NCAA defends sexual assault policy
Emmert puts onus on the member schools
NCAA President Mark Emmert on Tuesday defended his organization and deflected blame to universities just days after a USA TODAY Network investigation found that college athletes punished for sexual assault routinely transfer and keep playing in the NCAA.
His remarks came the same day that the National Organization for Women called on the NCAA to “end the predator pipeline,” evoking the title of the USA TODAY Network investigation.
Emmert, who has dodged the USA TODAY Network’s questions and interview requests for more than a month, made the comment during an Aspen Institute symposium about college athlete pay. It was in response to an audience question about the investigation.
“When you hear, ‘The NCAA did this or did that,’ just insert, ‘the colleges and universities of America did this or did that,’ ” Emmert said. “That’s who makes those decisions.”
When contacted after the investigation, however, the leaders of those same institutions deflected questions to the NCAA.
The USA TODAY Network sought interviews and comment from all 19 college and university presidents, chancellors and athletic directors who sit on the NCAA’s highest governing body, asking what they intended to do to address the problems raised in the investigation.
None would answer. Fourteen ignored the requests. Of those who responded, five tossed it back to the NCAA.
“The NCAA is a repeat offender when it comes to putting profits over people.” Toni Van Pelt, NOW president
“This inquiry should be directed to the NCAA for a response,” said Texas State University President Denise Trauth, who sits on the NCAA Board of Governors.
‘Repeat offender’
The finger-pointing came amid outcry from survivor advocates and the National Organization for Women, whose president urged the NCAA to institute rigorous and enforceable codes of conduct that prevent teams from “monetizing sexual abuse.”
“The NCAA is a repeat offender when it comes to putting profits over people,” NOW President Toni Van Pelt said. “They have continued to let college athletes charged with assault off the hook.”
The USA TODAY Network investigation found at least 33 athletes since 2014 who’ve transferred to NCAA schools despite being disciplined for sexual offenses at a previous college.
The true number may be far greater, as five of every six Division I public universities refused to release records from disciplinary proceedings that would help reveal the extent of the problem, even though federal law explicitly allows them to do so.
The NCAA, which cracks down on athletes who accept cash or a free meal, get bad grades or smoke marijuana, outlines no specific penalties for athletes who commit sexual assault. And nothing in its rulebook restricts suspended, expelled and convicted athletes from transferring to new NCAA schools and leaving past sanctions behind.
“The fact that the Board of Governors will not make a statement and has refused to make a change is complete negligence,” said Daisy Tackett, a former University of Kansas rower who, along with another rower, reported being sexually assaulted in 2015 by a Kansas football player. The football player resurfaced on the Indiana State University team’s roster within months of Kansas finding him responsible in both rowers’ cases and banning him from its campus.
“They have an opportunity in front of them to make campuses and the NCAA a safer place,” Tackett said, “but apparently their bottom line and their public image is more important than the countless victims of abusive athletes they’ve emboldened.”
In Emmert’s comments at the Washington, D.C., symposium, he did not acknowledge the victims of sexual assault
– many of whom, like Tackett, were
NCAA athletes.
Instead, Emmert said, the NCAA has spent “an enormous amount of time on the issue of the prevention of sexual assault.”
“That doesn’t mean that it’s been enough or it’s gone far enough,” he added. “If we have one of those cases, that’s very problematic.”
Potential for policy
On whether athletes convicted or disciplined for sexual assault should be able to transfer to new NCAA schools, Emmert said, “the member schools decided that those were decisions that really needed to be made at the local level by schools themselves.”
But the Board of Governors, of which Emmert is a non-voting member, in August 2018 shot down a recommendation by its own study group, the Commission to Combat Campus Sexual Violence, to direct the NCAA divisions to consider legislation for holding such athletes accountable. The board has ignored calls by eight U.S. senators to fix the problem.
At least nine current Board of Governors members, including Emmert, attended that 2018 meeting as board members at the time, minutes show.
Jon Solomon, r of the Sports & Society Program at the Aspen Institute, asked Emmert whether the NCAA could adopt one of the conference policies nationally, such as that of the Southeastern Conference or Big Sky Conference.
“Potentially,” Emmert said. “All the rules are different, and all of them are complicated. It is an enormously complex issue when you look at the details of it. I think it’s an issue that’s going to routinely be discussed and debated widely.”