A Call to Action: Foreword
A Call to Action: Reconnecting College Sports and Higher Education
- A Call to Action: Letter of transmittal
- A Call to Action: Foreword
- A Call to Action: Ten Years Later
- A Call to Action: A Call to Action
- A Call to Action: Appendix A: Additional Issues for Consideration
- A Call to Action: Appendix B: Action on Knight Commission Recommendations of March 1991
- A Call to Action: Appendix C: Meeting Participants
- A Call to Action: Appendix D: Acknowledgments
- A Call to Action: Appendix E: Statement of Principles
Foreword
In 1989, as a decade of highly visible scandals in college sports drew to a close, the trustees of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation were concerned that athletics abuses threatened the very integrity of higher education. In October of that year, they created a Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and directed it to propose a reform agenda for college sports.
In announcing this action, James L. Knight, then chairman of the Foundation, emphasized that it did not reflect any hostility toward college athletics. "We have a lot of sports fans on our board, and we recognize that intercollegiate athletics have a legitimate and proper role to play in college and university life," he said. "Our interest is not to abolish that role but to preserve it by putting it back in perspective. We hope this Commission can strengthen the hands of those who want to curb the abuses which are shaking public confidence in the integrity of not just big-time collegiate athletics but the whole institution of higher education."
The trustees saw this as a goal worthy of a foundation that identified higher education as one of its primary interests, for the abuses in athletics programs had implications reaching far beyond football stadiums and basketball arenas. To understand their concern and the subsequent work of the Commission, it is necessary to look back on the extent to which corruption had engulfed big-time college sports in the 1980s.
In a cover story shortly before the Commission was created, Time magazine described the problem as "… an obsession with winning and moneymaking that is pervading the noblest ideals of both sports and education in America." Its victims, Time went on to say, were not just athletes who found the promise of an education a sham but "the colleges and universities that participate in an educational travesty - a farce that devalues every degree and denigrates the mission of higher education."
Here are some broad outlines of the problems the Commission saw then:
- In the 1980s, 109 colleges and universities were censured, sanctioned or put on probation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). That number included more than half the universities playing at the NCAA's top competitive level - 57 institutions out of 106.
- Nearly a third of present and former professional football players responding to a survey near the end of the decade said they had accepted illicit payments while in college, and more than half said they saw nothing wrong with the practice.
- Another survey showed that among the 106 institutions then in the NCAA's Division I-A, 48 had graduation rates under 30 percent for their men's basketball players and 19 had the same low rate for football players.
It was small wonder that eight out of 10 Americans questioned in a Louis Harris poll in 1989 agreed that intercollegiate sports had spun out of control. They agreed that athletics programs were being corrupted by big money, and felt that the many cases of serious rules violations had undermined the traditional role of universities as places where young people learn ethics and integrity.
A 1989 series in The New York Times raised another warning flag:
"High school athletics have become the latest entree on the American sports menu, served up to help satisfy the voracious appetite of the fan. As a result, scholastic athletes are on the verge of becoming as important to the billion-dollar sports industry as their college brothers and sisters - and just as vulnerable to big-time exploitation."
Somehow, Knight Foundation concluded, sanity had to be restored to this bleak scene and the values of higher education put above all else in the world of intercollegiate athletics.
Neither the Foundation trustees nor the members of the new Commission were under any illusions that the task would be easy. As far back as 1929, another major American foundation - the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching - had published a comprehensive study of college athletics and had reached conclusions that sounded distressingly familiar 60 years later: recruiting had become corrupt, professionals had replaced amateurs, education was being neglected, and commercialism reigned.
The problem had become worse in the intervening years as the popularity of college sports soared and millions of television dollars were poured into college athletics. The stakes had been raised, putting an even higher premium on winning.
Television money had also moved colleges and universities into the entertainment business in a much bigger way. Many of the most vocal and partisan fans were not students or parents or alumni, but people who valued winning more than they did the universities' underlying purposes. The thrill of victory, sports as spectacle, sports for gambling - these were their lodestones.
In the face of these trends, the good news was that it was still possible to point to major colleges and universities that ran successful athletic programs without sacrificing either their ethical standards or their academic integrity. As Knight Foundation saw it, reflecting the hopes of many others, the challenge of the 1990s was to develop and win acceptance of realistic reforms that would bring all of higher education's sports programs back under the academic tent.
As its contribution to meeting that challenge, the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics met repeatedly over a period of five years and produced three reports that helped channel the head of steam building up behind college sports reform in the 1990s.1
The Commission laid out an analysis of the problems facing college sports and proposed a "new model for intercollegiate athletics." This analysis was straightforward: Following decades of presidential neglect and institutional indifference, big-time college sports were "out of control." The reform agenda Commission members proposed was equally straightforward, the "one-plus-three" model - presidential control directed toward academic integrity, financial integrity, and independent certification.
No claim was made that their recommendations would solve all the problems tarnishing college sports, or even that all problems would ever be solved to everyone's satisfaction. "Reform is not a destination but a never-ending process," said the Commission's last report.
Despite the fact that the Commission held no formal authority, nearly two-thirds of its specific recommendations had been endorsed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association by 1993. It was not until 1996, however, that the most significant of these recommendations won approval when the NCAA voted to replace a governance structure controlled primarily by athletic administrators with a system that put college presidents in charge of all planning and policy activities, including the budget.
A Knight Commission statement welcomed this development and underscored what it meant: "So now it's up to the presidents to deliver." With that, the Commission announced its formal dissolution but said it would be watching "with an interested eye" to see how the presidents handled their new power.
As the 10th anniversary of the Commission's first report in March 1991 approached, the members decided to reconvene for a fresh look at what has happened in this intervening decade and to assess the state of college athletics at the beginning of this new century. Had the situation improved or worsened? Were there new problems that warranted attention?
The report that follows presents the Commission's findings from a series of meetings in 2000 and 2001 with NCAA representatives, university presidents, a trustee board chair, faculty, conference commissioners, athletics directors, coaches, athletes, authors, professional sports executives, television officials, a sports apparel representative, a gambling lobbyist, leaders of national higher education associations, and a U.S. senator.
After assessing those hearings, the Commission concludes with some satisfaction that the NCAA has moved a long way toward achieving the goals laid out in the Commission's earlier reports (see Appendix B). Many reform efforts have been undertaken over the last decade with sincerity and energy. We reiterate our strong conviction that college sports, when properly conducted, are worth saving. Sports at all levels have been a source of immense satisfaction, self-discipline, and achievement for tens of thousands of young men and women.
That said, it is clear that good intentions and reform measures of recent years have not been enough. After digesting the extensive testimony offered over some six months, the Commission is forced to reiterate its earlier conclusion that "at their worst, big-time college athletics appear to have lost their bearings." Athletics continue to "threaten to overwhelm the universities in whose name they were established."
Indeed, we must report that the threat has grown rather than diminished. More sweeping measures are imperative to halt the erosion of traditional educational values in college sports. The evidence strongly suggests that it is not enough simply to add new rules to the NCAA's copious rule book or ask presidents to carry the burden alone. Higher education must draw together all of its strengths and assets to reassert the primacy of the educational mission of the academy. The message that all parts of the higher education community must proclaim is emphatic:
Together, we created today's disgraceful environment. Only by acting together can we clean it up.
