It hasn’t garnered a whole lot of attention since the announcement that CBS would name its players this year, but a battle has been going on between the NCAA and fantasy sports since late summer. There hasn’t been much real action, but plenty of handwringing, harsh words, hyperbole and misinformation have been tossed around.
Finally, today via The Huffington Post, NCAA president Myles Brand decided to comment publicly on the issue.
In case you don’t feel like reading the entire thing, it’s actually relatively conciliatory. Brand certainly makes clear that he doesn’t agree with naming college players in fantasy games and heads down some of the bumpy roads that a number of his colleagues have driven in trying to make their points, but he stops short of predicting the end of “amateur” athletics.
A cynic might say that it’s not incredibly surprising to find a softer stance from the president of an organization in the middle of a $6 billion contract with the same company that sparked this whole controversy (a relationship Brand does fairly mention). Really, though, how many cynical journalists are out there …
Still, despite softer language and a few apparent attempts to defuse the controversy, Brand still took some missteps in arguing the NCAA’s case. For proper treatment, I figured I’d go through part of his op-ed piece Fire Joe Morgan style. (Bolded text below is copied directly from Brand’s writing.)
It’s been two weeks now since the kickoff of the college football season and the kickoff of the college football fantasy season that for the first time is using real names of student-athletes.
Sorry, sir, but player names have actually been used in online fantasy games for 13 years.
The acquisition and trading of student-athletes, the substitution of their university or college standing with fantasy team names and all for the sake only of virtual competition, runs counter to some of the most important characteristics that distinguish college from professional sports. Those who participate in college sports are students, and the first purpose of intercollegiate athletics is to enhance the educational experience of those students.
I haven’t taken the time at this point to review all the graduation rate data (or figure out how to read all of the NCAA’s charts), but I do know that the two most penalized sports under the NCAA’s new graduation-rate measuring system for the 2007-08 academic year were also the two most prominent — football and men’s basketball. Despite operating with rosters of only about 15 players, men’s basketball easily outpaced all other sports in instances of penalties.
Now, part of this is certainly the fact that more than 300 schools in Division I-A alone sport men’s basketball squads. However, if the “first purpose” is to enhance the academic experience of the players, then a whole lot of coaches and athletics directors either missed the memo or are really bad at their jobs, at least by this measure.
By the way, if you add baseball to the other two men’s sports, you get 124 penalty situations, compared with 94 among all other sports.
… college fantasy leagues pay no heed to the educational value of intercollegiate athletics as opposed to the entertainment value of professional sports.
I must say, I was quite impressed with all the heed paid to the educational value of the Tennessee-UCLA game a couple of Mondays ago. The educational value of those Tuesday and Thursday night football games is impressive as well, as is all the education provided during the Wednesday night ACC basketball games that make Dick Vitale cry all winter. The ultimate in educational value is probably that enormous group study session that pulls 65 “teams” together every March, beginning on a Tuesday night, continuing on consecutive Thursdays and Fridays and finally completing on a Monday night. How could you fantasy jerks invade this wholesome environment and wrap your entertainment-driven tentacles around everything?
College fantasy leagues conducted on a par with professional fantasy leagues supports in the minds of many that the differences between college sports and professional sports in the real world are disappearing.
You know what else is accomplishing this? A $6 billion contract to air the men’s basketball championship through 2013. A coach making $4 million a year to teach football to the “student-athletes” at Alabama. A fifth Bowl Championship Series football game that is now played a full week after the other four have completed so that it can sit alone on a Monday night. Wait, I feel like I’ve come across this idea of football on a Monday night somewhere before …
That’s the part I don’t like the most.
Give me a break, sir.
Now, Brand does seem to indicate that the NCAA has no intention of suing CBS — or any other fantasy provider — any time in the foreseeable future to remove athlete names, and he finally concedes that fantasy college football has yet to make any discernable impact on the real game. If only Brand could steer clear of the same insincere language spouted by his peers, maybe we’d be getting somewhere.
A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.
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