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STUDENT ATHLETES’ APPRAISALS OF THE NCAA AMATEURISM POLICIES

GOVERNING COLLEGE SPORTS

Collin Devon Williams, Jr.

A DISSERTATION

in

Education

Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

2015

Supervisor of Dissertation:

_________________________________________ Shaun R. Harper, Associate Professor of Education Graduate Group Chairperson:

____________________________________________________________ J. Matthew Hartley, Professor of Education Dissertation Committee: Shaun R. Harper, Associate Professor of Education Laura Perna, James S. Riepe Professor of Education Scott Rosner, Practice Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics

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iii DEDICATION

To

God

Family

Friends

Fraternity

Prep for Prep

Collegiate

Penn

Liberta

Brooklyn

Corona

Thank you for being my village. Thank you for believing. Thank you for inspiring.

To you, this work is dedicated.

iv ABSTRACT

STUDENT ATHLETES’ APPRAISALS OF THE NCAA AMATEURISM POLICIES

GOVERNING COLLEGE SPORTS

Collin Devon Williams, Jr.

Shaun R. Harper

The amateurism principle governing college sports prohibits student-athletes from

receiving compensation beyond tuition, room, and board, despite them garnering

publicity, bolstering school pride, providing entertainment, and generating billions of

dollars in revenue for the Division I institutions they attend (Sylwester & Witosky, 2004).

Purportedly a measure to protect players from exploitation by professional and

commercial enterprises (NCAA, 2013a), the legitimacy of this claim has been called into

question in recent years, as former college athletes have gone public about their basic

needs not being met. From hungry nights with no food and inadequate insurance for

sport-related injuries to comparatively lower graduation rates and “full” athletic

scholarships that do not cover the cost of attending college, the concerns of college

athletes have been captured in the press and media. Despite this, their voices have gone

practically unheard in the published higher education research on student-athletes (Van

Rheenen, 2012).

This dissertation employed qualitative research methods to examine student-

athletes’ appraisals of NCAA amateurism policies. Specifically, this phenomenological

study used individual and group interviews with 40 college football players at 28

institutions across each of the power five conferences (PFCs) to answer the primary

research question: How do student-athletes on revenue-generating athletic teams

v (hereinafter referred to as revenue-generating athletes) experience college and the

amateurism policies governing college sports? Other research questions guiding this

study include: (1) What do revenue-generating athletes perceive to be the costs and

benefits of having participated in intercollegiate athletics? (2) How do revenue-

generating athletes juxtapose the NCAA’s amateurism rhetoric with their own

educational and professional expectations and experiences? (3) What are revenue-

generating athletes’ appraisals of amateurism policies governing college sports? Criterion

sampling methods were used in this study. The sample comprised of seniors on football

teams in one of the power five conferences—The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), the

Big Ten Conference (B1G), the Big 12 Conference (Big 12), the Pacific-12 Conference

(Pac-12), and the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Findings juxtaposed amateurism and

other NCAA policy rhetoric with participants’ educational and professional expectations

and experiences.

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………...........iii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………...............iv LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………...viii CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND, PURPOSE, & OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1 Statement of the Problem.…..…………………………………………………………3 Purpose of the Study……………..……………………………………………………7 Guiding Questions………………………………………………………………...8 Significance of the Study…………….………………………………………………..8 Key Concepts and Definitions…….…………………………………………………10

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE

Chapter Overview ……………………………………………………………………13 Sociology of Sport in the United States……………………………………………...13

Youth Socialization and Participation in Organized Competitive Sports...……..15 Popularization of Highly Organized Competitive Youth Sports………………...20

The History, Evolution and Critiques of Intercollegiate Athletics………..…………23 Origin of College Sport…………………………………………………………..25 From Aristocratic to American Amateurs, 1840-1910…………………………..27 The Professionalization of Amateur Sport, 1910-1984………………………..…29 Evolution into a Commercial Enterprise, 1984-present.……………………..….33

DI Student-Athlete Experiences: Contemporary Challenges and Outcomes..............34 Balancing Complex Roles and Identities………………………………………...35 Academic Outcomes………………………………………………………………….39 Career Development and Transition Outcomes………………………………..…41

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODS

Chapter Overview ……………………………………………………………………43 Rationale for Qualitative Inquiry………………………….…………………………43

Rationale for Use of Qualitative Methods……………………………………….44 Methodological Approach: Phenomenology.………………………………………..45 Site………………………………………..………………………………………….46 Sampling and Participants…………………………………………………………...48

Criterion Sampling……………………………………………………………....48 Data Collection………………………………………..……………………………..51 Data Analysis………………………………………..……………………………….53

Phenomenological Data Analysis………………………………………………..53 Trustworthiness and Methods of Verification.………………………………………55 Limitations…………………………………………………………………………...56 Role of Researcher…………………………………………………………………...57

vii CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS

The Revenue-Generating Athlete Experience……………………………………….59 For the Love of the Game………………………………………………………..59 I May Have Thought Twice………………………..………………………………..66 Your Life Revolves Around Football………………………..……………………72

Countable Athletically Related Activity………………..……………………72 Balancing Athletics and Academics…..………………..……………………74 What 20-Hour Rule?........................................................................................78 “Voluntary” Activites..……………..………………………………………..79

Costs and Benefits of Intercollegiate Athletic Participation.………………………...80 Professional………………………………………………………………………..82 Academic………………………..…………………………………………………..86 Extracurricular…………..………………………………………………………..91 Social…………..……………………………………………………………….....92 Physical…………..……………………………………………………………….96 Developmental…………..…………………………………………………….…..98

Revenue-Generating Athletes’ Responses to NCAA Amateurism Rhetoric….…....101 Student-Athletes Shall Be Amateurs in Intercollegiate Sport…………………...102

Revenue-Generating Athlete Identities…………………………………..…104 Participation Should Be Motivated Primarily by Education…………………...110 Student Participation in Intercollegiate Athletics is an Avocation…………..….113 Student-Athletes Should Be Protected from Exploitation………………………….114

Summary of Findings……………………………………………………………….117

CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, CONCLUSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS Discussion………………………………………………….………….…………....122 Conclusions…………………………………………………………..……………..129 Implications for Practice……………………………………………….…………...131

Implications for NCAA.……………………………………….…………...…....131 Implications for Member Institutions…………………………………………...136 Implications for Student-Athletes and their Families…………………………..138

Implications for Future Research………………………………………….………..141 Closing………………………………………..……………………………….……143

REFERENCES……………………………………..…………………………………..144

viii LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Amateurism and Other NCAA Policies………………………………………….3 Table 2. Participant Demographics………………………………………………………49 Table 3. Institutional Characteristics…..……………………………………………...…50 Table 4. Countable vs. Non-Countable Athletic Related Activities……………..………74

1 CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUND, PURPOSE, AND OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

Enormous price tags on television rights packages, athletic department spending,

and coaching salaries evidence how lucrative the enterprise of intercollegiate athletic has

become (Clotfelter, 2011). In 2008, for example, ESPN contracted to pay the NCAA

$500 million dollars to broadcast four of the five major Bowl Championship Series

(BCS) games (Wilbon, 2011). The BCS website states, “Each conference whose team

qualifies automatically for the BCS receives approximately $22 million in net revenue. A

second team qualifying brings an additional $6 million to its conference.” By 2011, four

individual conferences—the Big 12, Pac 12, SEC and ACC—had all signed football TV

deals valued at over a billion dollars each (Thamel, 2011). The most prolific of the

television deals came in 2010 when the NCAA entered into a 14-year, $10.8 billion dollar

agreement with Turner/CBS sports to broadcast the DI Men’s Basketball Championship

(Sandomir & Thamel, 2010). In a study of athletic spending at the institutional level,

Berkowitz & Upton (2011b) found 228 athletic departments had spent a total of $6.8

billion in 2010. That year, the University of Alabama’s athletic department alone brought

in $26.6 million in revenue.

Coaches too have seen much of this profit. Eclipsing the $3.5 million Jim Tressel

made in 2011, are other high profile basketball and football coaches like Rick Pitino and

Nick Saban, who in the same year, brought in $7.5, $5.9, and $3.8 million in salaries,

respectively (Berkowitz & Upton, 2011a; Wilbon, 2011). In the same year, the coaches of

approximately half of the 68 teams that made the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball

tournament and 58 of the 120 FBS football school earned salaries greater than $1 million

2 dollars (O’Neil, 2011). On their most recent financial statements, the NCAA reported

total revenue of nearly $1 billion ($989 million) in 2014; for the fourth year in a row, the

Association made a surplus of over $60 million (Berkowitz, 2015). While student-

athletes on DI men’s basketball and football teams generate the majority of this revenue,

the NCAA’s amateurism principle prohibits them from being compensated beyond

tuition, room, and board (Sylwester & Witosky, 2004). Still, there exist noncommercial

benefits of participating in college athletics.

As a part of its Behind the Blue Disk series, a collection of questions and answers

(Q&As) explaining their position on issues in college sport, the NCAA released a one

page document called Student-Athlete Benefits that details both the immediate and

lifelong benefits of participating in intercollegiate athletics (NCAA, n.d.). Student-

athletes are afforded additional pathways to a college education through athletic

scholarships; receive academic support and tutoring services; graduate at rates higher

than their non-sport peers; have access to elite training opportunities, a healthy diet, and

$70 million in emergency resources through the NCAA’s Student Assistance Fund; are

provided medical insurance through their schools; gain exposure and have new

experiences as they travel for competition; and are prepared for life after college having

learned transferable skills such as time management, leadership, and teamwork.

Institutions use rhetoric, broadly defined as the art of effective or persuasive

speaking or writing, to communicate messages about themselves to others. In higher

education, literature on mission statements and institutional rhetoric is ubiquitous as their

presence alone begs the very legitimacy of a college, university, or governing body, such

as the NCAA; however, researchers have not reached a consensus about their utility

3 (Morphew & Hartley, 2006). While some argue a shared purpose provides an

organizational roadmap to success and achieving espoused goals, others are more

skeptical, viewing them as “excessively vague” and “unrealistically aspirational”

“rhetorical pyrotechnics” (p. 456-457). Of the little empirical analysis that has been

conducted, most suggests the harsher critiques are accurate: mission statements and

institutional rhetoric are not consistent with the institution’s current identity. Table 1

presents the amateurism policies using the same rhetoric from the 2014-2015 NCAA

Manual (henceforth the Manual).

Table 1. Amateurism and other NCAA Policies

Fundamental Policy,

Article 1.3

A basic purpose of the Association is to maintain intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body and, by so doing, retain a clear line of demarcation between intercollegiate athletics and professional sports. (NCAA, 2014, p.1)

Principle of Amateurism,

Bylaw 2.9

Student-athletes shall be amateurs in an intercollegiate sport, and their participation should be motivated primarily by education and by the physical, mental and social benefits to be derived. Student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation, and student-athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises.

Principle of Amateurism,

Bylaw 2.9

Amateur competition is a bedrock principle of college athletics and the NCAA. Maintaining amateurism is crucial to preserving an academic environment in which acquiring a quality education is the first priority. In the collegiate model of sports, the young men and women competing on the field or court are students first and athletes second.

Maximum Financial Aid to Individual, Bylaw 15.1.6

An institution shall not award financial aid to a student-athlete that exceeds the cost of attendance that normally is incurred by students enrolled in a comparable program at that institution.

Statement of the Problem

The problem that this study focuses on is the insistence of the NCAA to operate

under the guise of an amateur enterprise, despite the commercialization of big-time

4 college sport and the professionalization of its participants. Though the student-athlete

and amateur ideals espouse goals of prioritizing academic success over athletic

achievement, the enterprise of intercollegiate athletics has evolved into a mainstream

entertainment business where participants compete for revenue and exposure at least as

much as they do for victories (Duderstadt, 2009). Growing financial pressures have led to

negative perceptions of sports programs, as they have undermined academic integrity,

incentivized ethical compromises, and proliferated the incidence of sport scandals

(Harper & Donnor, 2015). According to former NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz,

the average person would say four things about college athletics: “colleges make millions

of dollars at the expense of the college athlete; all coaches cheat; athletes never graduate;

and all athletes are drug addicts” (Telander, 1989, p. 24). In the last decade, more than

half the institutions playing at the most competitive level, Division I-A, have been

sanctioned for violating NCAA regulations (Duderstadt, 2009).

Over the last century, four national reports—the 1929 Carnegie Foundation study,

the 1952 Presidents’ Report for the American Council on Education, the 1974 study for

the American Council on Education conducted by George Hanford, and the 1991 Knight

Foundation Commission study—have provided systematic analyses of the influence of

intercollegiate athletics on the postsecondary educational environment, suggesting that

problems associated with big-time athletics cannot be easily corrected (Clotfelter, 2011).

In the first study, the Carnegie foundation spent three years visiting over 100 colleges and

universities to assess administrative control of athletics inside the university, the

consequences of participation, the status of college coaches, recruiting, press coverage of

college sports, and players’ amateur status (Thelin, 2011). Observing a “distorted scheme

5 of values,” from abuses in recruiting to slush funds, player subsidies, and coaching

salaries, Savage et al. (1929, pp. 306-307) blamed “commercialism, and a negligent

attitude toward the educational opportunities for which the college exists.” Clotfelter

(2011) asserts remarkably little has changed in over 60 years: subsequent reports continue

to indict the commercialization of college sports, its push for revenue, the involvement of

media, and the influence of boosters outside the university for the corruption of the

student-athlete ideal, as evidenced by the excesses of recruitment, athletic scholarships,

and special privileges. By the 1990s, competitive college sports “had all the trappings of

a major entertainment enterprise” (Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, 1999,

p. 5) and were “in direct conflict with nearly every value that should matter for higher

education” (p. 21).

Rather than achieving systematic reform, the NCAA has instead developed a

complex code of conduct that for the most part, ignores the student in the student-athlete

and primarily focuses on the athlete (Duderstadt, 2009). For example, an analysis of DI

men’s basketball coaching contracts indicated that coaches were five times more likely to

have incentivized compensation opportunities for athletic success than they were for

academic success (Wilson, Schrager, Burke, Hawking, and Gauntt, 2011). As Hanford

(1978) argues, we are amidst “an educational dilemma concerning the place and mission

of athletics within our intellectual estates by mixing dollar values with educational ones”

(p. 232). Relatedly, the Association focuses more on amateurism infractions than inferior

education matters (Purdy, Eitzen & Hufnagel, 1985). Cullen, Latessa, & Jonson’s (2012)

assessment of the extent and sources of NCAA rule infractions reveals that aside from

practicing beyond the mandated limits, the majority of violations are related to the

6 compensation of athletes. While the large payments that garner the most media attention

are relatively rare, student-athletes receiving free meals and other services (e.g. haircuts

and dry cleaning) from coaches, boosters, and local businesses occurred much more

frequently. Seemingly, the NCAA’s determination to not pay its amateur athletes is the

main source of trouble in college sports (Clotfelter, 2011). As the maze of regulations

overlook educational goals, the reform agenda has failed to mitigate the commercial

pressures that create the tenuous relationship between athletics and academics

(Duderstadt, 2009).

In The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, Shulman and

Bowen (2001) analyzed 40 years (1951-1990) of data from 30 highly selective

postsecondary intuitions with rigid admissions policies. The findings, referred to as

“hidden costs” of college intercollegiate athletic, are more troubling as the pervasiveness

of athletic pressures undermined the values of the most academically rigorous

institutions. Even these schools were complicit in the underperformance and lower

graduation rates of student-athletes, who were shown preferential treatment in

admissions’ processes, recruited academically underprepared, clustered into certain

majors, and funneled into disengaged athletic subcultures isolated from campus culture,

Shulman and Bowen found. Bowen and Levin (2003) more closely examined the

collegiate experiences of recruited athletes, walk-on athletes, and nonathletes in

Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values. At the 33 non-athletic

scholarships offering schools, recruited athletes were as much as four times more likely

to gain admission than a nonathlete applicant with similar academic credentials;

considerably more likely than walk-on athletes and nonathletes to end up in the bottom

7 third of their class; performing even worse than their GPAs and standardized test score

predicted. Thus, some scholars have ultimately concluded that in universities with major

sports programs the corruption of academic ideals is endemic (Clotfelter, 2011).

While commercialism’s evils have been the subject of much literature, authors

have largely treated it as an abstract force from which intercollegiate sport stakeholders

have refuge. “There remains a considerable gap in the historical record when it comes to

the evolution of ‘NCAA-sponsored’ professionalism in the form of athletically related

financial aid” purport Sack and Staurowsky (1992) because “almost no attention has been

given to the process by which the NCAA itself has incorporated professionalism into its

constitution and bylaws” (p. 8). In College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy

of the NCAA Amateur Myth (1999), they explain how amateurism rhetoric obscures

NCAA-sanctioned payments, downplays the institution’s role in professionalizing college

sport, and sways the public into perceiving the Association as a defender of this

erroneous ideal. Thus, “NCAA-fabricated mythology” not only exploits athletes

financially, but also undermines educational integrity (Sack & Staurowsky, 1998).

