10 June, 2009 - USC men's basketball coach Tim Floyd has resigned in the wake of a recruiting scandal and player defections...

It occurs to me that the many E2 noders from outside of the US must be somewhat mystified on reading a news item like this. As, indeed, are many Americans whose enthusiasms don't include sports at our college level. Perhaps in this writeup I can shed some light on this phenomenon for this audience.

I don't believe that the way in which major sports are operated as a franchise by American institutions of higher learning is duplicated in any country outside the U.S. Cambridge University in the UK must have various sports clubs, for example, but it surely has nothing comparable to the sheer scale of, say, the Ohio State University football program. The OSU football stadium seats in excess of 100,000. The University of Michigan football stadium is currently undergoing renovations which will bring its seating capacity to around 108,000. They fill these venues, and dozens of others of comparable size, 6 or 8 times each fall. This is mania, on a scale which in most countries might only be approached by, say, the FIFA World Cup.

The athletics department is undoubtedly the biggest budget and revenue component of every large American University or College. To be sure, much if not most of this revenue comes as donations from alumni, but successful programs generate millions of dollars from ticket sales and media rights to games, especially in the "big 2" sports, namely football and men's basketball. These sports generally are made to pay for the rest of the sports offered by the athletic department, everything from swimming to lacrosse, which generally operate at a loss.

Coaches of elite university football and basketball programs can become the highest profile individuals in the entire State. I dare say that more citizens of South Carolina, where I now live, can name the coach of the University of South Carolina "Gamecocks" football team (currently one Steve Spurrier) than can name the state's governer (currently one Mark Sanford.)

When Jim Calhoun, the coach of the enormously successful University of Connecticut men's basketball team, was needled during a recent press conference for being the highest paid state employee, at a salary of $1.6 million per year, in a time of historical economic stress, he quite correctly responded that his program generated $12 million for the school. (And he said a few other colorful things, in addition...)

Then there's the gambling angle. Next to American professional football, College football and basketball are easily the most popular events on which to wager. According to one report I found after a moment's googling, the FBI estimates that, each year, 2 to 3 billion dollars are wagered illegally on the annual NCAA Division I men's basketball national tournament. If you should ever happen to be in Las Vegas, Nevada during the football season (roughly August through December), you will find football games, college and pro, are the most prominently advertised betting opportunities in the many legal booking establishments.

Naturally, in the American way, something generating this much interest and emotion has fuelled the growth of a vast media ecosystem. Entire cable television channels, magazines, radio syndicates, and, of course, websites, now feed the demand for information on all aspects of college football and basketball.

Think about this, if you didn't attend American University: would you be willing to donate hundreds, even thousands of dollars every year to your dear old alma mater for a "seat license", which then allows you to purchase tickets to your team's home games at additional expense? This isn't a ticket purchase; it's the purchase of the right to buy your ticket. Or how about this: would you cut a check for a million dollars to pay for a new weight room for the football team?

Until you can answer one or both of these questions in the affirmative, you don't understand the passion that American college sports can generate.

Of course, anything involving this much money, ego, and competitive pressure must have a dark side. There's a fundamental tension built in to this system, whereby the demand for a successful athletic program often works at cross-purposes to the stated mission of the University. The gifted but illiterate athlete, admitted to the university under fradulent pretenses to give the team a better chance, is not a new story. Nor is the mob operative who gets his "hooks" into a player on a team, to get him to fix a game for crooked gamblers.

There's also an awful lot of "using" that goes on in college sports. Many coaches plainly use the young men to advance their fame, fortune and career as they hop from job to job. The athletes, for their part, use the university as their springboard to a fabulously lucrative pro career. Or, at least, they think that's what they're doing - only a pitifully tiny fraction of Division I College athletes ever make the pros in football or basketball. Self delusion about this is another handle by which they may be used. Even the professional leagues get into the act - they use the College programs as their "minor leagues", and don't have to pay for the privilege. High school coaches, Amateur Athletic Union coaches, parents, agents, and all manner of other "hangers on" all want a piece of any promising high school kid who looks like he might be the next star. Lo and behold, next thing you know, State U hires a new deputy assistent athletic director, who just happens to be the uncle of the kid who just committed to play basketball there.

