suicide.

After Seau’s death, a few former players went public with their post-football plight on Dave Pear’s blog. Pear has been fighting for years with the NFL to get medical benefits to pay for the injuries he says he suffered during his career. The injuries were numerous.

The comments should be noted by school boards and others with a passing interest in watching football whether it is Friday night high school contests or Monday Night Football featuring NFL teams.

Former Pittsburgh Steelers player Reggie Harrison, now known as Kamal Ali Salaam-El, wrote: “Since we don’t have a crystal ball, we may never know what was going through Junior Seau’s mind. I have yet to entertain the thought of taking my life, but I can relate to the pain that a lot of us are going through. I take 10 methadone, 4 oxycodone and 2 ml of liquid oxycodone daily, and sometimes the pain still overtakes me. I just pray that I can hold on and lean on my fellow alumni if I feel that I can’t go on. My heart goes out to Junior and his family and I hope he has found Peace. I sure haven’t found it.”

Former Los Angeles Rams player Rick Hayes responded: “Kamal, I believe we played against each other in the L.A. Coliseum during our rookie year in the 1974 preseason. I, too, have been in pain today following the news of Junior Seau, and I find myself wondering about the possibility of CTE being the cause. For the last month, I have missed two Brain Scans and MRIs because of fear and pain. Several months ago, I finally detoxed from a daily dose of over 1000 mg of oxycodone via the Subuxone method.  I think of suicide almost daily. There were other pills, too. I feel much better now but still question the pain and sleep disturbances.

“In your note, I found the realization that these medications treat and cover our emotional traumas as much as our physical pain. And eventually, they stop working due to our opioid tolerance. I wish you, our fellow former players, and myself, a path through all this confusion. We are all one, but unfortunately the NFLPA is failing in providing us guidance and assistance. They are aware of our PAIN and ADDICTIONS. Now they are having SUICIDES thrown in their faces. When will they act truthfully and completely? The BLOOD is on the OWNERS and NFLPA’s hands.”

Janet McCoy, speaking on behalf of her husband Mike, who played for the Green Bay Packers, responded from the viewpoint of a wife with a suffering husband. She said: “I received a call from my husband yesterday when he received the news of another player’s death. Since Mike is in assisted living for his dementia, all he could do was weep when I answered the phone. I knew why he was crying even before he spoke. How many tears do the players, wives and families have to shed before the NFL takes notice? I would like to suggest that the NFL have a payment plan for mental health therapy after this.  Most men are not able to express themselves when this tragic diagnosis is received. Blessings to all our families.”

The awful truth for the former players who are suffering is that their own players association let them down. The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) was so focused on just getting money that there were not secondary concerns about players’ safety or post career medical and insurance benefits. There probably are hundreds of thousands of players from the college, high school and semi-pro ranks who have suffered severe injuries and now are depending on Social Security Disability insurance and Medicare for life-altering injuries.

High school football remains king in certain sections of the country, but what would happen if former high school players suffering from devastating injuries started suing schools? Would school boards who are either self-insured or pay huge insurance premiums keep the games going?

The answer to that question may come an awful lot sooner than anyone thinks. The National Football League and a helmet manufacturer are being sued by hundreds of former NFL players who contend that the league failed to care for players’ during and after their careers.

The NFL is urging all 50 states to take a very close look at head injuries suffered in high school and other football programs for children.  Whether it is merely lip service or not, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent out 44 letters to states urging them to enforce strict surveillance of head injuries.

There are now numerous lawsuits—and even though the players have directed their complaints against the National Football League—all of football is really on trial. That includes youth leagues, junior high school, high school, and college football. If the NFL and the helmet manufacturer lose on this issue, the whole structure of football will be shaken. The NFL depends on getting ready-made players with years of experience. That could all change because school districts may decide running a football program is too costly in terms of insurance premiums and player safety.

If school boards begin axing football from their budgets, Troy Aikman’s words about the NFL’s future, may become prophetic: “The long-term viability, to me anyway, is somewhat in question as far as what this game is going to look like 20 years from now.”

Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy’s 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on “The Politics of Sports Business.” His book, “The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition” is available at bickley.com and Amazon and featured on Google books.

The Minnesota House of Representatives voted recently to approve a $975 million plan to build the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings a new football stadium and the state Senate was expected to also approve the measure. The House plan forces the owners of the Vikings to raise $427 million of the tab from private sources.