Purpose of Study

The purpose of the current study is to describe and understand how student-

athletes experience college and the amateurism policies governing intercollegiate

athletics. By juxtaposing the NCAA’s principles and espoused goals with their academic

and professional expectations and outcomes, this study seeks to examine their perceptions

of the costs and benefits of participating in big-time college sport as well as better align

amateurism rhetoric with their lived realities. In many ways, this study is a response to

the proliferation of former athletes’ varying critiques of the NCAA and its member

8 institutions. As players no longer apprehensive about their athletic eligibility typically

offer these reports in television interviews, documentaries, and an increasing number of

lawsuits, this study aims to supplement those perspectives with data collected through

individual and group interviews. Particular emphasis is placed on the experiences and

perceptions of undergraduate men on DI men’s athletic teams in the power five

conferences (PFC), as they are responsible for the majority of the revenue generated by

college sports.

Guiding Questions

The primary research question is: How do student-athletes on revenue-generating

athletic teams (hereinafter referred to as revenue-generating athletes) experience college

and the amateurism policies governing college sports? Other research questions guiding

this study include: (1) What do revenue-generating athletes perceive to be the costs and

benefits of having participated in intercollegiate athletics? (2) How do revenue-

generating athletes juxtapose the NCAA’s amateurism rhetoric with their own

educational and professional expectations and experiences? (3) What are revenue-

generating athletes’ appraisals of amateurism policies governing college sports?

Significance of Study

Though it explores the social construction of their athletic identities, their lived

experiences with stereotyping and low expectations, and bachelor’s degree completion

(Harper, 2009), the existing literature on DI male student-athletes has not been able to

clearly delineate the multiple characteristics and cumulative processes—sport

commitment, educational expectations, campus climate issues, and academic engagement

practices—that influence academic success (Comeaux & Harrison, 2011). Subsequently,

9 the support services and programs for student-athletes have failed to consistently and

effectively enhance student–athletes’ learning and personal development and raise

graduation rates (Comeaux, 2007; Hinkle, 1994). “These analytical gaps constrain the

ability of student affairs leaders, particularly academic advisors and counselors, to

explain, not simply to describe, how certain factors influence student-athletes’ academic

success” (Comeaux & Harrison, 2011, pg. 235).

Major consequences of the failure to distinguish between the multiple influences

on academic success are the deficit orientation assumptions made about college athletes

(Comeaux, 2007; Comeaux & Harrison, 2011). They are too often treated like “passive

victims of systemic exploitation” in the abundant editorials and exposes and scant

scholarly research that fail to enlist their voices and perspectives (Van Rheenen, 2012,

pg. 11). The one large-scale survey (Van Rheenen, 2011) and the two single-institution

qualitative studies (Adler & Adler 1991; Beamon 2008) that have circumvented this

misstep raise more questions than they answer. While they suggest a majority of revenue-

generating athletes do feel exploited, we remain largely unaware of what leads to these

perceptions. Accordingly, Van Rheenen (2012) calls for more a comprehensive

understanding of the perceived exploitation of college athletes.

The present study aims to fill these gaps in research on college athletes by: truly

listening to their voices (Beamon & Bell, 2011), investigating their experiences and

perspectives to redesign educational practice (Benson, 2000); putting their needs at the

center, considering all aspects of the student and his development (Person & LeNoir,

1997); and using data across multiple institutions and athletic conferences (Gaston-

Gayles, 2009).

10 The significance of this study extends beyond closing gaps in the college sport

knowledge base. As current and former athletes college athletes are rallying together to

gain a “seat at the table” and “voice their needs” to the NCAA and its member

institutions, this study will be important to mitigating concerns on both sides. The

research questions guiding this inquiry emerged from this ongoing debate. The findings,

to some extent, are intended to facilitate this discourse. Participants’ feedback is needed

to move forward in ways that are seen as equitable for each of the stakeholders. Ideally,

this contribution will help meet the needs of revenue-generating athletes and prevent the

dissolution of competitive athletics within the NCAA.

Key Concepts and Definitions

Included in this section are definitions of key concepts used throughout this

dissertation.

Amateurism The Principle of Amateurism, or Bylaw 2.9, states: “Student-athletes shall be amateurs in an intercollegiate sport, and their participation should be motivated primarily by education and by the physical, mental and social benefits to be derived. Student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation, and student-athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises” (NCAA, 2013, p. 4). An institution cannot “award financial aid to a student-athlete that exceeds the cost of attendance that normally is incurred by students enrolled in a comparable program at the institution” and “is an amount calculated by an institutional financial aid office…” (NCAA, 2013, p. 192).

Division I (DI) Also known as high profile, revenue generating and big-time, DI is the

most lucrative, popular and competitive level within intercollegiate athletics.

Student-Athlete NCAA terminology for a participant in intercollegiate athletics Revenue Athlete Student-athletes on teams that generate revenue, specifically DI men’s

basketball and football

11 Scholarship Athlete Student-athletes for whom the cost of tuition, room, and board are

covered for their participation in intercollegiate athletics Walk-On Athlete Student-athletes who are not recruited to play sports, but earn spots on

athletic teams after being admitted to an institution FBS The top level of college football is the Division I Football Bowl

Subdivision (FBS), formerly Division I-A. In total, the FBS is comprised of 10 conferences and 128 member institutions.

Power 5 Conference (PFC) The five standout conferences within the FBS, referred to as the “Big

Five” or the “Power Five”—The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), the Big Ten Conference (B1G), the Big 12 Conference (Big 12), the Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12), and the Southeastern Conference (SEC).

ACC The ACC is comprised of 15 schools—Boston College, Clemson

University, Duke University, Florida State University, Georgia Tech University, University of Louisville, University of Miami, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, University of Notre Dame, University of Pittsburgh, Syracuse University, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech University and Wake Forest University.

B1G The B1G is comprised of 14 schools—University of Illinois-Urbana

Champaign, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Maryland-College Park, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska- Lincoln, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, Rutgers University, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Big 12 The Big 12 is comprised of 10 schools—Baylor University, Iowa State

University, University of Kansas, Kansas State University, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, University of Texas-Austin, Texas Christian University, Texas Tech University, and West Virginia University.

PAC 12 The Pac-12 is comprised of 12 schools—University of Arizona,

Arizona State University, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-Los Angeles, University of Colorado- Boulder, University of Oregon, Oregon State University, University of Southern California, Stanford University, University of Utah, University of Washington, and Washington State University.

12 SEC The SEC is comprised of 14 schools— University of Alabama,

University of Arkansas, Auburn University, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Kentucky, Louisiana State University, University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, University of Missouri, University of South Carolina, University of Tennessee, Texas A&M University, and Vanderbilt University. As of February 2015, there are a total of 65 colleges and universities in the five power conferences.

13 CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE

Chapter Overview

A thorough examination of the exploitation of student-athletes must acknowledge

the historic and contemporary roles of sports in the U.S. context, the postsecondary

environment, and the lives of undergraduate men on revenue-generating basketball and

football teams at Division I institutions. Hence, this review of literature begins with a

sociological exploration of sports to describe why they are so valued and popular in

American society as well as how our youth, particularly boys, are socialized into,

participate in, and benefit from them. It then traces the history of intercollegiate athletics,

paying particular attention to the NCAA’s history, evolution, and critiques. The final

section describes the how participation in Division I intercollegiate athletics influences

students’ academic outcomes.

Sociology of Sport in the United States

Sociology affords researchers a lens through which to examine sports as social

phenomena (Giulianotti, 2005). Beyond the underlying assumption that sports are about

more than the games and competitions themselves, sociologists posit that they are

integral parts of our social and cultural contexts and thus, can be used to study the social

worlds we collectively create, organize, maintain, and change (Henricks, 2006).

Sociology of sport research is generally used to develop our knowledge base on the

cultures and societies in which sport exist, the social worlds created around sports, and

the experience of individuals and groups associated with sports. Sports are worthy sites of

scholarly investigation because they are socially significant activities; reinforce raced,

14 gendered and classed ideology; and have become integrated into important spheres of

American life, from family, economy, and the media to politics, education, and religion

(Coakley, 2014). Because they provide excitement, memorable experiences, and

opportunities to initiate and extend social relationships for many people, sports are

considered socially significant (Coakley, 2009).

Defining ideology as “webs of ideas and beliefs that people use to give meaning

to the world and make sense of their experiences,” sports influence how we think about

race, class, and gender (Coakley, 2014, p. 27). As women are generally perceived to be

inferior to men in activities requiring strength, emotional control, and physicality, the

dominant gender ideology is that sports are to be played by boys and men; they are

inherently better at them and participating in them enhances their masculinity

(Greendorfer, 1993). For example, while playing a contact sport like tackle football is

believed to make a boy a man, throwing a football “like a girl” renders him a feminine

underperformer (Adler, Kless, & Adler, 1992). The dominant racial ideology assumes

that skin color is predictive of specific predispositions to athletic ability. Widely held

beliefs include darker skinned and Black men’s ability to run especially fast and jump

incredibly high, whereas lighter skinned persons and White men are thought to be less

athletically gifted (Coakley, 2009). The dominant class ideology is that sports are a

microcosm of a meritocratic and capitalistic system that is fair and just. As meritocracy

falsely assumes that equal opportunities for economic success exist for those who deserve

them, sports indirectly legitimize this belief as they reinforce the notion that those who

work hardest win (Birrell & McDonald, 2000).

15 Sports are also connected to life in the United States, from family, the

economy, and the media to politics, religion, and education (Coakley & Dunning, 2000).

In millions of American families, sports influence the children participating as much it

does the parents who provide transportation, watch games and coach teams

(Mandelbaum, 2004). Sports stimulate local and regional economies with the billions of

dollars spent each year on tickets, equipment, participation fees and dues, and gambling

(Horne, 2006). While the rights to broadcast sports cost media outlets billions of dollars a

year, their coverage of them influences conversations and reinforces the aforementioned

ideological themes (Dyck, 2000). Politically, sports serve many national purposes like

engendering pride, unity, and identity, expanding global recognition, and displaying

power, wealth, and physical prowess (Majumdar & Hong, 2006). Further, the

management of sport is political as it involves organizations that make decisions about

rules, eligibility, and the allocation of rewards and punishments (Malcolm, 2008). Tasked

with exercising power over people’s lives, these groups are often referred to as

“governing” bodies. Even religious institutions in America, like churches that revise their

worship schedules so members can watch the Super Bowl on Sundays, accommodate

sports (Yiannakis & Melnick, 2001). Across all education levels, sports are typically a

part of the general physical education curriculum; however, they become more serious,

competitive, and popular in high school and college (Zirin, 2007).

Youth Socialization and Participation in Organized Competitive Sports

An interactive and continuous process of learning and social development,

socialization occurs as we become familiar with ourselves and with the social worlds in

which we live (Coakley, 2009). Research on sports and socialization is typically

16 qualitative; uses in-depth interviews and field observations; and studies small samples

(Gayles, 2009). It seeks to procure detailed descriptions of the complexity of three

processes: becoming and staying involved in sports, changing or ending participation in

sports, and the impact of being involved in sports (Coakley, 2014).

Methodologically sound research has identified three major factors related to

sport participation: (1) a person’s abilities, characteristics, and resources; (2) the

influence of significant others; and (3) the availability of meaningful sport opportunities

(McCormack & Chalip, 1988). To better understand the process of being introduced and

becoming committed to sports, Stevenson (1999) interviewed 29 athletes. Consistent

across participants’ descriptions of how they became elite are two processes, introduction

and involvement and developing a commitment to sport participation. While important

people in their lives gradually exposed them to sports over time, these athletes’ decisions

to specialize in a particular sport was influenced by the extent to which they felt

connected to those associated with the sport as well as the extent to which they felt they

could be successful in their respective sport (Stevenson, 1999). Their development of

strong athletic identities was positively associated with commitment to sports. In other

words, these elite competitors grew more involved in sports as the people they viewed as

important recognized and defined them as athletes. As athletes’ decisions are predicated

on structural and cultural factors, Stevenson (1999) asserts sports socialization involves

multiple interactive processes rather than passive ones. In a social world, the maintenance

of an athletic identity is inextricably linked to other salient cultural identifiers like race,

gender, age, and sexuality (Comeaux, Speer, Taustine, & Harrison, 2011). Influential

17 structural factors include the availability of and access to necessary resources like

equipment, facilities, coaches, and competition (Houlihan & Green, 2007).

Donnelly and Young (1999) similarly emphasize the connection between sports

and complex processes of identity formation. They assert becoming an athlete is a four-

step process that includes acquiring knowledge about the sport, interacting with people

involved in the sport, learning from one another what is expected in the sport, and

becoming recognized and fully accepted as an athlete by other athletes in a particular

sport culture. The decision to participate in sports is often tied to its perception as a

culturally important pathway to gaining social acceptance and actualizing personal goals.

For example, Coakley and White (1999) found that young people participated in sports

when it helped them gain control over their lives, achieve a variety of goals, and improve

others’ perceptions of them. Simply, most people play sports when they believe it will

add something positive to their lives. However, as social conditions and relationships

change over time, so do the reasons people decide to play and eventually depart from

sports (Funk & James, 2001).

Between 1950 and 1980, a conflation of interests led to a proliferation of research

seeking to understand and remedy youth departure from organized sport programs.

Parents of baby boomer children wanted to know if sports would build character and

teach American values; coaches desired to understand how to better develop and prepare

athletes for elite competition; and academics and other social critics sought confirmation

of whether or not big-time sport programs were exploiting college athletes and leaving

them unprepared for life beyond athletics (Goldstein & Bredemeier, 1977). The literature

that emerged provides great insights into changing and ending sport participation

18 (Coakley, 2014). Athletes do not cut all ties with sports when they drop out of a

particular sport; as they age, they tend to play different and less competitive sports, take

on reduced roles in the same sports, or transition to other sport-related roles like

coaching, administration, and management (Coakley, 2009). Through interviews with 34

athletes who had ceased or reduced sport participation between the ages of 18 and 24,

Koukouris (1994) sought to understand the process of disengagement from formally

organized competitive sport. Although exploitation, injuries, and other negative

experiences sometimes precipitate athletic disengagement, he found that dropping out of

sports is commonly associated with other developmental changes, like transitioning from

the educational to the professional world and/or starting a family. After long careers

absent opportunities to develop identities outside of athletics, those most committed to

sports are much more likely to struggle as they transition into other relationships,

activities, and careers (Wheeler, Steadward, Legg, Hutzler, Campbell, & Johnson, 1999).

Research on the impact of athletic participation examines participants’ daily

experiences, the social worlds they create, and the ideological messages they produce

seeks to understand the extent to which sports build character and improve health and

physical well being (Stevenson, 1999). More than 50 years of literature fails to

consistently define character, fully understand the complex relationship between sports

and socialization, and delineate the difference between athletes and nonathletes (Stoll &

Beller, 1998). Further, faulty assumptions about the homogeneity of athletic experiences

and their unique benefits have caused scholars to overlook the diversity in experiences

and outcomes, other influences when assessing how and if sports build character, the

differential perceptions of what benefits of participation in organized sports means across

19 students and over time, and the social and cultural contexts of sport socialization

(Hartmann, 2008; Kidd & MacDonnell, 2007). Consequently, general statements about

whether or not sports develop character cannot be made.

For nearly every competitive sport, the risk of injury alone is so high it outweighs

any potential health benefits (White, 2004). Accordingly, a startling amount of research

suggests that sports may actually be unhealthy (Abernathy & Bleakley, 2007; Messner,

2002; Murphy & Waddington, 2007; White, 2004). Among both female and male

adolescents, sport is the main cause of injury (Abernathy & Bleakley, 2007). All but two

competitive sports (basketball and volleyball) were the omitted from the U.S. Surgeon

General’s list of healthy physical activities (U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services, 1996). While rhythmic, non-competitive, self-controlled exercises (e.g. sit-ups,

push-ups, lunges dips, squats, and other calisthenics) are the healthiest form of physical

activity, benefits decline as sports become more competitive (Waddington, 2000a;

2000b). Likewise, high contact, competitive sports are more likely to leave a participant

injured than jobs in construction, oil rigging, and mining (Swartz, 2004). The injury risks

are most exacerbated in heavy contact sports like football, where players violently and

aggressively wield their bodies likes weapons for athletic success (Young, 1993).

