justplainbil

Just Plain Bill

Another NCAA Black Eye

In this time of world and national crises, you may wonder why I would spend my time writing about something that might be considered a trivial matter to most folks, but I have a “bone to pick” with the National Collegiate Athletic Association about their abdication of responsibility for the ongoing, persistent movement of college football and basketball coaches.

If college athletes wish to move from one college to attend and compete for another, in most cases they have to sit out their next year of competition. Yet football and basketball coaches are free to jump from one school to another, regardless of the length of their commitment in their signed, “binding” employment contract. There’s no one-year waiting period for them as there is for the very same athletes they coach. Especially egregious are those football coaches who announce their intent or actually leave their teams for a new position just prior to an end-of-season bowl game. Those coaches abandon personal commitments to both the school and to the young men and women recruited, ironically, for their very own long-term personal commitments to the same school. 

This thought came to mind while watching The Blind Side once again, the great movie about a young man’s journey from abject poverty to college and NFL success – thanks to the incredible generosity and gifts of a special family. The movie depicts the steady stream of major college football coaches paying recruiting visits to the home of this football player, plying their wares, selling the merits and benefits from their individual schools and football programs – all with a heavy dose of personal appeal.

What blew me away is that many of these coaches at prominent schools at the time the movie was made, played by the actual real life coaches, are now at other schools or have left the profession. Of all depicted in the movie, all extremely well paid I might add, not a single one of them is still coaching at that school portrayed in the movie, or they have left coaching for broadcasting

Question: Why are coaches allowed to walk away from their signed contracts to serve, and leave schools at any time they want without penalty? We’ve even watched this happen at schools where improprieties involving NCAA rules took place: the perpetuating coach is free to move on to another college, the pros, or to broadcasting it appears, without cost or consequence. 

There. I’ve said it and I do feel a little better.  I realize it’s unlikely my blog on this topic will affect change. Far too many leaders of universities are focused on the financial rewards that might result from having a “big name” coach in their employ – regardless of flaws in character and in the NCAA system.