“The taxpayers of Minnesota will be the big losers if forced to subsidize a new playground for millionaire players and multi-millionaire owners,” said Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute and author of its recent work on sports stadium subsidies.

Fan-owned Minnesota Vikings?

Steve Stanek, a research fellow for The Heartland Institute and managing editor of its publication Budget & Tax News, said, “I wonder how many people who support taking hundreds of millions of dollars from residents to hand to wealthy sports team owners and multi-millionaire athletes also believe the wealthy should pay higher taxes? Do they fail to see the irony?”

The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank whose researchers have questioned government subsidies to sports stadiums since the mid 1980s, recently released a Policy Brief proposing fan ownership of teams as a solution to “sports stadium madness.”

“Sports stadium subsidies impose a huge cost to society,” Bast wrote in the brief, released in February. “Unearned rent being held onto by professional sports franchises, made possible largely by public subsidies for new sports stadiums and arenas, is a huge injustice and deadweight loss to the nation.”

“Unearned rent,” a reference to the work of economist Henry George, is created whenever private individuals use force or fraud to restrict competition, Bast notes. The solution, he says, is to remove the privileges that enable individuals and corporations to generate and keep unearned rent.

In the realm of professional sports, removing those privileges means fan ownership of sports franchises, ala the Green Bay Packers. “Because it is owned by the fans, the team will never relocate,” Bast writes, “so it can’t demand subsidies.” The Packers are the least-subsidized professional sports team in the country, he notes.

“The spread of fan-owned teams would break the subsidy culture that now grips all of the major sports leagues,” Bast concludes.

Bast’s Policy Brief, “How to Stop Sports Stadium Madness: Is Fan Ownership the Answer?” can be found online here.

For more comments about the Vikings stadium plan from experts at The Heartland Institute, please contact Tammy Nash at tnash@heartland.org  or 312-377-4000. After regular business hours, contact Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org  or 312-731-9364.

The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit its website at http://heartland.org/  or call 312-377-4000. 

Among the cuts outlined by Mr. Spelman are an across –the-board cut of 10% in spending for recruiting and travel for every sport sponsored the university.  The proposed budget projects a decline of some $550,000 in football ticket sale revenue from 2011-12 to the upcoming year.  That continues a 3 year trend of declining ticket revenues as attendance has fallen significantly.

The Seminole football team finished in the top 4 in final season football polls every year from 1989 to 2002.  Over the past 3 years the Seminoles have only had a record of 26-14.  They have only been to one bowl game and have not beaten their chief rival, the University of Florida.

This downturn on the field has also led to a decline in athletic department giving.  Four years ago Seminole Boosters, the organization set up to handle donations to athletics, reported total donations of $42.4 million.  Last year these donations had dropped to $32.7 million.  Increases in TV revenues and the success of the FSU men’s basketball program have not been able to offset these declines.

Florida State becomes the second Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) member in six months to announce steps needed to erase athletic department operating deficits.  The University of Maryland announced last fall a plan to cut 8 varsity sports to deal with a $4.7 million budget shortfall.  The University of California and Rutgers University have also within the past year admitted that their athletic departments would have to make significant cuts because of budget concerns.

Both schools have been criticized for waiting to notify university officials and coaches about the looming problems until long after the problems had begun.  At FSU one leading booster called on Seminole fans to write major checks to boost donations to the athletic department.

For over two decades the FSU football program was one of the elite programs in the country.  Its teams under Bobby Bowden won national championships in 1993 and 1999 and played for at least 3 others.  When schools such as FSU and Maryland (which has historically had a very successful men’s basketball program) are facing difficult financial times it sends a powerful signal around the country.

Given the overwhelming importance of football as the engine that drives the money train for many athletic departments it is sobering to realize that a few down years on the field might translate into major problems for entire departments.

This story was major news recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Given the difficult financial times institutions of higher education are facing today, even major players in college sports can ill afford to have to deal with declining revenues in their football programs.  In the investment world advisors tell clients to diversify their portfolios and not keep all of their money in one investment.  This, however, may not be possible for college athletic departments.  Is it possible that the goose may be able to kill the golden egg?

This was a conclusion drawn from presentations at a recent conference at the Center for Disease Control.  The conference was convened by the Institute of Medicine, which provides independent advice on health issues to policy makers, foundations and others.