Research on obesity, another indicator of health, reports more troubling findings for

participating in the most popular American sport: football. Between 1985 and 2008,

while competitive sports grew in popularity, obesity rates among young and adult

participants have more than doubled (Coakley, 2009; Duncan, 2008). In the NFL, for

example, while fewer than 10 players weighed over 300 pounds between 1920 and 1985,

570 players weighed more than 300 pounds in 2006 (Frias & Hartnett, 2006). Similar

20 patterns of obesity exist in college and high school football, the most frequently played

of all school-sponsored sports (Keller, 2007).

Although he ultimately concludes the research is largely contradictory and

inconclusive, Coakley (2014) identifies both positive and negative factors associated with

sport participation. Positive socialization outcomes are associated with:

Opportunities to explore and develop identities apart from playing sports; knowledge-building experiences that go beyond the locker room and playing field; new relationships, especially with people who are not connected with sports and do not base their interaction on a person’s status or identity as an athlete; explicit examples of how lessons learned in sports may be applied to specific situations apart from sports; and opportunities to develop and display competence in nonsport activities that are observed by other people who can serve as mentors and advocates outside sports. (p. 103)

Contrarily, sport participation is most likely to have negative consequences when “it

constricts a person’s opportunities, experiences, relationships, and general competence

apart from sports” (p. 103).

Popularization of Highly Organized Competitive Youth Sports

Highly organized competitive sports—characterized by considerable amounts of

formalized practice time, extensive attendance by adult spectators, exclusivity to the most

talented athletes, and selection of winners on various levels—did not exist for youth until

the conflation of a couple of distinct, yet related developments in the early twentieth

century (Wiggins, 2013).

First, as organized sport became an American obsession for spectators,

participants’ supposed advantages facilitated its inclusion in school curriculum

(Majumdar & Hong, 2006). Originating in the college environment, spreading to high

schools, and eventually trickling down to elementary schools, physical education placed

21 competitive sport within the grasp of preadolescent boys (Wiggins, 2013). Prior to the

1930s, schools, playgrounds, and a handful of national youth membership agencies (i.e.,

Boy Scouts, the Y.M.C.A., and other Boys’ Clubs) provided recreational activities for

organized sports for boys under age 12. In fact, the initial acceptance and promotion of

competitive sports by schools thrU.S.t them so deep into the American mainstream that

outside organizations began to sponsor competitive programs, while physical education

professionals, educators, and researchers went on a crusade to remove them from

elementary schools for undermining educational objectives (Wiggins).

Between the 1930s and 1960s, organized competitive youth sports were

frequently critiqued for forcing kids to focus on one sport too early in their development

(Mitchell, 1932); the exclusion of non-stellar athletes (Duncan, 1951); and physical,

psychological and emotional strain (American Association for Health, Physical

Education, and Recreation, 1952). Additionally, championship play and post season

games (Moss & Orion, 1939) were criticized for their overt emphasis on winning and

rewards (Skinner, 1945) as well as their expensive and time-consuming nature (Mitchell,

1932). The litany of publications disapproving of competitive sports in schools

(AAHPER, 1952; 1963; 1968) left room for less intense physical activity and contributed

heavily to the growth of intramural sports (House, 1931; Roop, 1932). One 44-state

survey, for example, reports that only 10% of elementary schools sponsored

interscholastic competition in 1940 (Georgiady & Savage, 1940). When schools dropped

the sponsorship of competitive sport programs, child related organizations and ‘boys

work groups,’ or volunteer organizations focused on boys’ social welfare and their

development into upstanding American citizens, picked up where they left off (Wiggins).

22 The second major development was the paradigmatic shift in Americans’

understanding of the value of sport and how these beliefs allowed boys work groups to

thrive. An abundance of literature in the first decades of the twentieth century evidences

that childhood was regarded as an increasingly important stage in the human life cycle

(Bell, 1903; Bühler, 1930; Claparède, 1911; Hager, Hartwig, Houston, La Salle,

McNeely, & Wayman, 1950; Hall, 1904, 1920; Key, 1909). Concerned individuals and

relatively newer organizations took it upon themselves to provide opportunities for

proper growth and development. Most notably, the boys work groups, as did much of

America, believed that sport was the exclusive method to exercise boys’ minds and

bodies (Wiggins, 2013). In 1890, Theodore Roosevelt wrote:

There is a certain tendency to underestimate or overlook the need of the virile, masterful qualities of the heart and mind…there is no better way of counteracting this tendency than by encouraging bodily exercise and especially the sports, which develop such qualities as courage, resolution and endurance. (as cited in Gorn & Goldstein, 1993, p. 98)

Americans were not only confident competitive sport prevented delinquency, built

character, and promoted physical fitness, democratic living, general education,

citizenship, and sportsmanship, but many were also skeptical of its reported detriments

(Foster, 1930; Johnson, 1907; Kennedy, 1931; Landon, 1930; Thrasher, 1936). As the

perceived benefits of competitive sport for individual participants and society in general

were too established in the American imagination to prevent young boys from playing

them, the boys’ work groups successfully provided opportunities for competitive sport

whenever students were not in school—evenings, weekends, and summers (Wiggins,

2013). Therefore, it was outside the educational context that highly organized

competitive youth sports became prevalent in American culture.

23 Organized youth sports continued to grow dramatically in size and popularity

with the postwar baby boom and the social changes taking place in the 1950s. Eager to

develop their children holistically, new parents got them involved in organized sports,

and subsequently became involved themselves (Mandelbaum, 2004). While mothers

catered their domestic schedules around organized sports, fathers became coaches and

other league administrators and daughters cheered for their brothers from the bleachers,

as organized sports were mostly geared towards boys eight to 14 years old. In recent

decades, the impact and popularity of organized competitive youth sports has ballooned

because they: provide supervision after school and during the summer for households

with two working parents (Dukes & Coakley, 2002); are believed to be an indication of

good parenting (Coakley, 2006); keep children occupied and out of trouble (Sternheimer,

2006); are regarded as safe alternatives to the dangers lurking in the home (Nack &

Munson, 2000); and gain players social acceptance among family and friends and thus,

are viewed by participants as enjoyable and culturally valued (Opdyke, 2007).

History, Evolution, and Critiques of Intercollegiate Athletics

The enterprise of intercollegiate athletics has been the subject of perpetual debate

since its inception (Thelin, 2011). Seemingly, the multifarious roles sports maintain in the

postsecondary educational environment create a uniquely complex dynamic in the United

States, the only country where competitive sports are so closely connected to higher

learning (Thelin, 2011). Whereas serious athletes in other countries compete in local

clubs and leagues completely removed from scholastic pursuits, the U.S. develops the

majority of its elite athletic talent on college and university campuses (Sperber, 2000).

Almost 2,000 American college and universities sponsor athletic teams and nearly four

24 percent of all enrolled undergraduates, approximately half a million students, compete

at the varsity level every year (Suggs, 2008). Under the National Collegiate Athletic

Association’s (NCAA) governance, more than 1,200 member institutions sponsor a total

of 18,835 sports teams that compete for championships and feature approximately

463,202 student-athletes (NCAA, 2013b).

For college athletes, the playing field may be a character-building, experiential

classroom where lessons on discipline, teamwork, and perseverance can be taught more

holistically (Bowen & Levin, 2003). Still, as spectator sports have served essential

university functions since the mid-nineteenth century, the ethical compromises made to

field winning teams have been the primary source of tension between the academic

mission of colleges and the competitive mission of athletic departments (Harper &

Donnor, 2015; Smith, 2000). The self-appointed governing body contends college sports

engage students; improve academic performance; help develop transferable skills; foster

physical fitness; generate school spirit, unity and pride; promote parental, alumni, and

community support; and provide opportunities for students to display their diverse skills.

Simultaneously, critics assert college sports distract students from educationally

purposeful activities; distort academic values; perpetuate dependence and conformity;

pacify spectators; deprive educational programs of resources; and subject athletes to

injury and isolation in culturally hostile campus climates (Bowen & Levin, 2003;

Clotfelter, 2011; Coakley, 2009; Duderstadt, 2009; Harper & Donnor, 2015; Lapchick,

2006; Overly, 2005; Sack & Staurowsky, 1998; Shulman & Bowen, 2001; Sperber, 1999,

2000; Suggs, 2008; Van Rheenen, 2011). As such, intercollegiate athletics remain

“American higher education’s ‘peculiar institution’. Their presence is pervasive, yet their

25 proper balance with academics remains puzzling” (Thelin, 2011, p. 1). The following

chronicles the history of intercollegiate athletics, from its European origins through its

evolution from “amateur” sport to a professionalized, commercial entity.

The Origin of College Sport

Competitive sports emerged on European campuses during The Middle Ages

when the advent of residential colleges increased the leisure time students would

eventually fill with games (Suggs, 2008). Mangan and Park (1987) trace the origins of

rowing, cricket, horseracing, tennis, badminton, and racquetball to Great Britain’s leading

universities (Cambridge and Oxford) and elite preparatory schools (Eton and

Westminster), where the sons of titled nobility and landed gentry have been playing them

since the sixteenth century.

Prominent among British aristocracy, the amateur ideal was more of an

exclusionary tactic than a noble principle (Veblen, 1953). Based on genetics alone, the

aristocracy was believed to be qualitatively superior to the working classes (Moore,

1993). Similarly, leisure activities were believed to be qualitatively superior to

professional ones (Veblen, 1953). Unconcerned with material gain, the gentlemen-

aristocrat participated in sports merely for the love of the game. Though he tried to do

everything well, investing too much time, effort, or energy into a single activity to

individually acquire merit was considered plebeian (Sack & Staurowsky, 1998). Thus, the

elite avoided professional drill and methodical instruction to distance themselves from

even highly trained professionals, regarded as “overdeveloped in one direction, atrophied

in all others” (Perry, 1904, p. 25). In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen (1953)

explains that abstention from labor, excess effort, and training was a status indicator

26 derived from Ancient Greece. Meant only for those born into immense privilege,

amateur sports were reserved for the aristocracy.

Though the amateur ideal upheld the academic traditions of a liberal arts

education within the context of the university setting, the inherent class bias was easily

recognized elsewhere, creating controversy among the masses (Sack & Staurowsky,

1998). The “mechanics clause,” for example, was inserted into early definitions of

amateurism to exclude members of the working class who were never compensated for

athletic performance. In 1866, the Amateur Athletic Club of England defined an amateur

as:

Any gentleman who has never competed in an open competition, or for any public money, or for admission money, or with professionals for a prize, public money, or admission money, and who has never in any period of his life taught or assisted in the pursuit of athletic exercises as a means of livelihood; nor as a mechanic, artisan, or labourer. (Glader, 1978, p. 19)

While the alleged rationale behind barring manual laborers from amateur sports was the

unfair physical advantage they derived from the rigor of their daily occupational

activities, the aristocracy’s exclusion of them was more about perpetuating difference,

maintaining hierarchies, and retaining their own elite social status (Sack & Staurowsky,

1998).

When the British aristocracy began to decline in the late nineteenth century, so

too did the amateur spirit. The amateur ideal lost considerable ground in 1889, after the

British suffered humiliating military defeats to South Africa in the Boer War. In A Nation

of Amateurs, Brodrick (1900) argued that the militaristic blunders were a consequence of

amateurism, which rendered the British careless, weak, and lacking in method and

training. When international competition drove agricultural prices down, the property of

27 the aristocracy lost value, leaving them vulnerable and competing with the new middle

class for employment (Cannadine, 1990). During these increasingly industrial times, the

demand for highly skilled professionals grew while the dominance of Great Britain’s

leisure class faded (Sack & Staurowsky, 1998).

From Aristocratic to American Amateurs, 1840-1910

Though very few American colonists were aristocrats in England, they adopted

many of the landed gentry’s customs (Mandell, 1984), from fashion and lifestyle to

educational standards (Morison, Commager, & Lechten, 1980). Founded in 1636,

Harvard was a “rustic imitation” of the elite British schools (Sack & Staurowsky, 1998),

borrowing architectural style and classic curriculum from Oxford and Cambridge

(Morison et al.). Meanwhile, wealthier colonists continued the sporting activities of Great

Britain’s leisure class. By the onset of the Revolutionary War in 1776, over two dozen

English sports had been adapted, becoming an intricate part of American life (Mandell,

1984). Particularly popular at colleges were class contests that hazed incoming first-year

students by pitting them against older cohorts (Sack & Staurowsky, 1998). Recreationally

motivated and organized and governed by students, campus athletics continued in the

amateur spirit. Viewing it as an increasingly integral component of the curriculum, most

Northeastern colleges erected departments dedicated entirely to physical activity (Smith,

2000). As physical education became a discipline, competitive sports grew into an

obsession (Suggs, 2008, p. 4).

The circumstances surrounding the very first intercollegiate contest, for example,

suggest college sports have been problematic and in need of greater regulation since at

least 1852 (Harper & Donnor, 2015; Smith, 2000). To promote a new resort hotel built

28 along his powerful Boston, Concord, and Montreal railroad line, James Elkins

sponsored a lavish regatta between Harvard and Yale (Smith, 2000). Desperate to best its

academic rival Yale in this eight-day boat race, Harvard hired and fielded a professional

coxswain disguised as a student. In a review of the history of intercollegiate athletics,

Suggs (2008) reports virtually all of its evils were present at this initial event: “external

corporations were using college sports to advertise their own services; teams were

bending the rules on academically eligible athletes; and everyone was gambling on

everything” (pp. 4-5). Out of these concerns came the shift from student-controlled

athletic teams to faculty oversight (Duderstadt, 2009).

By the turn of the century, the inability of colleges to control sports signaled the

need for regulation beyond the institutional level (Smith, 2000). The athletic conferences

created as a result were also largely ineffective, and elite university presidents continually

denounced the increasingly commercial and dangerous nature of football. In 1903,

Charles Eliot, Harvard’s president at the time, offered a particularly compelling critique:

“death and injuries are not the strongest argument against football” (as cited in Branch,

2011, p. 5), “that cheating and brutality are profitable is the main evil.” Despite several

attempts by Walter Camp to make it safer, with minimal padding and optional helmet

usage, the game remained violent by design. Resultantly, faculty at several schools

attempted to abolish the sport. After 21 deaths and 200 injuries in the 1904 season,

newspapers and other editorials condemned the brutality and corruption in college

football, bringing national attention to the issue (Smith, 2000).

To restore ethical conduct, President Theodore Roosevelt invited select college

football leaders to a White House conference in 1905. At this meeting, Roosevelt, an avid

29 outdoorsman, admirer of football, and strong believer in amateurism, declared no

student who has ever been compensated in any way for his athletic ability was allowed to

participate in intercollegiate athletics (Byers & Hammer, 1995). As death, injuries, and

corruption continued, a larger national conference was convened by New York

University Chancellor Henry MacCracken to decide whether football could be reformed

or if it would have to be eradicated altogether, resulting in the creation of a Rules

Committee (Sperber, 2009). Later that year, when representatives from both the White

House and NYU conferences met to reform college football rules, the Intercollegiate

Athletic Association (IAA)—renamed the National Collegiate Athletic Association

(NCAA) in 1910, was formed as a regulatory body to ensure both fairness and safety

(Smith, 2000). Among its founding principles was the amateur ideal adopted from the

British aristocracy.

The Professionalization of Amateur Sport, 1910-1984

During its infancy, the NCAA was not a major player in the governance of

intercollegiate athletics. For the first 20 years, students, infrequently monitored by

faculty, remained in control (Smith, 2000). In the 1920s, the advent of the radio, the

building of megalithic stadiums, the spreading of college football to the South and other

regions of the U.S., and the development of successful and entertaining programs allowed

for greater fan interest in intercollegiate sports. The 1927 Rose Bowl became the first

coast-to-coast U.S. broadcast, signifying the transition of college athletes into local,

regional, and national folk heroes (Suggs, 2008). The rapid growth of the college sport

enterprise also opened it up to further criticism for its pervasive issues.

30 In American College Athletics, Savage, Bentley, McGovern, & Smiley (1929)

made national headlines and exposed 81 of 112 schools surveyed for recruiting athletes

and paying them in a variety of prohibited ways, from disguised booster funds and illegal

athletic scholarships called “subsidies” to non-existent show jobs. Findings from the

Carnegie Foundation report launched the national debate over whether college athletes

should be paid. The discussion would return to the forefront in 1939, when first-year

athletes at the University of Pittsburgh went on strike because their upperclassmen

teammates were getting paid more than them (Smith, 2000).

