The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Murphy a recurring nightmare for NCAA
If Chris Murphy’s intention is to become the NCAA’s worst nightmare, say this much for Connecticut’s junior U.S. senator: He quickly is becoming its most recurring one.
In late March, Murphy launched his first in a series of scathing reports on the ills of college athletics. Entitled “Madness Inc.: How Everyone is Getting Rich Off College Sports — Except the Players,” Murphy went after the caretakers of the multibilliondollar industry for their greed. He called on athletes to be compensated. He called it a civil rights issue.
Would he stop the Madness?
Hardly.
On Thursday, Murphy released his second treatise. “Madness Inc: How colleges keep athletes on the field and out of the classroom.”
Did the ardent UConn fan hold back a little more this time? Was he a little gentler?
Hardly.
“The lack of academic integrity across college sports may be the most insidious piece of a broken system,” Murphy wrote in his 15page report. Kaboom!
“The first report got more attention than I would have thought,” Murphy said on the phone from Washington on Thursday morning. “There was a lot of coverage, a lot of interest in the sports world and the world of higher education. I know it ruffled some feathers at the NCAA. I also know they are feeling that the pressure is growing and growing, and they’ve got to make some moves.
“I’ve had a lot of my colleagues in the Senate quietly patting me on the back. I had a few really unlikely Republicans come to me and say, well, if you do look at legislation down
the line give me a call. There’s more quiet support in the Senate for this than I would have thought.”
Much of what Murphy has presented about the NCAA is not breaking news to serious college sports fans. Yet the way he has packaged it, the weight he carries as a U.S. senator, the way he has directed it to casual sports fans and people who aren’t sports fans at all … Let’s put it this way: He has reached some places that previously had not been reached and is making matters uncomfortable for the comfortable. On matters of compensation, academics, recruiting, health and welfare, Murphy is intent on moving a seemingly unmovable force.
His social media traffic from the first report was high. People following him for political reasons got plugged into NCAA matters. Earlier in the year, Mark Walker (RN.C.) introduced a bill in the House that would allow athletes to profit from their image and likeness. Evidence that in a time of ugly division, Murphy is hammering at one issue that has bipartisan support.
“Our first report was clearly aimed at the NCAA itself,” Murphy said. “I’m glad the NCAA has at least started looking at the issue of compensating players for the use of their likeness. That’s probably driven more by California legislation than our report, but I’d like to think our report had something to do with it.
“This second report is aimed at both the NCAA and individual schools. The fact of the matter is schools can make the decision to get more serious about academic programming. My hope is school administrators and athletic directors will read this and feel some heat about the amount of time they’re forcing athletes out of the classroom. Down the line, there can be legislation to be introduced and worked through Congress, but for now I think it’s simply a matter of increasing the exposure of inequities and injustices in the system.”
In Madness II, Murphy went after reported graduation rates and the inadequate education athletes get compared to their peers when they do receive a diploma.
“These scholarships are, of course, very valuable, and at every chance, the NCAA claims these scholarships are more than enough to compensate athletes for the fulltime hours they devote to their sports,” Murphy wrote in the report. “Yet the NCAA and colleges look the other way as athletic programs — especially in revenuegenerating sports — routinely defraud athletes of the tremendous value those scholarships hold.”
The NCAA reported a record 88 percent graduation rate among its 21,000 Division I athletes last year. Murphy called the number incomplete and misleading. His report said the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate excludes athletes who transfer to another program before graduation yet are in good academic standing.
“Wherever the athlete transfers to then becomes responsible for their academic success and it reflects upon their GSR,” the report said. “While this seems fair, the numbers on transfers paint a startling story. For the most recent cohort used to calculate GSR, the NCAA reported 95,782 athletes who entered college from 20062009. Within this group, the NCAA reported 23,112 athletes who transferred out of their programs in good academic standing, thus labeled ‘Left Eligible.’
“However, the NCAA only reported 8,165 athletes who transferred into programs, meaning there were nearly 15,000 — or twothirds of all ‘Left Eligible’ athletes and 16 percent of all athletes — who went missing in the data. These athletes did not graduate, but the numbers account for them as if they did, painting an inflated picture of academic success. As a result, the GSR for programs is consistently 20 points higher than the Federal Graduation Rate and the NCAA can falsely declare victory.”
The College Research Institute, according to the report, pointed to black football and basketball players at Power Five schools with graduation rates 22 and 35 percent lower than their peers. Murphy called it part of the growing civil rights crisis in college athletics.
“While the NCAA may try to find ways to sugarcoat the data, far too many athletes are missing at graduation ceremonies,” the report said.
The report was not kind to the guilty, focusing on academic fraud scandals at schools including North Carolina and Syracuse, 40 of them over three decades. It examined sham classes, athletes who said academic advisers completed coursework or were barred from pursuing a preferred major because “I was majoring in football.”
The report also examined an NCAA study that showed athletes average more than 40 hours a week for athletic commitments inseason and the Pac12 showing it was more than 50 hours. The report argues such a huge commitment attacks the balance between athletics and education and opens the door for fraud and a sore lack of a full academic experience. The report calls for guaranteed scholarships for four years, rather than a yeartoyear basis, and more academic transparency.
It should come as no surprise Murphy supports UConn’s move to the Big East from the geographically challenging AAC.
“One hundred percent,” Murphy said. “One of the things that bothered me most about the AAC was the travel time. We tend to forget it’s not only the football and basketball teams, it’s all the studentathletes. There’s travel to Florida and Texas multiple times a year. It will give more time to return to the classroom, and I think will make a lot of coaches and studentathletes happy.”
After he hung up the phone Thursday, Murphy led a forum on academics and college athletics in Washington.
“It’s meant to market to folks on The Hill,” Murphy said. “Staffers, a handful of members of Congress. I’m not introducing legislation in the next month, but I want to be ready for the moment when we have to, and this is about building support.”
No, Murphy has not introduced a specific blueprint for every solution. Yes, he’d rather the NCAA take immediate and significant steps to fix itself before Congress forces legislation. In the meantime, he pushes. The next Madness Inc. topic?
“I’m not sure,” Murphy said. “But recruiting is one area we plan to get into. The way in which a handful of adults benefit from a broken system and control the fates of kids is really disturbing.”
Oh, that one will be a nightmare for the NCAA.