If present trends continue by 2030 42% of all adults in the U.S. will be obese.

U.S. government statistics show that currently 2/3 of all adults and 1/3 of all children are overweight or obese.  Studies indicate that if present trends continue by 2030 42% of all adults in the U.S. will be obese, defined as being at least 30 pounds over a person’s optimum weight.

The illnesses and costs of obesity are known and it is no secret that such costs are spiraling.  We read stories about this topic constantly.  What may be noteworthy about this recent conference is the report that only a systematic, all-encompassing approach may be successful in reversing the current trend.

Here are five goals and some thoughts on how to reach them:

1.  Create an environment where choosing healthy foods and beverages is the obvious, easy option.  This would require that fast food restaurants commit to making at least half of their food options for their kid meals comply with government dietary guidelines for moderately active 4 to 8 year olds.  It would also require businesses, governments and others to reduce the availability of sugary drinks and to make clean, cold water more readily available to workers.
2. Improve information delivery about diet and exercise.  Food and beverage makers, restaurants and media outlets should within 2 years voluntarily adopt nutritionally-based standards for marketing their products to children and young adults.  If this does not work, governments should be prepared to use their regulatory powers to bring about such advertising.
3. Expand the role of employers, health care providers and insurance companies in promoting obesity prevention policies.  Employers should make healthy foods available to employees and adopt policies that encourage employees to exercise during the workday.  Health care providers and insurance companies should work to make preventative health screenings and advice more readily and affordably available.
4. Make it easier for people to incorporate exercise into their daily lives.  Governments and businesses should work together to make walking trails, biking paths, parks, playgrounds and community recreation centers more readily and safely available.
5. Make schools a national focal point for obesity prevention.  Among other things, kids in all grades should be required to engage in 45-60 minutes per day of physical exercise.  It is probably no coincidence that our population has grown more obese as more and more schools have eliminated mandatory PE classes from the curriculum.

The United States was able to build an atomic bomb in just over three years during World War II.  We put men on the moon within eight years of that goal being announced by President Kennedy.  We virtually eliminated polio in about 15 years.  All of these goals were achieved with a strong national focus and the commitment of large amounts of resources.

It will be a national shame if the nation that increased life expectancy by over 25 years during the 20^th Century becomes a nation of inert, unhealthy, unproductive fat people by the middle of the 21^st Century.  It is time for everyone to take note of the problem and actually begin to seriously confront it.

Readers who want to find more information on this hot button topic can read a recent article in USA Today by going to http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/wellness/story/2012-05-09/obesity-epidemic-strategies/54813912/1?csp=34news.  The article includes an interactive map of the U.S. that provides statistics on obesity by state.  It also includes a number of links to other resources.

But Junior Seau didn’t live to be a ripe old age and until an autopsy is performed and a police investigation is complete, there is no need to speculate about the circumstances surrounding Seau’s death other than he was found dead of a shotgun wound on the morning of May 2, 2012

The gun wound should strike a nerve among former players. It seems that is becoming a way of life and death among NFL alum suffering from life altering injuries that probably came from years and years of absorbing hits on the football field.  Seau is now just another former player who is dead from unnatural circumstances.

There is either some serendipity or karma about Seau’s death because National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell had just announced the suspension of four players who performed with the 2010 New Orleans Saints football team who allegedly put up money to knock out opposing players.

Football was nearly banned in the very early part of the 20th century by President Theodore Roosevelt when players were maimed or died on the field during college games. Roosevelt forced football people and college presidents to “clean up the game.”

The National Football League’s modern day success was partially built on the “Violent World of Sam Huff” a 1960 CBS news magazine show which featured Huff and the Giants and the way the team played defensive football.

The sport is entertainment for fans but there have been tragic consequences for some of Sunday’s grid iron heroes. In April, former Atlanta Falcons player Ray Easterling killed himself. The suicide death of one-time Chicago Bears defensive back Dave Duerson in 2011 received plenty of coverage but that didn’t stop former players from ultimately taking their own lives.

This reporter gets many e-mails and calls from former players. A column on Gene Atkins, a former defensive back with the New Orleans Saints led a former player to call me.