By 1946, the NCAA had grown so embarrassed by its inability to alleviate

exploitative recruitment practices, bribery, and rampant gambling scandals that it

convened with conference officials from across the country to develop a 12-point code of

ethics to ‘”restore” sanity in college athletics (Sperber, 2000). Seeking to reach a

compromise between the Southern schools in favor of full athletic scholarships and

schools in the Ivy League that advocated for all students be treated the same, the “Sanity

Code” prohibited schools from compensating athletes beyond free tuition and meals

(Smith, 2000). Enacted in 1948, it set a momentous precedent in intercollegiate athletics

as it “abandoned the NCAA’s forty-two-year-old commitment to amateur principles and

allowed financial aid to be awarded on the basis of athletic ability” (Sack & Staurowsky,

1998, p. 44). The three-person Constitutional Compliance Committee created to enforce

the penalties would prove unsuccessful by 1950, when member institutions agreed

complete expulsion from the NCAA was too harsh a punishment for violating the new

policies (Suggs, 2008). The Sanity Code made two things evident: not only had the

31 amateur ideal, as it existed among the British aristocracy, been lost, but also the NCAA

needed to strengthen its rule enforcement capacity.

During the 1950s, the NCAA began to more industriously exercise its authority.

In 1951, the Association repealed the Sanity Code and replaced the Constitutional

Compliance Committee with the Committee on Infractions, the rules-enforcement system

in place today (Suggs, 2008). The appointment of Walter Byers as the NCAA’s first

Executive Director was also pivotal, as he was instrumental in setting several precedents

that would strengthen the Association and its enforcement division (Smith, 2000). Byers

and the Committee on Infractions were tested almost immediately as two major scandals,

grade counterfeiting in football and point shaving and gambling in basketball, rocked

college sports later that year (Suggs, 1999). While other reform efforts were failing, the

Committee on Infractions handed the University of Kentucky and iconic coach Adolph

Rupp the first-ever “death penalty.” Barring the Wildcats from competition for the entire

1952 season created an “aura of centralized command for an NCAA office that barely

existed” (Branch, 2011, p. 6).

Perhaps Byers’ most salient win was the legal battle leading to the creation of the

term “student-athlete.” When the widow of Ray Dennison—a Fort Lewis A&M Aggies

football player who died of a head injury—tried to sue the NCAA for workmen’s

compensation death benefits (Sperber, 2000), the NCAA placed the word “student” in

front of “athlete” to emphasize players’ statuses as students, to prevent them from being

identified as employees, and to promote the amateur ideal of academics over athletics. In

a rapid yet calculated response to “the dreaded notion that athletes could be identified as

employees by state industrial commissions and the courts,” Byers “crafted the term

32 student-athlete, and soon it was embedded in all NCAA rules and interpretations as a

mandated substitute for words as players and athletes” (Byers & Hammer, 1995, p. 69).

Preserving the image of college athletes being students first, athletes second, and

employees never, the ambiguous term has been an exclusive shield for the NCAA,

serving as an effective legal defense (Van Rheenen, 2013).

The NCAA quickly transformed into a self-sustaining bureaucracy under Byers.

The revenue generated by televising the college football “Game of the Week” ballooned

after the NCAA forced football powerhouses the Universities of Pennsylvania and Notre

Dame out of independent television deals (Watterson, 2002). In 1952, Byers’

maneuvering resulted in NBC paying the NCAA $1.4 million for a restricted football

package, enough to rent a headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri (Branch, 2011). By the

mid 1950s the NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament was the premier invitational

tournament. It became an increasingly profitable national phenomenon with its expansion

to 48 teams in 1975 and the storied collegiate rivalry between Indiana State’s Larry Bird

and Michigan State’s Magic Johnson in 1979 (Suggs, 2008). According to Falla (1981),

the $100,000 the NCAA made in revenue in 1947 reached $500,000 in 1967, $1 million

in 1972, and $22 million in 1981.

Throughout the 1970s, the growing interest in and commercialization of college

sports increased the NCAA’s enforcement capacity so much that the Association was

being accused of unfairly exercising its power (Smith, 2000). To address these concerns,

the NCAA added checks and balances by dividing the prosecutorial and investigative

roles of the Committee on Infractions, and by separating member institutions into three

competitively homogenous groups called divisions.

33 Evolution into a Commercial Enterprise (1984-present)

University presidents grew more directly concerned about the operation of the

NCAA in the 1980s, viewing athletic programs as potential sources of expenses, revenue,

and public relations, as well as reflections of their professional reputations (Duderstadt,

2009). The concurrent pressures placed on university presidents by boosters, alumni, and

faculty (namely, managing ethical compromises while fielding winning teams) caused

them to take more active roles in governance. In 1984, the recently created Presidents

Commission began demonstrating their collective power (Smith, 1988). By 1985, college

and university presidents appeared to be “running college sports” when they exercised

their authority to call a special convention (Smith, 2000). Though their efforts to contain

athletic costs remained largely unsuccessful, these institutional leaders became

particularly relevant in the governance of college sports, restructuring the NCAA with the

addition of a Board of Directors and an Executive committee for each of the three

divisions (Duderstadt).

Important developments continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s as television

watching, the profitability of broadcasting deals, and the popularity of college basketball

significantly increased. When the Supreme Court ruled the NCAA limitations on the

televising of football games were in violation of antitrust laws in NCAA v. Board of

Regents (1984), the Association’s monopoly over broadcasting was lifted, opening the

floodgates of opportunity for powerful conferences to negotiate their own contracts

(Watterson, 2002). As gambling and the introduction of the point spread made basketball

more popular, stakeholders quickly realized, that relative to football, basketball was

inexpensive and ideal for broadcasting. The national tournament, for example, had grown

34 exponentially more popular since expanding its format in 1975. In 1984, CBS paid $1

billion for its exclusive broadcasting rights (Smith, 2000). Commercialization reached

new heights as cable television, major athletic conferences, and ESPN attempted to quell

the insatiable appetites of sports fans, scheduling day and night games throughout the

week and on weekends. In 1999, CBS renegotiated broadcasting rights for the

tournament, paying the NCAA $6 billion over 11 years, approximately $550 million

annually. By drastically increasing the value of intercollegiate athletics, basketball swiftly

went from a minor sport to a major consideration, confirming what academics had feared

all along: whoever makes the money makes the rules (Duderstadt, 2009).

Most recently, the role of intercollegiate athletics, once believed by college

presidents and the NCAA to be about the holistic development of its participants, has

shifted to generating revenue and providing national entertainment (Overly, 2005).

College basketball and football have become almost entirely commercial entities,

facilitating the professionalization of college athletics conferences, some of which, the

Big Ten for example, televise more sporting events than the most popular professional

sports leagues (Duderstadt, 2009). Sports press and media, none more so than television,

have increased the demand for big-time college sports, resulting in the Association

lengthening regular seasons and raising questions about adding and standardizing

postseasons (Thelin, 2011). As the value of big-time college sports continues to increase

so too will the consequences of commercialism.

DI Student-Athlete Experiences and Outcomes in Contemporary College Sports

Literature on the campus experiences of student-athletes was scarce until the

1980s when the NCAA passed several eligibility rules to address growing concerns about

35 their learning and personal development, particularly those playing the big-time sports

of men’s basketball and football (Comeaux & Harrison, 2011). Despite them garnering

publicity, fostering school pride, providing entertainment, and generating billions of

dollars in revenue for the DI institutions they attend, the NCAA’s amateurism principle

prevents student-athletes from receiving compensation beyond athletic scholarships (Van

Rheenen, 2012). Thus, the ethical question at the center of college sports is: how do

participants benefit from the college experience relative to their nonathlete peers?

Accordingly, the extant literature seeks to understand the challenges to student-athletes’

educational success, from psychosocial and identity-related challenges (Martin, 2009;

(Brown, Glastetter-Fender, & Shelton, 2000) to various issues related to career planning,

academic motivation, and post-college outcomes (Adler & Adler, 1987; Gaston-Gayles,

2004; Pascarella & Smart, 1991).

Balancing Complex Roles and Identities

According to Gecas and Burke (1995), identity comprises “who or what one is”

and “the various meanings attached to oneself by self and others” (p. 42). Self-identity

refers to how one views oneself while social identity refers to how the self is viewed by

others. Athletic identity, if understood as a social role (Astle, 1986), encompasses the

obligations—behavioral, affective, cognitive, and social—associated with identifying

with said role (Brewer, Van Raalte, & Linder, 1993). Student-athletes are a unique

college population for whom success entails putting in hard work, showing dedication,

and performing in the classroom as well as on the field and court (Simons, Rheenen, and

Covington, 1999). Beyond balancing the academic and social demands that their non-

athlete peers do, they must also manage a bevy of exhaustive athletic demands including

36 travelling, practicing, and competing (Watt & Moore, 2001). Athletes in Division I—

the NCAA’s most competitive, lucrative, and popular level—receive elevated levels of

social reinforcement for their athletic prowess, and often disproportionately develop their

athletic identities. When their sports are in season, for example, student-athletes typically

spend more than twenty hours per week on sport related activities, miss several classes,

and endure bodily injury and fatigue (Wolverton, 2008). Even keeping track of the

complex set of rules and requirements the NCAA and athletic conferences have mandated

student-athletes adhere to in order to remain eligible for intercollegiate athletic

competition can be time-consuming and arduous. Hence, being an athlete is at the center

of both their self-identity and social identity. Logically, identity foreclosure, defined as “a

commitment to an identity before one has meaningfully explored other options or

engaged in exploratory behavior, such as career exploration, talent development, or

joining social clubs or interest groups” (Beamon, 2012, p. 196), is prevalent among

undergraduate men on revenue generating basketball and football teams (Harrison, Sailes,

Rotich, & Bimper, 2011).

In a national study on their perceptions of their college experience, 62 percent of

student-athletes reported participation in intercollegiate athletics contributed to them

viewing themselves more as athletes than as students (Potuto & O’Hanlon, 2006). The

majority of participants expressed wanting to spend more time on academics and pursue

more professional and educational opportunities such as internships and research with

faculty. For 80 percent of them, athletics was the main reason they were unable to.

Fittingly, the literature on DI student-athletes routinely argues that the problematic

academic, psychosocial, and career development outcomes they experience are a function

37 of the institutions’ inability to engage them in activities beyond sports (Comeaux &

Harrison, 2011; Gaston-Gayles, 2009, 2015; Gaston-Gayles & Hu, 2009a, 2009b; Martin,

2009).

Student engagement can be defined as the quality of efforts students themselves

devote to educationally purposeful activities both inside and outside the classroom that

contribute directly to desired outcomes (Astin, 1993; Kuh, Schuh, Whitt, & Associates;

Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). They range from reading, writing, studying for and

attending class to interacting with peers, staff, and faculty as well as participating in

student groups and organizations and other curricular and cocurricular activities (Gaston-

Gayles, 2015). Ideally, postsecondary environments support students’ efforts with

policies and practices that facilitate participation in these productive activities (Kuh et al.,

2005). However, DI institutions with high profile athletic programs persistently fail to do

so (Overly, 2005).

Adler and Adler (1987, 1989, 1991) have provided much theoretical insight into

the ways in which DI student-athletes balance their social, academic, and athletic roles. In

one study, Adler & Adler (1987) use four years of participant observation and identity

theory to examine conflict between and the changing salience of social, academic, and

athletic roles of players on a major college basketball team at a private, medium-size,

predominantly white university. They found: (1) the “overwhelmingly demanding athletic

role,” (2) the prioritization of athletics over academics, (3) the resulting “frustrations and

failures in the academic realm,” and (4) the lack of positive reinforcement in the

academic sphere conflate to cause conflict between players’ various roles (p. 452). To

38 resolve said conflicts, athletes` reconstruct the identity salience of their academic role

by realigning, reducing, or in some cases, dropping it entirely.

Adler and Adler (1989) also identified a new form of self-identity, the glorified

self. A public persona that differs from the athlete’s private persona, it arises “when

individuals become the focus of intense interpersonal and media attention, leading to

their achieving celebrity” and is caused “in part by the treatment of individuals’ selves as

objects by others” (p. 229). Glorified in the media for their athletic prowess, and

resultantly “treated with awe and respect” by large numbers of people (p. 301), student-

athletes concept of self is heavily influenced by the daily face-to-face interactions with

others on campus in which they are expected to live up to this media created persona

(Adler & Adler, 1989). Thus, as social and academic roles are unrecognized, devalued,

undermined, the immense privileging of athletic roles transforms athletes’ identities and

self-conceptions, increases their commitment to these roles, and eventually leads to the

“glorified self” as the dominant master status (Adler & Adler, 1989).

From a longitudinal study of a DI men’s basketball program, Adler and Adler

(1991) have most recently discovered a phenomenon by which student-athletes privilege

their athletic roles and responsibilities above their roles as students, as team practices,

conditioning, games, and travel engulf their time and ultimately their identities. Role

Engulfment theory posits that sport is the predominant, and sometimes exclusive, venue

for student-athlete engagement. As they primarily live, eat, socialize, and take classes

with teammates and other athletes, student-athletes are afforded limited opportunities to

engage with non-athletic peers. Resultantly, they are socialized into a peer subculture that

discourages exerting effort in academic activities, distracts them from studying, and

39 compels them to disassociate with other students who could provide greater academic

role modeling. Essentially, the very nature of their athletic commitment vastly

undermines their ability to fully integrate into the larger campus community and be

academically successful.

Academic Outcomes

The rate at which student-athletes graduate is the most commonly used metric to

asses whether or not athletic programs are upholding the academic ideals of higher

education institutions. Since the NCAA began collecting graduation rates in 1983,

student-athletes’ graduation rates have steadily increased (Zimbalist, 1999). By 1998,

student-athletes (58 percent) were graduating at rates higher that their nonathlete peers

(56 percent) (NCAA, 2000). Of the students who began college in 2004, 65 percent of the

athletes graduated by 2010 as opposed to 63 percent of the general population (NCAA,

2011). Though overall student-athletes maintain higher graduation rates than their peers

who do not play college sports, disaggregating the data by sport, race, gender, and

division reveals longstanding and pervasive inequities, namely in revenue generating DI

programs (Harper, Williams, & Blackman, 2013). While the NCAA’s graduation success

rate indicates over 80 percent of student-athletes who entered college between 1999 and

2003 have graduated within six years (Sander, 2010), women’s graduation rates are

typically higher than those of their male counterparts and Division II (DII) and Division

III (DIII) schools typically graduate more students than DI schools (NCAA, 2011).

Finally, despite the overall increases in graduation rates, athletes in the revenue

generating sports of football and basketball are graduating at lower rates than any other

collegiate athletes (NCAA, 2000; Zimbalist, 1999).

40 Many studies have found that relative to their peers, student-athletes are less

prepared for the academic rigor of college, particularly those who are highly committed

to their sport (Bowen & Levin, 2003; Shulman & Bowen, 2001). When they enter college

with similar background characteristics though, the differences in academic performance

are minimal (Aries, McCarthy, Salovey, & Banaji, 2004; Pascarella & Smart, 1991;

Stuart, 1985). Research examining the impact of participation in intercollegiate athletics

finds it may negatively influence student learning for specific populations (McBride &

Reed, 1998). For example, men on revenue generating sports teams are not experiencing

cognitive benefits to the extent other college males are (Gaston-Gayles, 2009). Men’s

basketball and football are the only sports in which participants scored lower in reading

comprehension and mathematics than non athletes and athletes in other sports (Pascarella,

Bohr, Nora, and Terenzini, 1995). They also consistently scored lower on other cognitive

development measures such as critical thinking and scientific reasoning.

At colleges and universities with high profile sports programs, student-athletes are

also often subject to the pervasive “dumb jock” stereotype. Assumed to be inept and

incapable of performing well in the classroom, student-athletes are stigmatized by peers,

administrators, alumni, and faculty (Howard-Hamilton & Watt, 2001). Perhaps most

detrimentally, Parsons (2013) suggest professors may hold more negative attitudes

toward college athletes than any other postsecondary stakeholders. Thus, student-athletes

regularly encounter low expectations in classrooms where professors are skeptical of

their academic abilities and surprised when they earn A’s on assignments (Parsons,

2013). According to Engstrom, Sedlacek, & McEwen (1995), both revenue and not

revenue athletes are subject to their professor’s prejudicial attitudes and stereotyping.

41 This is particularly troubling as Comeaux and Harrison (2007) report positive,

supporting and encouraging interactions with faculty are especially critical for the

academic success of athletes in revenue generating programs.

Career Development and Transition Outcomes

Fewer than two percent of all college men’s basketball and football players will

play at the professional level (Coakley, 2009). The other 98% of student-athletes need to

be prepared to procure and perform jobs outside, as the vast majority of them will never

play sports so competitively again (Martin, 2009). Touted as a priceless opportunity to

procure an education and a job, surprisingly little is known about the ways in which

participation in intercollegiate athletics impacts students’ ability to actualize career

aspirations (Park, Lavallee, & Tod, 2013). The scant research suggests Division I student-

athletes are most likely to experience unhealthy transitions out of sports.