The stated ideal is that the athlete will be an amateur- compensated only by the scholarship he receives from the university. The university may reap millions of dollars from his efforts, but the student athlete is not supposed to see any of it. Further, the athlete is supposed to be a legitimate student. He is supposed to go to class. He is supposed to actually take all the exams himself. He is not supposed to be able to enroll in sham courses or majors ("basket weaving"). He is supposed to choose a school to attend and play for based on a personal valuation of the educational opportunity, not because some wealthy alumni paid his mother ten grand. Aside from his scholarship, the athlete is not supposed to receive any benefit not available to the rest of the student body.

These are the ideals, but they struggle in the face of the many pressures, in practice. I am somewhat reminded of Robert Graves' depiction of Rome under the Julio-Claudians in I, Claudius. The culture and society had strict mores on many types of behavior, to which all outwardly adhered, and for violations of which the penalties were severe. Even an accusation could bring ruin. In spite of this, these strict mores were widely observed only in the breach.

And so it seems to be in the world of college athletics. Each year, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the overall governing body, imposes sanctions of varying severity on programs found to be in violation of the rules.

Over the years, these rules have grown in complexity to an almost absurd degree. A coach can make no more than 1 phone call a week to a recruit. The recruit can make no more than 5 "official" visits to the school. He can receive no more than 3 tickets to games. The coach cannot buy an athlete so much as a milkshake. He cannot give the athlete so much as a ride to the bus station. If he should "bump into" a recruit in public, he's not supposed to talk to him.

A coach can be diligently trying to follow all the rules and still trip up, violating them inadvertently.

Yet there seems no doubt that there has grown up a sleazy culture of "plausible deniability" concerning the NCAA rules of college athletics. We know this because we hear of NCAA sanctions every year on rules violators. The following list, by no means intended to be complete, lists some recent ones:

2005 - Baylor University basketball program put on lengthy probation, forfeited scholarships, and had their number of allowed recruiting visits reduced after coach Dave Bliss was found to have been paying portions of players tuitions not covered by their scholarships, and other violations. Coach Bliss received a 10 year "show cause" order, under which any college that wanted to hire him must "show cause" to the NCAA as to why he should be hired. This effectively bans him from coaching at the college level.

2008 - Indiana University put on 3 years probation for recruiting violations by coach Kelvin Sampson, who, after being forbidden to make phone calls to recruits (he had been caught making way too many of them) nevertheless proceeded to make a bunch more.

2009 - Florida State University told it will forfeit games because of a massive academic cheating scandal in the athletic department.

2009 - Alabama University put on probation and told that it will (retroactively) forfeit games after a scandal where players obtained free textbooks for friends.

2009 - University of Memphis basketball under investigation after allegations that Derrick Rose, star point guard during Memphis' 2008 appearance in the national title game, had had someone else take his Scholastic Aptitude Test, used as a college entrance exam. (These proceedings pending as of writing with the NCAA).

2008/2009 University of Southern California under investigation by the NCAA for both football and basketball. Star football running back Reggie Bush, a key player on the USC teams that won 2 national championships, was alleged to have received large cash payments and other compensation from a sports agent while in the program. Star basketball player O.J. Mayo was alleged to have been given cash payments by the coach, Tim Floyd. Floyd announced his resignation on June 9, 2009. As of this writing, the NCAA continues to investigate USC for "lack of institutional control."

There are more, many, many more. You can find them. Some of these episodes involve the same coaches (Calipari and Sampson), gone to another school after they got their first one in trouble. Some involve a school already on "probation", caught in further violations.

Is anybody clean? At this level, when this much money and pressure is involved, it is probably wiser to reverse the traditional presumption of innocence. Should one not be a sports fan? I don't personally believe this. Though I do believe that one should not invest their entire sense of self-worth in a football team...