“I read the story you did on Gene Atkins,” said the former player who was on a Super Bowl championship team. “In reading this story, I felt that I was reading about myself. I am currently on SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) and Non-Degenerative NFL Disability. I have been diagnosed with Post-Concussion Syndrome. I have been in a rehab facility twice to treat my depression, cognitive learning and chronic pain. I have been struggling with my depression, loss of memory and chronic pain for a long time. It was hard – and is still hard – for me to accept. I get really confused when the NFL doesn’t accept me. The NFL don’t even have a number for retired players that are depressed or even suicidal. Dave Duerson was my friend. We talked and played in golf tournaments after we retired. What he did could have easily been me.

Look at the number of NFL safeties that are going through the same problems. We all played around the same time and all were known as and trained to be head hunters. Seek and destroy– that’s what (a coach) told me to do. Make people afraid to come in your territory. I had my best game in the Super Bowl and don’t even remember playing in that game. I only know what happened by watching the tapes and talking to the players. I was knocked out during the first series of the game and had my nose broken when (a running back’s) forearm came throw my open face mask.

“Just wanted to let you know that these bounties didn’t just start.  I won’t say under what coach and who directed it; but I received bounty monies and so did a lot of my teammates. We all were excited about going to the early Monday morning meeting. This is when we got our cash for big hits, knockout, roaches and whatever name you wanted to use. We got paid in cash and watched film as a team to make decisions on what hits would qualify.

“The goal was to knock players out and the easiest way was on special teams. And everyone that was any type of a hitter wanted to be on special teams. This wasn’t for everybody – only the big hitters.”

The former player in question has not followed up after his e-mails. But his story is quite similar to many others. Depression, loss of family, living on the government dole because the National Football League Players Association never negotiated a post-career benefit package is common.

Players Association Executive Directors from Ed Garvey to Gene Upshaw to DeMaurice Smith have traded future benefits for “Money Now”, which was the slogan of the players during the 1982 National Football League Players Association walkout. The players association failed the membership in 1982, 1987 and every subsequent collective bargaining negotiation.

Goodell, the New Orleans Saints franchise, Saints management, coaches and players are lucky that law enforcement officials are not at initial glance investigating the whole bounty case and that the league is being allowed to handle the situation.

That’s exactly what sports leagues and organizations want–the ability to impose sport discipline not legal discipline on employees.

The NBA now has a National Football League owner in his league. Tom Benson just purchased the New Orleans Hornets franchise which will now be his second active professional sports franchise in the city. Benson had owned an Arena Football League team in New Orleans.

During the news conference introducing Benson as the new Hornets owner, Stern told the “probing” media that Benson would not answer any questions about his Saints, the bounties, the suspensions imposed on Saints upper management and coaches and that he was there to talk about basketball.

“With all due respect Commissioner Stern, Mr. Benson was handed over $186.5 million between 2002-10 as a thank you for keeping the Saints in New Orleans despite having a long-term lease. The state has rebuilt the SuperDome at a cost of many millions of dollars, the state has created a tax-free zone between the Dome and the arena and Mr. Benson bought the Dominion Tower from the state, renovating it and then renting office space to the state. Given that Mr. Benson is getting hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, it is incumbent upon him to answer questions. Are you, Mr. Stern, afraid of real questions?”

Sports leagues do control United States media. Leagues and colleges are partners with CBS, Disney (ESPN), Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, Comcast’s NBC Universal and Time Warner. Local newspapers own some teams or have a business relationship with privately owned teams. The “big” names of sports reporting have done relatively little to justify their reputations.

Bob Costas talked about steroid usage in baseball in the 1990s as did the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell. That is about the extent of reporting in sports. The Lupicas, the Alboms and the rest of the big city sports columnists fall flat on their collective faces when reporting on sports real issues. There is an awful lot of hype surrounding Bryant Gumbel’s HBO show but there is little substance in the program.

Will the media wake up and really cover sports like a business? Doubtful unless you count Mike Lupica’s Madison Square Garden experience as better when the Knicks win so they better sign the right stars to make the Garden rock like it did in 1994.

Junior Seau will be lauded in death and remembered as a great player. But to some, he is just another statistic. Another young man, 43, who died prematurely after a spectacular career. There are newer and younger stars who will provide Sunday or Monday night or Thursday night entertainment; and Friday night high school football is still revered as is Saturday college football. The players are interchangeable and disposable. The games will go on.

Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academys 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on “The Politics of Sports Business.” His book, “The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition” is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com.