As they ended their sport careers and adjusted to post sport life, revenue athletes

reported career transition difficulties and negative emotions, from feelings of loss and

identity crises to distress (Kerr & Dacyshyn, 2000; McKenna & Thomas, 2007; Park,

Lavallee, & Tod, 2013). While their non-sport peers utilize the professional services

available on campus more than them, college athletes endure a host of psychological and

mental health related issues as much or more than them—fear of success, identity

conflict, social isolation, and career anxiety (Park et al., 2013). Assessments of collegiate

male athletes’ life satisfaction at the termination of their collegiate careers indicated that

Black athletes and students who did not have employment plans for after college were

significantly less satisfied with life (Perna, Ahlgren, & Zaichkowsky, 1999). Those with

the strongest athletic identities at the time of sport retirement experience the greatest loss

42 of identity (Kerr & Dacyshyn, 2000; Lally, 2007) and need more time to adjust to life

without it (Grove, Lavallee, & Gordon, 1997; Warriner & Lavallee, 2008). A function of

the prioritization of athletic over academic and professional development, some revenue

athletes depart from college less developed and prepared for life than when they entered.

43 CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODS

Chapter Overview

This chapter describes the research methods used to investigate how DI student-

athletes experienced college as well as the amateurism policies governing intercollegiate

sports. It begins with a rationale for my use of qualitative research methods and a

description of phenomenology, the methodological approach that guides this study.

Following is an outline of the methods used to select the sample and site for data

collection. It then explains the procedures used to collect and analyze data. Finally, the

chapter concludes with a discussion of the measures taken to ensure trustworthiness of

the data, as well as my background and role in the study.

Rationale for Qualitative Inquiry

Four characteristics distinguish qualitative and quantitative approaches to social

science research (Patton, 2002). First, participants in qualitative research are not selected

for the purpose of making generalizations about the larger population, but instead for

their rich insights into the phenomena under investigation. In this study, student-athletes

who played at least three years of DI college football shared their appraisals of the

amateurism policies governing college sports. Second, as opposed to measurement,

qualitative research focuses on understanding and describing the essence and wholeness

of experiences (Moustakas, 1994). This study, for example, sought to understand how

amateurism policies impacted the student-athlete experience, particularly in regard to

their educational and professional expectations and outcomes. Third, as the researcher is

often the data collection instrument in qualitative research, her or his personal

44 experiences and insights can be critical in interpreting the findings that emerge (Patton,

2002). For this reason, qualitative researchers must be particularly mindful of and

committed to acknowledging the biases they may possess (Creswell, 2007). Finally,

whereas quantitative research presents findings using numerical reports, qualitative

research typically presents findings using narration, storytelling, themes, and verbatim

quotes.

Rationale for Use of Qualitative Methods

Primarily conducted for national level decision-making purposes, the majority of

research on the student-athlete experience has been quantitative, employing large-scale

data sources with representative samples (Gaston-Gayles, 2009). This section outlines the

rationale for using qualitative methods to understand the experiences of elite

intercollegiate athletes. First, qualitative methods are best for answering how and what

questions (Creswell, 2007). The research questions guiding the study asked how DI

athletes experienced amateurism as participants in intercollegiate athletics as well as what

they perceived to be the costs and benefits of their participation. Second, if the goal of

research is to generate rich descriptive data and the outcomes of an inquiry are not yet

known, qualitative methods are ideal (Creswell, 2007). They afford researchers the

opportunity to use detailed information to explore topics or phenomena. Finally,

qualitative methods are useful for understanding the experiences of individuals within

their respective environments (Creswell, 2007). As this study sought to understand how

athletes’ experienced amateurism within their varied institutional contexts, qualitative

methods are particularly useful and appropriate.

45 Methodological Approach: Phenomenology

Researchers who subscribe to the belief that qualitative methods cannot be used to determine effects are in essence arguing that students are incapable of reflecting sensibly and honestly on what they have experienced firsthand… college students are arguably best positioned to offer personalized data and perspectives that help shed light on the magnitude of how they were affected by something in their learning environment, participation in a program or activity, or interactions with faculty and student affairs educators. But again, such lived experiences are lost in institutional fetishes with aggregate analyses. (Harper, 2007, p. 58) In the early 1900s, the German philosopher Edmund H. Husserl introduced

phenomenology as “the study of how people describe things and experience them through

their senses” (Patton, 2002, p. 105). This methodological approach to qualitative inquiry

focuses on understanding and describing the lived experiences of people who have

experienced a similar phenomenon, or a common set of conditions (Creswell, 2007).

Typically, phenomenological studies deeply interrogate participants to provide rich and

insightful self-reports of the phenomenon under study (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009).

Not only do these types of accounts exhume a group’s common experience, but also they

explain what participants have experienced, how they have experienced it, and the

meanings they make of their shared experience (Moustakas, 1994). As they entail the

construction of a rich textural summary (what each participant experienced) and a

detailed structural summary (how each person experienced the context, program, or

phenomenon), phenomenological methods are useful for making sense of how

participants are affected by a unique set of circumstances, conditions, or policies

(Moustakas, 1994). By the end of a phenomenological study, both the researcher and the

readers ought to be able to say, “I understand better what it is like for someone to

experience that” (Polkinghorne, 1989, pg. 46). In this study, for example, the

46 phenomenon investigated was the experience of being an amateur athlete at a revenue-

generating DI institution. By the end, readers should better understand how student-

athletes experience amateurism policies.

Site: The “Power” Five Conferences (PFCs)

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is the chief regulatory

body for intercollegiate athletics in the United States. Under “the Association’s”

governance, more than 1,200 member institutions, conferences, and organizations

sponsor a total of 18,835 sports teams that compete for championships and feature

approximately 463,202 student-athletes (NCAA, 2013b). Comprised of three levels,

referred to as “divisions,” this study focuses on Division I. The top level of college

football is the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly Division I-A. In

total, the FBS is comprised of 10 conferences and 128 member institutions. Within the

FBS, there are five standout conferences, referred to as the “Big Five” or the “Power

Five”—The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), the Big Ten Conference (B1G), the Big

12 Conference (Big 12), the Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12), and the Southeastern

Conference (SEC). The ACC is comprised of 15 schools—Boston College, Clemson

University, Duke University, Florida State University, Georgia Tech University,

University of Louisville, University of Miami, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill,

North Carolina State University, University of Notre Dame, University of Pittsburgh,

Syracuse University, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech University and Wake Forest

University. The B1G is comprised of 14 schools—University of Illinois-Urbana

Champaign, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Maryland-College

Park, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Michigan State University, University of

47 Minnesota, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Northwestern University, Ohio State

University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, Rutgers University,

University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Big 12 is comprised of 10 schools—Baylor

University, Iowa State University, University of Kansas, Kansas State University,

University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, University of Texas-Austin, Texas

Christian University, Texas Tech University, and West Virginia University. The Pac-12

is comprised of 12 schools—University of Arizona, Arizona State University, University

of California-Berkeley, University of California-Los Angeles, University of Colorado-

Boulder, University of Oregon, Oregon State University, University of Southern

California, Stanford University, University of Utah, University of Washington, and

Washington State University. The SEC is comprised of 14 schools— University of

Alabama, University of Arkansas, Auburn University, University of Florida, University

of Georgia, University of Kentucky, Louisiana State University, University of

Mississippi, Mississippi State University, University of Missouri, University of South

Carolina, University of Tennessee, Texas A&M University, and Vanderbilt University.

As of February 2015, there were a total of 65 colleges and universities in the five power

conferences.

48 Sampling and Participants

Criterion Sampling

Criterion sampling methods use specific criteria to identify and select participants

(Patton, 2002). The sample in this study was limited to student-athletes who played

football for one of the 65 institutions within the ACC, B1G, Big 12, Pac-12, or SEC and

was a senior. The five power conferences were chosen because the schools within them

field the most popular, competitive, and lucrative football teams. Every NCAA DI

football champion since 1989 has come from them. Their football conference champions

receive automatic bids to the College Football Playoff (CFP)—a post-season series

including six nationally televised football contests. Simply put, when Americans discuss

college football, they are most often referring to the institutions that comprise these

power conferences. This is particularly significant because the debate over the extent to

which scholarship athletes are university employees who should be financially

compensated is rooted in amateurism ideology. A thorough exploration of amateurism in

intercollegiate athletics must be situated within the context of the revenue-generating

sports. Finally, participants were required to be seniors who had, at the time of data

collection, exhausted their eligibility. Thus, they were in no way jeopardizing their

athletic careers to participate in this study. Still, this study was fundamentally about

college. Seeking deeply reflective and detailed accounts of the revenue-generating athlete

experience, it examined those who have spent the most time in the postsecondary

environment to provide rich textural as well as detailed structural summaries (Moustakas,

1994). In all, there were 40 participants from 27 institutions in all five conferences.

Tables 2 and 3 provide characteristics of the participants and their respective institutions.

49

Table 2. Participant Demographics (N=40)

Athletic Conference

Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) 13 Big Ten Conference (B1G) 8 Big 12 Conference (Big 12) 5 Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) 11 Southeastern Conference (SEC) 3

Race

White 26 Black 7 Latino 1 Asian 3 Multiracial 3

Undergraduate GPA

Mean 3.37 Range 2.85-3.90 Unreported 12

Undergraduate Major(s)

Business 14 Journalism, Media, & Communications 2 Science, Technology, Engineering, Math 9 Social & Behavioral Sciences 3 Double Majors 7 Unreported 12

Family Structure

Single Parent 2 Two Parent 26 Other 0 Unreported 12

Parental Educational Attainment

Both Parents Graduated College 24 One Parent Graduated College 1 Neither Parent Graduated College 3 Unreported 12

Household Income

0-$50K 1 $50K-$100K 10 $100K+ 16 Unreported 13

Athletic Status Walk-On 20 Recruited 20

50 Table 3. Institutional Characteristics (N=28)

National 4-Year Institutions

Arizona State University Boston College University of Colorado University of Illinois University of Indiana Kansas State University University of Louisville University of Miami University of Michigan University of Minnesota North Carolina State University University of North Carolina Northwestern University University of Notre Dame The Ohio State University University of Oklahoma Oregon State University Penn State University Purdue University University of South Carolina Stanford University Syracuse University University of Tennessee University of Texas Texas A&M University University of Virginia Wake Forest University Washington State University

Athletic Conference

Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) 9 Big Ten Conference (B1G) 7 Big 12 Conference (Big 12) 3 Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) 5 Southeastern Conference (SEC) 3

Public or Private Public 21 Private 7

Competitiveness by Barron's Profiles of American Colleges

Most Competitive 8 Highly Competitive (Plus) 6 Highly Competitive 4 Very Competitive 3

51 Data Collection Procedures

Data for this study were collected using individual and group interviews via the

Blue Jeans online videoconferencing platform. The recruitment process began with the

compilation of the names of every senior on each football team in the ACC, B1G, Big 12,

Pac-12, or SEC. I first visited the conference websites to verify their institutional

members. For each of the 65 schools, the football team roster was sorted by year and the

names of more than 1,200 seniors were extracted and placed into an excel document. As

public colleges and universities typically list contact information for students on their

websites, a search of the campus directories yielded the emails of approximately 800

student-athletes. Once the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board (IRB)

granted approval, personalized emails were sent to each player inviting them to

participate in the study. After indicating interest in participating, the athletes were sent a

second email with detail about the study, conditions of participation, and interview sign-

up schedules. As students responded with their availability, they were placed into

corresponding time slots.

The first round of invitations produced interest in the study, but only resulted in a

couple of interviews. Recognizing the difficulty of coordinating focus groups across

revenue athletes’ schedules, some procedural amendments were made. One significant

change was the decision to conduct individual interviews in conjunction with the group

interviews to procure as many study participants as possible. The interview protocol was

condensed to minimize participation time. While the initial group interviews typically

lasted 60-90 minutes, the combination of the amended protocol and individual interviews

shortened the average participation time to approximately 30 minutes. To minimize email

52 correspondence, the new invitation emails contained scheduling instructions as well as

an attached .pdf document with details about the study and participation. The second time

around, I was transparent about my eagerness to speak to every willing PFC athlete. I

informed them that I would adjust my schedule to be free during any 30-minute time slot

they had available. Lastly, I included my personal phone number so students could

contact me via text message if they preferred that to email. Of the 90 student-athletes who

replied indicating interest, 40 participated in the study, 10 individual and 10 group

interviews.

During the interviews, I patiently sought to understand how the participants had

experienced college as student-athletes. The 40 athletes were asked to reflect deeply upon

their lived experiences as amateurs in high profile, highly lucrative football programs.

They were also asked to talk about what they gained from and sacrificed for football to

compare and contrast the costs and benefits of their participation in intercollegiate

athletics. After participants were presented with excerpts and verbatim quotes from the

NCAA manual, they were then asked to juxtapose these prompts with their own

educational and professional expectations, experiences, and outcomes. Although a

standard protocol was used, the interviews were semi-structured to permit both data

collection and participant reflection. The intent is for discussions to become

conversational, allowing participants to reflect on their experiences as college athletes

and students (Patton, 2002). All interviews were audio recorded and professionally

transcribed.

53 Data Analysis

Phenomenological Data Analysis

In Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook, John Creswell (2007)

explained phenomenological data analysis includes several phases—information

reduction, analysis of relevant statements, identification of common themes, and a search

for all possible meanings emerging from the data. The detailed step-by-step process

Moustakas (1994) advanced in Phenomenological Research Methods remains the central

approach to data analysis and thus, was carefully followed in this study.

The analysis phase began with epoche, a process of critical self-reflection Husserl

introduced. Katz (1987) writes:

Epoche is a process that the researcher engages in to remove, or at least become

aware of, prejudices, viewpoints or assumptions regarding the phenomenon under

investigation. Epoche helps enable the researcher to investigate the phenomenon

from a fresh and open viewpoint without prejudgment or making meaning too

soon. (p. 36)

Moustakas (1994) explains that to achieve an understanding of another’s experience, the

researcher must be willing to set aside his or her own personal views and experience.

Therefore, the derived understanding was exclusively comprised of the reflections

offered by those who have experienced the phenomenon. As Patton (2002) noted, epoche

is not a fixed event, but an ongoing analytic process in which the researcher must

consciously focus on participants’ understandings and disregard their own. One technique

used was bracketing. In order to see data uncontaminated by personal interference, I had

to literally “bracket out” my assumptions (Patton, 2002).

54 In bracketing, the researcher holds the phenomenon up for serious inspection. It

is taken out of the world where it occurs. It is taken apart and dissected… it is

treated as text or a document; that is, an instance of the phenomenon that is being

studied. It is not interpreted in terms of the standard meanings given to it by the

existing literature. (Denzin, 1989, pp. 55-56)

Denzin lists the following continuous steps for bracketing:

1. Locating key phrases and statements that speak directly to the phenomenon in

question.

2. Interpreting the meanings of these phrases.

3. Obtaining the subject’s interpretations of these phrases.

4. Inspecting what meanings reveal about a phenomenon’s essential recurring

features.

5. Offering tentative definitions of phenomena based on these essential recurring

features.

All of the aforementioned steps were taken as I carefully read and re-read each of the

focus group transcripts line-by-line. By physically “setting aside predilections,

prejudices, predispositions,” Moustakas (1994) explains bracketing allows “things,

events, and people to enter anew into consciousness, and to look and see them again, as if

for the first time” (p. 84). Each transcript was approached like text with which I had

limited familiarity. I bracketed out my thoughts and assumptions as I read each line of the

transcripts. My random thoughts and assumptions— most of which were connected to my

own personal experiences—were marked in the margin. After reviewing each transcript, I

asked myself: “is this what the participants really meant; is the judgment I’ve made here

55 truly characteristic of their experiences?”

Once the data were bracketed, Moustakas (1994) recommends the researcher fully

describe her or his experience of the phenomenon. Then, she or he should engage in

horizontalization, the process of listing and giving equal value to each statement

regarding how participants experience phenomena. After, I clustered the meanings into

categories that best depict participants’ shared experiences.

The composition of text began with textural descriptions of “what” the

participants experienced as amateur athletes in college (Moustakas, 1994). I summarized

the participants’ accounts as they pertained to several thematic portions of the

phenomenon. I then wrote composite descriptions to capture what participants

experienced collectively. After, I depicted “how” participants experienced the

phenomenon via structural descriptions. The composite textural and structural

descriptions were woven together in Chapter Four to best illustrate the essence of the

revenue-generating athlete experience.

