Boise State among NCAA schools out to block scholarship change - Andy Staples - SI.com
This article hits on a key aspect of what is wrong with the illusion of "amateur" and the "student-athlete." Staples makes a good point about the schools themselves contributing to the problem, along with the outdated and draconian rules of the NCAA (a "governing" body that has become very similar to the old AAU, an administration the NCAA originally fought against). The schools can, in essence, hold student-athletes hostage by denying release requests, even going over the head of the supposed governing body, the NCAA.
I had something similar happen to me. I initially signed a National Letter of Intent for a track scholarship as a 17-year-old high school senior with a small Div. II school. After a year, I came to the conclusion that the school, both athletically and academically, was not a good fit for me, so I chose to transfer to the University of Wyoming. While I had no issue with being accepted to the university and transferring my credits, I ran into a problem with being released athletically from the Div. II school.
Now, while student-athletes are required to sit out a year of eligibility when transferring between schools in the same division, that is not a requirement when transferring between divisions (i.e. transferring from Div. II to Div. I). I contacted the head track coach and athletic director of the Div. II school, told them my plans to transfer and reasons for doing so, and asked to be released from my NLI with them. I was assured that this would not be an issue, so I went home for the summer and didn't think much of it.
However, after a month of not hearing anything, I decided to check in and see what was the hold up (I had called Coach Sanchez that summer and was quickly told that he couldn't talk to me since I was, as he succinctly and accurately put it, "someone else's property"). When I called the athletic offices of the Div. II school, I was met with a run-around and told that the AD was gone on vacation. Time was an issue here; since I was attempting to walk-on at Wyoming (I remained a walk-on my entire career at UW), and Coach Sanchez was hamstrung by severely limited roster spots on the cross-country team thanks to UW's application of Title IX rules (that's a rant for another day), I was desperate to get my name on his roster list before he turned it in to the athletic department at the start of the season. Once the list was turned in and the roster spots filled, no one could be added thereafter.
The Div. II school did not release me until a week before school started at Wyoming that fall semester. I have no idea why they sat on that release form for months on end, and I was never given an explanation. It seemed to me that they did it simply because they could. And yes, some would argue that since I had, in definition, signed a contract with the school who in turn paid the majority of my tuition that year, it was dishonest of me to quit after one year. But I didn't quit; I continued to go school and eventually earned a degree in a subject not offered at the Div. II school (a core point in the NCAA grad school exception). And I fulfilled my one-year obligation considering scholarships are renewed on a yearly basis. In the end, I was forced to sit out one year anyway since by the time I was finally granted my release, the UW team had already started its season. I burned a year of eligibility because someone in the athletic department at the Div. II school either wanted to stick it to me for some unbeknownst personal reason, or because someone couldn't be bothered to sign a form and file it in a timely manner.
This is a problem. College athletics are so concerned with the money grab that common decency and common sense are being ignored. Yes, athletes on full-ride scholarships do not have to pay for school, but as is currently being addressed, those scholarships cover only tuition and fees, not cost of living. I can assure you that between a full credit load, studying, practice, travelling to meets, etc., I did not have much time for a job. I had some help from academic scholarships, but most of my college bill (primarily cost of living) was paid with student loans. And trust me, I am not the only student-athlete for whom this was an issue.
I'm not comfortable with the pay-for-play idea because it favors only a select group of individuals (football and basketball players). Yes, I know those sports make money, and my sport does not, but my sport also boasts higher graduation rates (figures from when I was in college, having enrolled in 2001) and cumulative team GPAs (the 2000-2001 UW men's XC team was awarded Academic All-American honors with a cumulative team GPA of 3.78). Obviously, there needs to be a greater emphasis on graduating and actually earning a college degree. That is made more difficult when student-athletes from under-privledged backgrounds, primarily football and basketball players, can't accept money for food because they would then be accepting a "gift" and thus deemed ineligible by the NCAA, or that a scholarship is not tied so much to performance (I do believe that there should be performance-based incentive for an athletic scholarship, sorry) but whether or not the school decides to renew it from year to year. And as stated in the linked article, a new coach can come in and essentially clean house, discarding players that may not fit their particular scheme. What happens to those student-athletes? They can transfer, but always run the risk of dealing with what I dealt with and with what Todd O'Brien is currently dealing with. And there isn't a damn thing the student-athlete can do to stop them.
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