The blog article by Richard Vedder, “College Sports and the Seven Deadly Sins,”  promotes serious thought and consideration in the field of sports as it relates to intercollegiate athletics.

However, this article is the one drop of rain that has made my bucket overflow and I am prompted to respond.  Professor Vedder and Professor Roy Boyd, who are both with the Department of Economics at Ohio University, expose yet another duplicitous attitude which has infested university campuses ever since the inception of  intercollegiate athletics.

The 1942 movie, “The Male Animal,” with actor Henry Fonda is reminiscent of the historical jealousy between the academic faculty and those involved with sports. The history of tension between those two factions is an old one.

What I find amazingly hypocritical about Vedder’s piece is that today we face ballooning tuition costs, rising faculty salaries, a student loan crisis  (the next “bubble”), and an attitude of antipathy towards an economic system which has built this country.

Faculty members have for so long fed at the trough of public tax dollars or solid endowments from private funding that they have little regard for a real free market—and perhaps they do not even understand it today.

It’s a fact nowadays that major college athletics faces some real soul searching but it will sort out its difficulties. What really gives me a rash is that this same class of “judges of college athletics” can be cited for their own seven deadly sins. I have seen it first hand at several different university campuses.

So let me offer in rebuttal my view on “College Faculties and the Seven Deadly Sins” and address it as if I were speaking face-to-face with Dr. Vedder.

1. Lechery or Lust:  Let’s get serious here, Dr. Vedder. Is there not ONE faculty member at Ohio University who has not or is not “involved” with some alluring young coed? Lechery among college professors is legendary!

2. Gluttony:  Tell me, professor, is every single grant your colleagues submit built upon a budget of honesty and bare bones?  Or is there not some “padding” to make certain that the real bucks get there?

3. Avarice/Greed: True, this is the most pervasive of sins, but is it not a function of college faculty unions to “advocate for” higher salaries, lavish pensions and “comfortable” benefits? And just who is it who is “exploiting” students?  Canned lectures, videos, and PowerPoint presentations cannot be the real hallmark of developing critical thinking on college campuses these days, now, can they?

4. Sloth:  So nice of you to give coaches a pass on this one, but you do not deserve one.  You work a 30-hour work week at best; have every weekend off; celebrate every holiday; enjoy Christmas Breaks, Spring Breaks and Summer Breaks (and those who do teach summer courses receive extra contracts); have graduate assistants to grade your tests; have research assistants to find material for your next book (the proceeds of which you personally pocket); and complain about your teaching load if you have to teach more than two to three courses per term.  On top of it all, faculty get TENURE, coaches do not.  How industrious of you!

5. Wrath: Indeed, this sin is evidenced in a physical sense in athletic competition, but is controlled within the contests. However, faculty wrath has been inbred with vengeance and manifests itself with such fury that not only have faculty members fallen victim, but entire departments have been obliterated. And THAT is violence which lasts!

6. Envy:  Come on, Dr. Vedder, just what motivated you to write this article as if it were the second “95 Theses”?  Epiphanies, which you seem to present here, should reveal the inner person, and not through one’s own myopia to reveal someone else’s shortcomings.

7. Pride:  Ah yes! The crown jewel of all faculty envy of coaches, since it is a fact of the universe that coaches are nothing but sinew held together by pride. What hubris generated your synthesis of sport analysis and prompted you to offer up your assessment and application of these sins to college sport, Professor Vedder?

It is one thing to be critical of another facet of a common institution, and quite another to sharpen one’s arrows then dip them into a poison. And what is it they say about people living in glass houses?  Oh yes, they shouldn’t throw stones.

My patience, for one, with such hypocritical tripe is at its end.

Dr. Arthur Ogden is a United States Sports Academy faculty member in the Department of Sports Management. He has served in education for more than 45 years in several capacities, including Dean of Academic Affairs, college football coach for 12 years and college athletics director for more than 10 years. He has taught in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Botswana and in Jamaica. You can reach Dr. Ogden at aogden@ussa.edu or visit www.ussa.edu.

My colleague, Roy Boyd, and I were complaining about the latest excesses in intercollegiate athletics (ICA) at our school (Ohio University), when Roy opined that a large number of the seven deadly sins were involved. Upon further reflections, I think all seven of those sins have been part of the ICA scene in recent years.