Trustworthiness and Methods of Verification

A qualitative research study is trustworthy when a researcher’s interpretation is

truly reflective of participants’ experiences. Credibility, transferability, dependability and

confirmability are the four measures Lincoln and Guba (1985, 1986) offer for evaluating

trustworthiness. The first, credibility, is achieved when the researcher gathers multiple

constructions of reality and participants verify her or his interpretations of these

constructions (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Measures to ensure credibility include:

“referential adequacy,” or electronically storing audio or visual recordings; “member

checks,” or reviewing the data and interpretations with study participants; identifying

56 “negative cases” that expand inquiry and analysis; triangulating data with multiple

investigators, sources, theories, or methods; and greater engagement in the field. Lincoln

and Guba (1985) describe transferability as a measure of “fittingness,” or the extent to

which a qualitative study’s findings can be transferred to other contextually similar

environments. Thus, they emphasize that researchers clearly detail the settings under

which the initial inquiry occurs. The final measures, dependability and confirmability,

call for outside auditors to assess the completeness and suitability of the research

methods and process as well as evaluate the entire product.

In this study, all four measures were taken into account to ensure trustworthiness.

Credibility was addressed through referential adequacy, follow up interviews, and two

types of member check procedures. First, each focus group participant was given an

opportunity to review the transcript. They were then invited to validate the findings in a

collaborative session in which they are asked to identify any inconsistencies, and when

necessary, assist in making them more accurate. Vivid, systematically detailed

descriptions of the site and participants increased transferability. The findings of this

study agreeably transfer to other revenue-generating college sports, namely men’s

basketball. A team of outside auditors was consulted to ensure dependability and

confirmability.

Limitations

Methodological and analytical shortcomings exist despite efforts to ensure

trustworthiness of findings. First, this study was conducted with student-athletes on PFC

teams. Findings cannot be generalized to nonrevenue-generating college sports. Second,

while many of the seniors will not be playing professionally, some will. Participants who

57 are confident that they are just months away from being financially compensated for

their participation in big time college sports may have different perceptions of

amateurism than their teammates who will not make it to the next level. Third, while this

study sought to capture the voices of a variety of revenue-generating athletes, the

participation bias was undeniable. Although Black males are the largest demographic in

DI college football, the majority (n=26) of the participants were White. Also

overrepresented were athletes from affluent, two-parent, college-educated households.

Many of the participants perceived themselves to be significantly more academically

driven that most of the other guys on their teams. Indicating that they were the minority

within their respective programs, the men in this study, on average, maintained a 3.37

GPA. Finally, half of the participants indicated that they were not recruited as scholarship

athletes, but were walk-ons that tried out for and acquired a spot on the roster after

enrolling. Only one participant was in the process of preparing to take his athletic talents

to the professional level.

Role of the Researcher

In qualitative inquiry, the researcher is the instrument for data collection

(Creswell, 1998; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994, 2000; Lincoln & Guba, 1985, 1986). Because

“the data are only as good as the qualifications of the inquirer,” Kuh and Andreas (1991)

assert, “the integrity of qualitative data depends on the competence of the data collection

instruments—human beings” (p. 402). Thus, researchers should not only identify their

assumptions, biases, values and attitudes, but also recognize the ways in which they

influence their observations, decision-making, value placement, and interpretation of

findings.

58 CHAPTER 4

FINDINGS

Findings from individual and group interviews with 40 power five conference

(PFC) football players are presented in this chapter. The revenue-generating athletes’

shared and lived experiences are disclosed throughout, and in many cases, are supported

by verbatim reflections from the participants themselves. The findings provide insight

into how this demographic of student-athletes experienced college and the NCAA’s

amateurism policies. Although the 40 participants are from 28 institutions across the

ACC (13), Big 10 (8), Big 12 (5), PAC 12 (11), and SEC (3), various dimensions of their

experiences were consistent within and across conferences and campuses. The sample is

diverse educationally, socioeconomically, and geographically, the overrepresentation of

White men and walk-on athletes from a student population predominately comprised of

Black male scholarship athletes is noteworthy. The 40 participants identified as White

(26), Black (7), Asian (3), Multiracial (3), and Latino (1). The revenue-generating

athletes in this sample often came from affluent families with both parents; were mostly

business and engineering majors; and, on average, earned 3.4 GPAs. Half of them (20)

were walk-on student athletes. Still, the composite descriptions presented suggest

commonalities among those experiencing the phenomenon.

The invariant constituents yielded in data analysis (Moustakas, 1994) led to the

identification of three categories that capture the essence of their shared experiences. The

thematic categories are: (1) the revenue-generating athlete experience; (2) the costs and

benefits of intercollegiate athletic participation; and (3) revenue-generating athletes’

responses to NCAA amateurism rhetoric. These findings also provide rich and

59 meaningful answers to the research questions presented in Chapters One and Three:

how do revenue-generating athletes experience college and the amateurism policies

governing college sports? What do revenue-generating athletes perceive to be the costs

and benefits of participating in intercollegiate athletics? How do revenue-generating

athletes juxtapose the NCAA’s amateurism rhetoric with their own educational and

professional expectations and experiences? Ultimately, what are revenue-generating

athletes’ appraisals of amateurism policies governing college sports? The presentation

and discussion of the categories are followed by a summary at the end of the chapter.

The Revenue-Generating Athlete Experience

The revenue-generating athlete relationship with sport begins long before he

reaches college. Starting from their point of entry as well as acknowledging the

considerable diversity in their family backgrounds and personal characteristics are critical

components of understanding how PFC athletes perceive their athlete and academic

experiences. Accordingly, the first prompts on the protocol not only asked them to

describe what college was like for a PFC football player, but also how they were

introduced to, became involved in, and developed a commitment to sports. In “For the

Love of the Game,” “I May Have Thought Twice,” and “Your Life Revolves Around

Football,” I move chronologically through their trajectories, paying particular attention to

their evolving orientations to school and sport as they transitioned from youth to

adolescence and from high school to college and career.

“For the Love of the Game”

Whether they identified as Black or White, came from affluent or low-income

households, grew up in urban cities in the Northeast or rural towns in the Southwest, or

60 had parents who earned no or multiple college degrees, the revenue-generating

athletes’ passion for sports originated at a young age when they were introduced to them

by family and community members they admired. These significant others, including

parents, siblings, cousins, friends, and successful athletes afforded them access and

exposure to the sports that they themselves loved, and served as catalysts in the revenue-

generating athletes’ sport socialization processes. It was from these loved ones the

revenue-generating athletes learned to love sports. For some athletes, it was literally

seeing those they knew achieve success on the field. One walk-on athlete, who eventually

earned a scholarship, explained his brother’s influence on his desire to play football:

My brother walked on, earned a scholarship and moved to running back. I obviously looked up to my brother a lot, and I wanted to follow those footsteps. I love football. It’s what I always envisioned myself doing. I walked-on and made it, because it was always a dream of mine to do so.

Another PFC athlete described how his childhood relationship with a prolific NFL

quarterback altered his decision play football:

If you know Aaron Rodgers from the Packers, I grew up with him. When he got to Cali, I was like “Oh, football’s kinda cool.” And then he got drafted, and I was like, “Dad, can I play football?” Dad said, “Yeah, you can do that.” So, I started playing football, and with him making it to the NFL, I thought I could make it to the NFL. Once I got to junior college, I realized I just wanted to go DI and then as far as I could go after that. I think being able to play at the DI level is kind of fulfilling every kid’s dream.

In some cases, the individuals who introduced revenue-generating athletes to football did

not play themselves, but proximity to the game sparked their interest. The sons of

coaches, sports medicine doctors and other sport professionals, for example, “grew up on

the sidelines” and became enamored with football as they followed their parents to work.

61 Others came from homes where their male role models were unable to actualize their

athletic aspirations and saw their parents’ circumstances as inspiration:

It’s always been a dream that I had. My father is a role model in my life, and he was a great athlete in high school, but being that he was the youngest of 6, he didn’t get an opportunity to go to college. He had to stay back and take care of his grandmother who was sick. I’m basically living the dream for him. He’s living through me, because I know if he had a chance, he would’ve definitely taken advantage of the opportunity to play college ball. I’m here now. I’ve have been successful and it’s an awesome feeling.

PFC athletes also came from geographic locations where football is so engrained in the

culture they could not credit any particular individual for their love of the game. For as

long as they could remember, they had always been fans of the local football programs

and dreamt of playing for them since childhood. One participant noted:

I was a Sooners-born, Sooners-bred kid from Oklahoma City. It was always a dream to play for the Sooners. Really it was just that passion, that kind of dream of getting to play college football for your school, for your team. That was really it for me.

When he spoke of his desire to play football, there was no discussion of personal benefits

or gain, just excitement about the opportunity to play the game he grew up loving as well

as the opportunity to represent his family and school. This orientation towards sport was

consistent across the revenue-generating athletes as children, but as they grew older their

motivations for playing football changed.

By the time these young men reached high school, few could ignore their

prowess. Continually recognized and defined as athletes by others, they began to develop

strong athletic identities, both internally and externally.

All you do is you play high school football, and high school football was … That was it, man. You’re just out there with your buddies, sweating together, working together, grinding on the field together. You knew football in kind of that pure enjoyment form. Why do we play sports? A lot of my research in physical

62 activities was about why do kids do physical activity? Kids choose a sport because they enjoy it. If I didn’t enjoy the camaraderie, and the masculinity of football I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have put so much into it.

As performance in sports became increasingly a part of who they were, PFC athletes

spent less time playing multiple sports and tended to focus on honing their skills in the

sports they are best at, not the ones they loved the most. Gradually, sports became not

just about enjoyment, but also about competing at the highest level and winning. One

revenue-generating athlete explained:

I think that’s always been important to me is trying to compete at the best level that you can. For me, competing at the top level that I could was football. If that were badminton, if I could get a Division I scholarship for badminton, I’d play badminton.

Another participant corroborated this claim:

I always played basketball as a kid, that was my favorite sport, but I also started playing football in elementary school. I stopped playing in 6th grade, because I hated it. Then all of a sudden I started playing again in the 7th grade and realized I was starting to become a little bit better at it than everybody else. I started getting a little bit bigger, and by the time I hit high school, I just wanted to play college football. I stopped playing other sports to concentrate on it. I wanted to play on Saturdays on national TV; I wanted to be able to be a student-athlete; and I knew that from early in high school, if you were good enough, it would help pay for college, which is something that I wanted to get.

In both excerpts, PFC athletes’ desire for and success in elite competition opened to the

doors to a new set of motivations. As children, they loved playing sports because they

were fun; as adolescents they loved playing sports because they were good at them; but

as standout high school athletes, they loved the financial opportunities winning could

afford them, namely athletic scholarships and lucrative professional contracts. In the

excerpt below, one revenue-generating athlete described how his motivations for

participating in sports changed over the years:

63 Growing up playing sports, I always wanted to play in college. It wasn’t necessarily because of the potential of a scholarship or whatever. It was more just for the love of the game, but then once you get there, it changes. This may be brutally honest, but it’s not as much of a dream as it once was when you were in high school. It’s definitely like more of a job. It’s non-stop, year round, and money over hours. I mean…you love it. You wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it’s definitely not just for the fun anymore. It’s definitely got the business component behind it.

In college, regardless of who introduced them to football and why they initially

committed to it, the PFC players recognized just how commercialized big-time college

sports were. At the DI level, the demands placed on coaches, players, and other athletics

personnel were so great that the game is no longer a game, participants felt. At all levels,

the lucrative opportunities were coupled with greater expectations and higher levels of

professionalism. Even the language participants used began to change. In each of the first

four excerpts, all spoke of playing college football as a childhood dream. By the time

they got acclimated to their athletic schedules, fun and enjoyment were no longer

substantial motivations. Rather, when asked why they to continued to participate in

intercollegiate athletics, the athletes expressed the desire to help. Most often, the men

from low-income backgrounds had their eyes set on the NFL, endeavoring to get out of

their impoverished neighborhoods and help sustain their families. On the other hand, the

high-achieving revenue-generating athletes from more affluent background were

motivated by athletic scholarships and procuring an education for free because they also

wanted to help their families out. Whether they desired to “buy mama a house” or

“alleviate loan debt,” revenue-generating athletes’ motivations became almost

exclusively financial in college.

64 In the following examples, even the revenue-generating athletes primarily

motivated by education reveal how much their participation stemmed from monetary

considerations. One participant explained that he saw playing DI football as an

opportunity to get a free education because college is so expensive. The reason he really

wanted to do it was because it was a way for him to help his mom financially. A walk-on,

who originally had no intention of playing football in college, woke up one day and

realized he could not afford tuition. Realizing he could punt, he spent months practicing

his kicking before trying out and eventually earning the starting spot and an athletic

scholarship. He explained that he really only played football because it helped him pay

for school. Similarly, a revenue-generating athlete from a small town identified football

as the only avenue to avoid going to community college or going to work for his dad. He

asserted that, he was not going to school to get an education and play football, but he was

going to school to play football and get an education. Recognizing that there would be no

education if it were not for football, this athlete learned to prioritize athletics over

academics, a theme that will be expounded on later.

According to the men in this study, the vast majority of PFC football players

came to college thinking they are going to be drafted to the NFL. For a lot of the guys,

“That’s always been the dream,” they reported. Their childhood dreams of playing

football in college were a necessary part of their escape route. Since they were little kids,

they have wanted to get a scholarship, get out of their communities, get drafted, and get

paid. One participant recounted the lessons football taught him about so many of his

teammates’ lives and their orientations to sport.

65 When I first started out as a football player in college I was terribly selfish, a real chip on my shoulder kind of guy. I’ll tell you, I thought these other guys had it made, and I didn’t know about the kind of lives they had lived or the kinds of lies they had been told leading up to college. There are other guys like me, and there are guys who are lower SES and have had a lot of hardships in their lives. These guys support more than just themselves, and everybody is aware of that. If you’re going to sell your institution to them, if you’re going to try and wine and dine them to come there, then you owe them more. That’s just plain and simple because you know deep down that some of these guys aren’t going to do anything with your education. We all know it. You know that they’re just here because they can’t do anything else. They love this sport. It’s all they know, and it’s all they can do. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of somebody way down the line that let the cycle be perpetuated. If you’re going to justify putting them in the position they’re in—because by all means they are coerced and led to believe that they are destined to go to college and play football—you owe them more.

The passage above highlighted several issues regarding revenue-generating athletes’

dispositions towards college football. The most salient was the way in which these men

were sold a dream that they are unable to cash in. While the athletes who were not

focused on getting to the NFL were investing in other spaces on campus and reaping

benefits from that, they also recognized that the system they were effectively using was

taking advantage of their most desperate and vulnerable teammates. When they recruit,

big-time sport programs present prospective students with a falsified version of the

college experience, participants recalled. Athletes from low-income and less educated

communities, however, were most likely to believe what they saw during visits. Many of

these first-generation college students are seeing campuses for the first time on recruiting

trips. Their parents, friends, and others back home were unable to temper their

expectations, and the star treatment they received presented a falsified version of what

they should have expected when they got to college and what they should have expected

to get out of college.

66 “I May Have Thought Twice”

A thematic undercurrent of the interviews and group interviews with the 40 PFC

athletes in this study is the gap between their expectations and realities. Presented in this

section are the most common misconceptions: how glamorous big-time football seemed

in high school; how physically and mentally tough it became in college; and the politics

of playing and practice time, particularly for scholarship and walk-on athletes.

In high school, they watched college football on TV and got a grandiose notion of

the “glory” of playing big-time college sports. It seemed as though everyone and

everything, from friends and family to media and fans, overemphasized it. As the highest

level of intercollegiate athletics, revenue-generating athletes expected it to be hard, but

they did not know how much work and time it took to make it on the field. On recruiting

trips, coaches showed them an idealized version of the college experience. At first, they

were nice. Responsible for getting them to commit, coaches told revenue-generating

athletes “the things they know they’ll like,” about the spotlight, opportunity, and

celebrity. They made it seem as though they were “the best thing since sliced bread,” and

like “everyone had superstar potential.” But, once they were actually on the team, they

unearthed the facts that the coaching staff chose to not disclose and encountered a host of

realities for which they were not prepared. Some discovered that not only were they not

starting, but also there were several guys better than them at their position. After the

coaches pretended every single person gets the same treatment, DI athletes got to college

and found out they were just “the next piece of meat in line,” often an experience

completely unfamiliar to them. The general sentiment became “coaches can change

everything.” Over time, the revenue-generating athletes began to recognize recruiting for

67 what it was. “Recruiting is a trip, man!” one student contended. The world-class

coaches and training facilities were more for recruiting the best talent than they were for

developing the existing talent. “It’s really all for the recruits,” said some participants. In

fact, others warned of not choosing programs based on coaches, because “there’s no

loyalty” in college football – even the coaching staff may be different. When they

arrived, they recognized that the amount of money at stake in big-time football was the

reason that their expectations were not met and that the purity of the sport they loved as

kids got corrupted in college. As the level of enjoyment of sport diminished, revenue-

generating athletes faced a new set of questions: How much did they love it? How much

were they going to invest? How much did they want to suffer for the little bit of pleasure

they got out of it? Did the benefits outweigh the costs? Was this right for them? The men

in the study reported that despite expecting the business part to be there, they did not

expect it to have as much influence as it did over coaching, recruiting, and the overall DI

athlete experience.

One of the first observations the revenue-generating athletes made was football

was a lot less glamorous in college than it looked on ESPN’s College Game Day. When

they got to campus, the PFC players said there were huge discrepancies between how

college football was marketed on television and by coaches versus what it was in real life.

First, football was only exciting when their teams were winning and they had the support

of fans. As one athlete put it, “it’s pretty bad when your opponents have more fans in the

stands than you at a home game.” Absent wins, the stadium crowds were empty, the

game itself was less fun, and athletes’ celebrity status on campus diminished.

68 PFC football also became less glamorous when the revenue-generating athletes

recognized that it would require a lot more work and hours than they anticipated. As the

highest level of sport in college, the participants knew DI football was going to be hard.

They expected it to be strenuous and, as elite competitors, believed it should be. As one

informed participant put it:

You’re basically playing sub-NFL football in the SEC. I knew that if I wasn’t fully committed I knew that I didn’t deserve to be there. I knew I shouldn’t waste my time. I knew going into college that I couldn’t afford to major in something too difficult that going to take away from my ability to play football. I needed to choose one or the other.

In the case above, the PFC athlete acknowledged that he knew football would be so

difficult that he prepared himself to take on a less challenging course load and devote

more time to his sport. Another athlete echoed a similar sentiment, saying that he knew

beforehand that time would be tight trying to go to practice, attend classes, complete

assignments, and study for exams. Despite knowing it would be strenuous, none realized

the extent until they actually lived it. One athlete admitted, that even as the top dog in

high school, he anticipated hard work, but he too didn’t quite understand how hard he

would have to work to get to a level of just being able to play. For him, the glamour was

lost when he realized he had to practice all year long. “For the most part, this shit sucks,”

he said. “The most fun you ever have is Saturdays, which means you have 13 maybe 14

opportunities out of 365 days to have fun. The other days, you’re just grinding.” The

theme of football not really being fun anymore was consistent. In fact, in a different

group interview, one participant used similar language to describe his experience:

Man! My first seasons were a grind! My teammates and I did not enjoy it as much as we suffered through it. There were guys that would just quit, and I couldn’t blame them. Me, I sucked it up, I kept my head down, and I grinded through it.

69

The revenue-generating athletes explained over and over again that the transition into

sports was incredibly strenuous and tough, both physically and mentally.

When you first get to college and you’re first starting out as a freshman, the speed of the game is completely different, the time commitment that you’re putting in. You’re working the hours of a job a lot of times. That’s tough. I knew it was going to be like that to some extent, but there’s nothing that you can really do to prepare yourself for the mental part of it. I think the biggest difference that I may have underestimated would probably be the mental aspect of the game, as far as all of the hours that we put in on the mental part of it: watching film, knowing what the other team is going to do before they do it, and just sort of understanding football in general.

While many focused on the physical grind, the participant above discussed severely

underestimating how cerebral the game can be. Of note was the consistency with which

the revenue-generating athletes were not adequately informed of what they were getting

themselves into until they had committed to it. Trying to make sense of why coaches

would not better prepare them for the transition into college, one revenue-generating

athlete commented, “I don’t think it’s too sexy to tell a kid that they’re going to try to

beat him down and get him mentally tougher.” Rather, another student added, they prefer

to wait until a recruit has committed (as in the case of his older brother) and then say,

“Congratulations, you just signed yourself over to 4 years of boot camp.” Coaches waited

until the cameras were off to tell the revenue-generating athletes about how much blood,

sweat, and tears it would really take to put in the necessary amount of work. Still, some

aspects of the high-profile sport experience, like the politics behind it, were never

discussed.

The revenue-generating athletes reported discontent with what they referred to as

the “politics” of college football. In short, politics can be described as anything impacting

coaches’ allocation of playing and practice time beyond athletic talents. The most

70 noticeable trend here was the divide between the recruit and walk-on athlete

experience and the influence of commercialism on the athlete experience. Exactly half

the participants were walk-on revenue-generating athletes. Their overrepresentation in the

sample illuminated some unique perspectives and diversity in experience. Walk-ons

discussed myriad ways in which they were the least valued pieces in the college football

system, and thus received the worst treatment. In PFC football, walk-on players get the

least playing time, are hit the hardest, and are not guaranteed to have their tuition, room

and board covered, despite being required to put in all the same work their scholarship

teammates do, participants stated.

I do completely agree about how much politics there are in football. On our team, you can see it all the time between the scholarship guys and the walk-ons. Though there isn’t a divide amongst the players, you can tell that the coaches really do see a difference between scholarship guys and walk-ons. I think that’s kind of sad, because me personally I didn’t really have plans of playing in the NFL or anything like that, but I really thought that there were some walk-ons who really were quality football players who never got a chance just because they were walk- ons. Politics, I think, are one thing that really hurt college football. It’s that line between scholarship guys and athletics really.

Aside from the revenue-generating athlete above, several others stated that coaches most

frequently perpetuated the divide between scholarship and walk-on players. One source

of the divide was their fundamental belief that walk-ons lack the athletic prowess

scholarship athletes possess. One revenue-generating athlete explained that he knew after

his first couple practices that as walk-on linebacker, he was going to be tackling dummy

for the scholarship linebacker for a solid two years before he made his way up in the

rank. Another walk-on described his spot on the team feeling like charity. Calling himself

a “make a wish foundation kid,” the participant explained that coaches would only

71 sparsely allow him and other walk-ons to travel or get a play or two in a game to

appease them and keep them as extra bodies on the team. He commented:

I think, for me, it was about wanting to get on the field. I wouldn’t have joined the team or went out and did the workouts or anything like that if I didn’t think I could play…I at least wanted a shot to go out there and show what I can do. Then they could evaluate me and make a decision. But I was a walk-on and they wrote me off from the beginning. I think that was more so why I didn’t really enjoy the experience as much as I expected.

Though pushed to their limits in practice, the walk-ons rarely got to display their progress

in games. For them, not being fully utilized for what they felt they could have offered the

team was the biggest reason they felt there was a gap between their expectations and their

realities. The collective sentiment was that they were on the team, but they were not fully

a part of the team.

At the core of the discrepancy between expectations and reality are a host of

commercial, reputational and competitive implications. The business of football was the

reason why big-time football wasn’t as glamorous in college as it was in high school, the

level of physical and mental strain were as intense as they were, the commitment was so

great, and the politics of playing and practice time even existed. Everything, according to

them, was oriented towards winning games, building awareness, and generating revenue.

The commercialization of college sports has grown exponentially. Though some was

anticipated, the PFC athletes did not expect it to have as much influence as it did on

coaching the overall revenue-generating athlete experience. “The amount of money that

goes into a DI SEC football program corrupts the purity of the sport in my opinion,”

summarized one PFC athlete. Another added that there was no loyalty in sports anymore

between coaches and players, because the NCAA allows coaches to use schools and

72 athletes as stepping-stones every day. Though he expected it to be that way, it was still

more of a business structure than he thought it would be:

I knew that I wasn’t going to have friends. I knew I wasn’t going to have social time. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go away on weekends, or take time off of anything. I knew I couldn’t even afford getting sick. I knew I couldn’t afford not sleeping enough. I knew I had to eat all the time. I was expecting it to be difficult, and looking back on it now, five years later, you’re like, “Wow.” If I had known it was going to be that way, I may have thought twice. We definitely didn’t know everything going into it. Expectations did not reach the reality.”

“Your Life Revolves Around Football”

Regardless of sport or division, finding the time to balance academic and athletic

responsibilities is the greatest challenge contemporary participants in intercollegiate

athletics faced. At the DI level, the commercialization and professionalization of sport

has exacerbated the amount of time and commitment athletic programs demand from

their players, especially in the revenue-generating sports of basketball and football. As

PFC football players, the men in this study reported that their commitment to sport

impeded their ability to engage in activities beyond football, make academic progress

toward degree completion, maintain eligibility, and benefit from college in the same ways

their nonathlete peers did. In “Your Life Revolves Around Football,” I detail the major

obstacles associated with balancing athletics and academics, including enormous time

demands, the unenforced 20-hour rule, scheduling conflicts, and “voluntary” football

related activity. I begin with a brief explanation of the NCAA’s established limits on

sport related activity to contextualize the revenue-generating athlete experience.

Countable Athletically Related Activity

“To minimize interference with the academic programs of its student-athletes”,

Article 17 of the 2014-2015 NCAA DI Manual requires member institutions to “limit its

73 organized practice activities, the length of its playing seasons and the number of its

regular-season contests and/or dates of competition in all sports, as well as the extent of

its participation in non collegiate-sponsored athletics activities” (NCAA, 2014, p. 223).

Countable athletically related activities or “any required activity with an athletics purpose

involving student-athletes and at the direction of, or supervised by, one or more of an

institution’s coaching staff” (NCAA, 2014, p. 223), must adhere to the weekly and daily

limitations under Bylaws 17.1.7.1 and 17.1.7.2. The former sets the daily and weekly

hour limitations for during the playing season, while the latter sets the daily and weekly

hour limitations for outside the playing season. During the season, student-athletes may

not participate in countable athletically related activities for more than four hours per day

and 20 hours per week. Competition counts as three hours. Out of season, student-athletes

may not participate in countable athletically related activities for more than four hours

per day and eight hours per week. During the academic year, student-athletes shall not

engage in any countable athletically related activities one day per week during the

playing season and two days per week outside the playing season. These daily and

weekly hour limitations do not apply during preseason practice prior to the first day of

classes or the first scheduled contest (whichever is earlier) and during an institution’s

term-time official vacation period (e.g., Thanksgiving, spring break), as listed in the

institution’s official calendar, and during the academic year between terms when classes

are not in session and a sport is in season. The chart below outlines which activities do

and do not count toward the limit of athletic related activity.

74 Table 4. Countable vs. Non-Countable Athletic Related Activities

COUNTABLE NONCOUNTABLE Practice Compliance, SAAC & SWD meetings Competition (& associated activities count as 3 hours)

Meetings with a coach initiated by student- athlete as long as no countable activities occur

Field, floor or on-court activity Study hall, tutoring or academic meetings Athletic meetings with a coach initiated or required by a coach

Training room/medical treatment/rehab & activities

Setting up offensive or defensive alignments Travel to/from competition Required participation in camps/clinics Recruiting activities (as student host) Required weight-training & conditioning activities

Voluntary sport-related activities (initiated by SA, no attendance taken, no coach present)

Participation outside of the regular season in individual skill-related instruction with a member of the coaching staff

Fund-raising, community service, promotional or public relations activities including media activities

Discussion or review of game film Training table, banquets Visiting the competition site in cross country & golf

Voluntary weight training not conducted by a coach/staff member

Balancing Athletics and Academics

When asked what college was like as a football player, every participant spoke

about the extent to which sport demanded the majority of his time. Most frequently, the

revenue-generating athletes spoke of a “balancing act” in which they had to first and

foremost, dedicate enough energy to football to even make it on the field, and second,

keep up with their academic obligations to, at a minimum, maintain their eligibility. Men

in this study explained that putting enough work into athletics and academics to get

where they wanted to be dominated their lives. After football and class, there was little to

no time to engage in other parts of campus life, like becoming involved in academically

purposeful activities, working a job, or simply socializing with their nonsport peers.

Because there was barely enough time for even proper sleep and adequate rest, football

75 players continually spoke about not having enough time to do the types of things that

“regular” and “normal” students do. As one participant explained:

It’s a grind. They’re two different, mutually exclusive worlds that have grown apart. There’s your football life and there’s your school life. Professors want the best out of you and coaches want the best out of you, so you’re kind of reporting to two masters to make sure you make the best of it. It’s hard.

PFC athletes constantly had something to do, whether it was going to film, the weight

room, practice, or trying to manage homework and classes. Crunched for time, they were

forced to learn how to manage their time and prioritize their commitments, ranking what

they were going to get done and what they were not going to get done. One player in the

sample asserted:

It’s a lot of football and not a lot of school, especially at this level. It’s definitely football first and school second. The coaches and people involved in the organization make that known to you. They make it clear either directly or indirectly. They let you know how important football is, and as a player you know that you need to be 100% committed to your sport. If not, it’s not worth your time.

Consequently, when they signed their contracts and accepted the responsibility of playing

on the most competitive stage of intercollegiate athletics, revenue-generating athletes

accepted the fact the football was their number one priority. Whether their aspire to play

professionally or not, as men who have procured scholarships based on their football

ability, maintaining a spot on the team was critical to actualizing their athletic, academic,

and/or career goals. Consider the following passage:

My career goal is to play in the NFL, so obviously I have to take school decently seriously. Otherwise, I won’t have a job after I graduate. I think that again it comes down to a function of time. If you look at us compared to other students, we’re taking the exact same classes and have to do the same amount of homework, but we have so much less time. We have that five-hour block every afternoon where we could never touch a book. It puts a lot of pressure on you when it rolls around to 11:00PM and you want to go to sleep, but you’ve got to

76 finish that paper, and you also know that you have to wake up at 6:15 to make it into your lift by 7:00.

Like the athlete above, men in this study repeatedly juxtaposed their experiences of

managing their time to balance both sports and school with their nonathlete peers. After

commenting on how much the time restrictions suck, one participant continued on to

question the inefficiency of his peers. At the end of his freshman year football season, he

could not understand how those who were not dedicating 40 or more hours of their week

to football did not submit assignments on time. Further, not only did these other students

who “claimed to be so busy” not have to spend 40 plus hours in meetings, workouts, and

practice, but also they did not have to then try to battle exhaustion, bodily fatigue, and

sleep deprivation to complete their homework. The men in this sample, more often

scholastically high-achieving than not, learned through circumstance, how to “crank out”

their coursework despite being “too tired to do anything,” something they reported wasn’t

characteristic of the majority of their teammates. Finally, in contrast to their nonsport

peers, the participants in this study were disgruntled with the ways in which their football

schedules heavily influenced which courses they could take, when they could take them,

and what they could major in.

The PFC athletes spoke in great detail about the extent to which football

monopolized their time, forcing them to adjust all other responsibilities and commitments

to their grueling athletic schedules. The men described a “complex” and “lifestyle” in

which football “consumed” them. If he had to explain it to someone completely

unfamiliar with football, one participant said the best way to put it is, “we basically have

something to do all day, everyday, especially during the season.” On a micro scale,

77 revenue-generating athletes build their whole day around football related activity.

Their sleep, eating, and class schedules must all adhere to their practice, film, and lifting

schedules.

My first year, they scheduled our workouts for 6:30 in the morning, so you’d wake up at about 6, go over to the stadium, get a workout in, go to class for 2-3 hours, get some lunch, go to meetings, go to practice, and then go to Study Hall. My typical day was from 6AM to about 9PM at night. The work you didn’t get done in Study Hall, you have to go back home and finish. My first year was basically football and sleep.

As another athlete put it, “it goes further than when do I have practice next, what workout

do I have to be at, and what time will be doing the things I need to do.” He explained that

in addition to what and when he chose to do things, he also had to think about how and

why he chose to do them. Major considerations included “what is this going to do for my

image as a football player and how is it going to affect me being a football player.” On a

more macro scale, their commitment to football dictated their schedule year round. Even

when classes were not in session and their academics did not have to compete with

football related activity, family, vacation, and holiday time still did. When other students

were out enjoying summer (travelling, interning, etc.), revenue-generating athletes were

confined to campus. Their sport commitments are year round, limiting their summers to a

week or two and rendering their spring and Christmas breaks as well as other holidays

and vacations practically nonexistent. Literally, every decision these men made could be

traced to the question: how will this impact my status and eligibility as a DI football

player?

78 What 20-Hour Rule?

Of the 27 institutions represented in this study, reportedly, only two adhered to

the time restrictions prescribed by the NCAA. Both schools were either recently or are

currently being investigated for infractions and are being cautious because of the threat of

sanctions and increased oversight by the governing body. Absent extenuating

circumstances such as these, the other 25 PFC institutions did little to nothing to enforce

the 20-hour rule; the Association did little to nothing to hold them accountable for their

blatant disregard of the rules. In fact, during one group interview, one PFC athlete

commented, “I don’t think there’s a 40-hour rule.” In his experience, the in season time

commitment for football so regularly eclipsed the 40-hour mark that he had forgotten that

the time restriction was actually 20-hours. Similarly, many participants questioned the

existence of any restrictions on football’s time demands at all, critiquing the ways in

which this rule was never followed. Participants said they knew it was supposed to exist,

but characterized the 20-hour rule was “broken,” “not really paid attention to,” and “a

fucking joke,” among other expletives.