I will use a slightly updated (from Biblical times) list of the sins as used by Dante in the “Divine Comedy,” very close to what I understand to be the official doctrine today of the Roman Catholic Church regarding such matters.

1. Lechery or Lust: Of course, the Penn State scandal seems rooted in lust,  but so are many others. Football coaches have been sacked at several schools (e.g., the University of Arkansas, University of Colorado) over scandals related to the provision or inappropriate pursuit of sexual favors.

2. Gluttony: Excessive spending and consumption pervades high level and even mid-major college sports. Coaches love to brag to competitors, “my indoor practice facility (weight room, office, artificial-surface football field) is bigger/nicer than yours.” This has contributed to the athletics arms race.

3. Avarice/Greed: Arguably the most pervasive of the sins, the pursuit of wealth and power is the hallmark of modern intercollegiate athletics. The mega-million dollar salaries, exploitation of students in the pursuit of wealth (e.g., the NCAA), etc., are all about greed.

4. Discouragement/Sloth: True, most of the successful participants in ICA are anything but slothful (lazy), yet the culture of ICA discourages hard academic work, and stories abound of athletes taking no-work courses, of schools canceling classes to allow the party atmosphere around big games to fester, etc. News reports claim that even Berkeley administrators are telling instructors not to schedule midterms on days when the team has a Friday night home game.

5. Wrath: Again, the competitive juices that lead to entertaining matches sometimes boil over into excessive anger accompanied by physical force. Players have been intentionally maimed, coaches have hit their own players, etc. For decades, Bobby Knight’s temper tantrums were a fixture of college basketball.

6. Envy: Much of the spending spree has been motivated by envy–a desire to not only keep up with competitors but also a desire to reduce their power and glory in order to improve one’s own relative position.

7. Pride, Hubris: Supposedly the deadliest of the deadly sins, the desire to be more important, more regarded than others, is at the heart of the athletics arms race. All the talk about the favorable financial and applicant gains associated with athletic success are all cover-ups for the hubris involved.

My discussion with Roy was prompted by news from Ohio University. A few weeks ago, our basketball team went far, making the NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen. Our $250,000 a year basketball coach, John Groce, behaved rationally–within a few nanoseconds (it seemed) of season’s end, he departed for the University of Illinois for roughly five times the salary. Ohio University then hired a new coach, with a below .500 record at Texas Christian, as head coach at $425,000 a year–70 percent more than the previous coach was paid (but less than his TCU salary).  The football coach, Frank Solich, making a paltry $330,000 a year despite a pretty good record, probably marched into the athletic director’s office and demanded to make more than the basketball coach, and reportedly is now being given a $100,000 raise. A successful basketball season leads to a $100,000 raise for the football coach–go figure.

Stories like this are going on all over the country. In the same year that I was told I could no longer have a phone because of budget constraints, my university is increasing intercollegiate athletic subsidies because it succumbed to some of the Seven Deadly Sins.

College sports is not Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon. The fatal problem is the Iron Law of Sports: every time someone wins a game, someone else loses. It is mathematically  impossible for a majority of schools to excel at the major sports. A majority of schools, including mine, almost certainly can never really succeed on any sustained basis, since they lack the population base or the following to realistically generate the revenues justifying extravagant expenditure.  The fact that they continue to try shows how subsidies and tuition fees collected by higher education have often been misused in wasteful, even anti-academic, ways.

Richard Vedder is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Ohio University. He directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, where he has published numerous articles on the economics of intercollegiate athletics.  Interested readers can go to the website at http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/. 

Punishment without evidence is not allowed by the American Constitution.

Commissioner Roger Goodell wants players to “trust” him based upon his word and his alone.

NFL above the Constitution?

These three statements blend together into the NFL’s scandal called “BountyGate.”  First, let’s get this one fact straight, the Commish is an employee paid by the owners of NFL teams.  The owners’ (and NFL) are being sued (as of May 2) by more than 1,500 former players, mostly on player safety and health issues.  It is the Commissioner’s job to protect the NFL (and by protecting the NFL, also the owners).

However, Goodell is missing the point if he argues he is only trying to protect players by discouraging bounty-like programs.  Paying someone to injure someone else is a crime.  Not a yellow flag, not a suspension, but an actual crime, punishable by prison time.  If  Commissioner Goodell has evidence of actual payments of an injury-causing hit, which he claims to have, then the evidence should be handed over to all proper authorities for prosecution.  If Goodell doesn’t do this, he is  in dereliction of duty and complicit; he should be fired and should not be trusted.  It seems obvious that the Commissioner has other agendas on his plate rather than fighting for player safety.

How to solve the problem?  Easy, a simple release of the evidence would do wonders in toning down the rhetoric.  The Commissioner should be told that it is not often in the United States where someone can be penalized without the benefit of representation and without access to evidence against the accused.  In the NFL, obviously this can happen.  This overstepping of the Commissioner into the land of crime should lead legislators, especially those from Ohio, Wisconsin and Louisiana, to ask if this “monopoly” should not be controlled.  Maybe, just maybe, the NFL considers itself above the Constitution’s protection of our inalienable rights.

What is the solution?  Transparency.  The accused has the right to face his accuser.  And the accuser is NOT the NFL’s commissioner.  The accuser is the evidence gathered and used against the player to convict them.  Commissioner, show us the evidence.  We understand you are protecting the money men (owners).  Now be a Commissioner of the entire league and protect the rights of the players, too.

Dr. Ted Phillips is the Chair of Sports Studies at the United States Sports Academy and has had a long career as an educator and coach.  He is also a longtime diehard New Orleans Saints fan.  He can be reached at tphillips@ussa.edu.  Anyone interested in the Academy’s programs can go to http://ussa.edu.

The key to being able to develop a sound distance training philosophy is to have a solid understanding of the concept of Periodization. Periodization is the division of a training year into a cycle of several phases—each phase devoted to different training methods and objectives. Periodized training allows runners to emphasize a specific type of training during a phase within a year-long training program. Other types of training are not neglected during each training phase—they are simply less emphasized.

Conditioning Phase or Base Period:

Within the scope of the traditional track and field year, the conditioning or base period is basically the summer months for cross country and the winter months for track. It is important for a coach to understand during the initial development of the base period, the athlete will most likely be sore for a minimum of three weeks.

Training should begin easy and there should be gradual increases in the time or distance run during training sessions. All physiological gains are made during periods of recovery; therefore, it is important to build recovery or rest into this phase as well as every other training phase.

An excellent guideline to follow in this phase is the “10% rule”– meaning after the initial three weeks of training, volume (miles or minutes run) should not increase much greater than 10% from one week to the next week.

A sample week workout during the base period might follow this schedule:

Monday:          Steady State (Long) Run

Tuesday:          Recovery

Wednesday:    Pace

Thursday:        Recovery

Friday:             Tempo

Saturday:         Recovery

Sunday:           Active Rest or Complete Rest

Pre-competition Phase:

In this phase, aerobic capacity should continue to be enhanced. Weekly running time or distance should continue to be increased as the quantity and quality of pace segments and the length of the steady state run should also be increased; however, it is important to note that coaches should not increase intensity and duration on the same day. One week, there can be an increase in the intensity of the workout and the following week, the distance of the segments run or the total workout can be increased.

A weekly schedule during this period might include the following:

Monday:          Steady state (long) run

Tuesday:          Recovery day

Wednesday:    Pace day

Thursday:        Light hill day or recovery day

Friday:             Pre-race day or recovery day

Saturday:         Race day or tempo run

Sunday:           Active or complete rest day

Competition Phase:

As the athlete moves into the competition phase of the season, competitive success is emphasized. The length of individual workouts and the total weekly mileage or time is maintained or slightly decreased. Pace workouts should have achieved a load of race distance or slightly longer. The pace run should become faster and recovery time allotted between segments should be gradually reduced. The steady state run is still a staple of the program, but the distance is gradually decreased as the pace is increased.

A weekly schedule during this period might include the following:

Monday:          Moderate run

Tuesday:          Pace

Wednesday:    Recovery

Thursday:        Moderate pace (condensed portion of pace workout) or tempo run

Friday:             Pre-race

Saturday:         Competition

Sunday:           Rest

Dr. Buns is Assistant Professor of Health and Human Performance and Assistant Track and Cross Country Coach at Concordia University, Nebraska.  He is a previous contributor to the Digest.  See http://thesportdigest.com/?s=matthew+buns. The United States Sports Academy offers several fields of study that can benefit coaches and those interested in the area of health and fitness.  For more information go to http://ussa.edu.  Dr. Buns can be contacted by email at matthew.buns@cune.edu.