The revenue-generating athletes, fed up with their teams consistently “going

overboard in terms of hours and stuff” took note of how many hours they were actually

dedicating weekly to countable athletic related activities. One student indicated, “A

conservative estimate for in season is 45 hours.” Others corroborated this claim as their

time calculations typically ranged between 40 and 50 hours per week in season.

I know that the NCAA says it’s twenty hours a week. Maybe you’re literally practicing or working out twenty hours, but that doesn’t include being at the facilities, commuting to practice, team meetings, and those kinds of things. Also, they only count game day as a couple of hours, when the game day is really

79 almost a whole six- or seven-hour event at home, or all day when you’re traveling and staying overnight at a hotel. It adds up to almost 50 hours per week in season.

It is worth mentioning that the revenue-generating athletes recognized and accepted that

the rule was almost completely disregarded, because it takes more than 20-hours to

compete for championships. As deeply competitive individuals, they expressed their

desire to compete at the highest level, but simultaneously requested transparency about

what that would require.

“Voluntary” Activities

One reason why the amount of hours revenue-generating athletes dedicated to

football greatly exceeded time restrictions the NCAA put in place are the “optional,”

“voluntary” or “non-mandatory” activities that coaches expected players to organize and

participate in without explicitly forcing them to. According to the NCAA Manual, for

athletically related activity to be considered voluntary, each of the following must be

true: student-athletes are not required to report back to a coach; participation is not

required—the activity must be initiated and requested solely by the student-athlete;

attendance and participation in the activity (or lack thereof) should not be recorded or

reported to the coach; and student-athletes cannot be penalized for not participating or

rewarded for participating. In practice though, as reported by the revenue-generating

athletes, these voluntary practices had a significant impact on the playing opportunities

they were afforded.

It’s not just a lot of hours. More so it’s the obligations that aren’t supposed to be mandatory. Like the meetings and the extra schedule of practices without the coaches or the lists coming to get an extra lift and it’s like your coaches wants you to go and do these things even though it’s not mandatory but if you don’t show up to these optional things then it reflects bad upon you and your chances of getting

80 on the field or having any playing time drastically diminish because they always throw things back in your face like why didn’t you come to this or why did you go to that. Even if you say you have homework and stuff like that it’s still looked as you still should have made it. If you want to win you should still come and do things like that. Some kids, a lot of kids feel pushed or coerced to do things, do extra things for the team just to get out there and play.

Costs and Benefits of Intercollegiate Athletics

As participants in the most popular, competitive and lucrative conferences in

college sports, the greatest challenge the revenue-generating athletes faced was the time

constraint placed on them by the more than 40 hours per week (in season) they dedicated

to football-related activities. The previous section detailed the myriad responsibilities that

are part of a DI athlete’s commitment to sport. In exchange for access to the opportunities

high profile college sports afford, or the benefits of intercollegiate athletic participation

(henceforth referred to as “benefits”), PFC athletes made significant sacrifices, referred to

as the costs of intercollegiate athletic participation (henceforth “costs”), to become

experts at their craft: football. These costs and benefits fell into six categories:

professional, academic, extracurricular, social, physical, and developmental.

For a few, professional benefits included exclusive networking events and job

opportunities and national exposure and experiences. These were offset by the

professional costs for many, which included not having time for internships and

professional experiences, a lack of transferrable career skills and competencies, and the

inability to navigate the working world and procure a job. Similarly, the academic

benefits of full athletic scholarships and support services were overshadowed by the

academic costs that included lower grades, a lack of interaction with professors, and the

inability to utilize the available support services. While the participants identified no

81 extracurricular benefits, the extracurricular costs included not being able to participate

in academically purposeful activities like student government, research, study-abroad,

Greek life, etc. Social benefits included camaraderie among teammates and being a

celebrity on campus, whereas the social costs included not hanging out, partying, and

building meaningful relationships with their nonathletic peers, particularly romantic ones.

They also did not have the time or resources to travel home and spend time with loved

ones. Physically, the benefits of elite facilities and training opportunities were

undermined by costs such as sleep deprivation, fatigue, and the risk of both long and

short-term physical and mental injuries without guaranteed medical coverage. The few

participants who experienced development benefits reported enhanced time management

skills, accountability, and teamwork as well as personal growth and maturity. Much more

frequently reported were the developmental costs like psychological and mental health

related issues, dependence on formalized structures, and relatively rougher transitions out

of college than their DII, DIII and nonathlete peers.

Mentioned earlier, and as the verbatim quotes will confirm, the men in this study

were scholastically high-performing students with strong academic identities that

developed long before college. The majority of the participants were White men from

households with two college-educated parents who earned more than $100,000

combined. The average GPA was 3.4. When they detailed the ways in which they were

able to benefit from being on a PFC football team, they made clear that they were the

exceptions in their locker rooms. As they began to accept that they might not actualize

their dream of playing professionally, these revenue-generating athletes tended to invest

their time and energy into “more than just football.” Specifically, the 20 walk-ons in this

82 study viewed playing football in college as a pathway to their careers rather than a

pathway to the league; however, their teammates rarely tempered their athletic

aspirations. For the vast majority of PFC athletes, it was “NFL or bust.” Consequently,

the participants regrettably admitted that few others were able to take advantage of the

available opportunities in the ways that they had. As the participants articulated, the costs

of big-time college football can simply be thought of all the things a normal college

student can do that revenue-generating athletes cannot. A function of time, PFC football

players simply did not get “the full college experience.” By no means were the benefits

described in the following pages universal.

Professional

To compete professionally, the NFL requires players to be 21 years of age or

three years removed from high school. As the League has not created an alternative

developmental system through which athletes can access elite training facilities,

competition, and coaches, high profile college football has become the de facto route to

gain national exposure, get drafted, and earn a lucrative contract. In fact, since the league

last updated its age restrictions in 1990, every player drafted has attended an institution of

higher learning. Whether or not they want an education, going to college is the exclusive

pathway to the NFL. The vast majority of the players drafted come from the same

premier PFC football programs as the participants in this study.

The revenue-generating athletes reported that the overwhelming majority of their

teammates were intent on playing professionally and perceived the opportunity to do so

being the biggest benefit of intercollegiate athletic participation. Though few made it to

the next level, many regarded the opportunities to train in state of the art facilities and

83 compete on the national stage as major benefits. One participant in the SEC remarked,

“You have access to everything a professional player has. Our facilities are better than

professional facilities.” As success on the field garners publicity, bolsters school pride,

provides entertainment, and generates billions of dollars in revenue, DI institutions do not

hesitate to invest in their athletic resources. Others spoke nostalgically about the

experiences of playing against the best competition in front of large national crowds 12 to

15 times a year, travelling around the world, and getting to be “the man” on Saturdays. A

couple of participants celebrated their access to world-class healthcare. If they would

have suffered an injury during their undergraduate years, they knew the training staff and

doctors in a big DI school would have taken care of them, at least while they were in

college.

The football network affords revenue-generating athletes’ unique pathways to

careers outside of sports. One participant spoke about the power of the network after

being recruited for track and transitioning to football:

After running track here and then joining the football team, I’ve noticed a huge difference as far as networking goes. There are more people in the community that gravitate towards the football team. Just walking around the city, you meet a lot of people like, “oh man you’re on the football team.” They want to come up and approach you and talk to you. You create so many different relationships, and you can easily meet somebody who can help you get a job somewhere. I think that’s the biggest positive of playing football was the networking.

The men explained football provided a huge advantage in the job search by opening

doors that they would otherwise not have access to. One participant went into the job

search nervous about his lack of professional experience and quickly learned that some

potential employers viewed his tenure as a revenue-generating athlete as 5 years of

professional experience. They were in awe that he was able to be a full-time student,

84 maintain a competitive GPA, graduate early with 2 undergrad degrees and a master’s,

and also play football. There seemed to be no shortage of employment opportunities for

those who performed well in the classroom and knew the basics about the job application

process. As one student explained “a 3.0 GPA as a full-time Division I athlete is going to

be valued higher by a lot of people than somebody who has a 3.5 or a 3.6. People

understand the extra work that was being put in.” Admittedly, both men were strong

candidates without football.

Some employers held positive views of certain athletic programs and “ate that shit

up” when they saw football on applicants’ resumes. They admired particular aspects of

football culture and wanted them associated with their organizations and brands. Some,

for example, hired athletes because they believed they are good at working with other

people and meshing within a team setting.

There are lot of big donors and sponsors who give back to the team all the time. They actually hooked me up with a job after my sophomore year that I ended up using to get into the field that I’m going to get into post-grad. Football has helped my career path. It’s helped my entire future.

Based on his professional interactions, another senior noted people have been very

willing to help him with his career and getting him a job, not because he did well

academically, but primarily because he was an athlete at the University of Michigan. In

particular, players on teams with winning cultures, storied histories, and strong support

from boosters may receive job opportunities through informal routes without ever

formally applying.

State really preaches a family atmosphere. Over 4 or 5 years, you’re lucky enough to meet a bunch of people who can help you going forward. A lot of guys graduate and are given jobs by boosters or people that they’ve met along the way.

85 Provided these kinds of employment opportunities they may have otherwise not

procured, the revenue-generating athletes in this study reported significant professional

benefits.

In contrast to the majority of revenue-generating athletes who played college

football as a route to the pros, the men in this sample primarily viewed college football as

a pathway to a free education that prepared them for a career after sports. Accordingly,

they were especially disappointed with the professional sacrifices they had to make

because of their commitment to sport. They included not having time for internships,

work-study, and professional experiences, a lack of transferrable career skills and

competencies, and the inability to navigate the working world and procure a job.

For the PFC athletes I spoke to, not having an internship was a pretty big deal.

Stuck training over the summer, they had to forego employment while their peers went

off to work. The football players saw these missed opportunities as damaging on multiple

levels, because not only did their nonathlete peers have more time to get better grades

during the school year, they also had summers with which to gain work experience and

tangible skills. Central to their issue with the professional costs was that it would make

them less competitive candidates in the future. In one group interview, graduate school

athletes noted, “Pretty much every single person that we’ve been competing with for jobs

has had tons of work experience from their sophomore year on, while we have no work

experience. Nothing.” Similarly, an engineer perceived giving up internships as his

biggest cost, because “most of the people in engineering come out of college having had

an internship.” Another senior saw not having internships as a drawback, because it was

not all athletes that were barred from participating, just football players. “Everybody else

86 in pretty much every other sport has that opportunity,” he said. Sans these internship

opportunities, football players left college with little to no work experience.

Another professional cost was the opportunity to work while in college. The

athletes reported that because PFC football is basically a full time job, the hours

dedicated to sport made it impossible to make money outside of their scholarships. At

best, some men were able to consistently work a couple of hours one day a week,

something most employers were not interested in. Further, many programs, whether

through formal or informal means, prevented their athletes from taking on any

commitments beyond school and sports. Thus, while their stipends provided them with

“enough cash to get by,” revenue-generating athletes did not have any ways with which

to procure some extra cash for incidentals like transportation, food, etc.

Without summer internships, work-study or other jobs during the academic year,

PFC athletes lack professional experiences. The revenue-generating athletes reported

feeling “behind the eight ball,” because while athletic experience might help get them in

the door, they never acquired any of the technical and tangible workplace skills a lot of

their peers had.

Academic

According to the participants in this study, they gained a lot from being student-

athletes, but the biggest benefit of them all was receiving a free college education.

Whether a recruit or a walk-on, revenue-generating athletes earned athletic scholarships

that covered the costs of their tuition, room, and board. Though they can save students

over $60,000 annually, even “full” athletic scholarships, also known as “free rides”

and/or “full rides,” regularly fell short of the cost of attendance, or the comprehensive

87 costs of attending an institution. Nevertheless, scholarship athletes left school with

minimal debt, absent the burden of paying off enormous loans. As one senior explained,

an athletic scholarship at a PFC institution was as good as it gets:

You can’t get the amount of money and support that a football player gets through any other avenue. A Division I SEC football player gets more benefits as far as food, clothing, money to spend, and privileges than any other student can get through academics or some other scholarship program. I tell a lot of friends who are on somewhat full rides for academics; I tell them their full-ride does not compare to mine.

Beyond content with what was included in his package, this walk-on was also aware, and

makes clear to others, that his full ride was not “free,” but earned.

What they have to do to maintain their full-ride also does not compare to what I have to do. The cost-benefit is right there. I get the best scholarship that anybody can get, and I put in the most work. I put the most at risk every day, so it’s risk and reward like anything else, like the stock markets…you're playing the stock market every day.

The walk-ons expressed a heightened sense of risk, because they were regularly putting

more on the line than their bodies. Unlike the recruits, they matriculated into college with

no guarantee of the costs being covered, so for them, earning a scholarship was

particularly meaningful.

Many of the men in this sample self identified as academically driven; not having

to pay for college was their primary motivation for playing DI football. Similarly, they

valued the educational opportunities football presented and opted to make the most of

them:

Football definitely opened up a bunch of doors for me, in terms of applying for the business school. My athletic status helped me get into business school, and I'm actually in the graduate school now. It helped me in job interviews with different employers, but for other guys I feel like they're so focused on just getting by with school they’re not really able to take advantage of some of the opportunities I was able to.

88

Essential to capitalizing on these academic opportunities, as the respondent above

indicated, was not being too preoccupied with football. In one group interview, three

players offered their opinions on why, even at the standout academic institution they

attended, they were able to access the available opportunities while the majority of their

teammates were not:

We were lucky enough to be able to flip the script and take football and use it as a benefit in a different area, which we could all attest to. Not a lot of people have been able to do that, because their whole goal was come in and go pro. Their goal is NFL or bust. A lot of these guys will end up not getting a degree. They won’t end up with a lot of things. The cost for them ends up going way through the roof. We all have a lot of costs in what we did, but we got a lot of good benefits out of it also. We’re all getting our Master’s degrees right now. We’ve all got undergrad degrees from a top public institution. I double-majored. He (points to his teammate) has a business degree. He (points to his other teammate) has got a degree in economics. We all used football as an avenue, as a benefit in terms of getting an education and getting all the things that we need because, we all saw that football is not always going to be there for us. We used the benefits in a different way.

One such way was actually making use of the extensive academic support services their

athletic programs offered. While they reported that most of their teammates underutilized

these support services, the revenue-generating athletes who achieved academically shared

that meeting with advisors, scheduling tutoring sessions, and setting up appointments

with career consultants all contributed their success.

Participants, on occasion, credited some of their academic success to their

grueling athletic schedules. One student, for example, disclosed that the time constraints

football placed on him forced him to be more disciplined with his coursework.

Consistently busy with sport commitments, he couldn’t be on the social scene much, even

89 if he tried. Without the full football schedule, he believes he may have been hanging

out and partying all the time.

Before arriving on campus, revenue-generating athletes expected high profile

college football to be hard work. Still, it was not until training camp and tryouts that they

realized exactly how much of their time football related activity would occupy. As they

got acclimated to campus, PFC athletes recognized football was the primary

consideration when going through their daily routine, registering for classes, and

declaring majors. According to the seniors, everything was related to how much time

you’re spending in football. “It’s all about time.” They reported the biggest costs of

football are time, sleep, and grades. Trying to catch up in their classes and not fail out,

they sacrificed sleep. In most cases, they ended up sacrificing all three. Revenue-

generating athletes spent so much time watching film, practicing, and lifting that they had

less time for doing homework and studying, taking the “cool” afternoon classes, getting

more sleep, and choosing more rigorous majors that would have better prepared them for

life and a career after college. Instead, they were encouraged to take classes and choose

majors that did not challenge or develop them, so they could dedicate more time to

football. One group interview, for example, contained three athletes from universities

with strong academic reputations. Even in the institutional contexts least likely to

compromise their scholastic standards, the athletes disclosed that they too sacrificed

developing relationships with professors and other opportunities that might have helped

improve their grades. One of them explained:

We went to Stanford and Notre Dame, two very good institutions. Up until this quarter, I never had a close relationship with any of my professors, never really went to office hours, and my grades suffered immensely. I don’t think that it was

90 because I was slacking by any means. I did what I had to do to get the grades to be able to play. It’s not like I have that shitty of a GPA, but it’s just not what I think it could be. The grades, relationships with professors, and job opportunities are all costs.

Regardless of which PFC school they played football at, revenue-generating athletes

asserted they did not get what their nonathlete peers got academically.

Though DI programs typically provided free academic support services, many

athletes, for a number of reasons, were unable to utilize these resources. In some cases,

revenue-generating athletes lacked the time to schedule appointments with tutors and

advisors and the energy to attend meetings and attentively receive the advice being

imparted unto them. In various instances, the disparity in educational background

characteristics presented a scenario in which the academic support services available did

not benefit the high or low achieving athlete. One participant explained that the free

tutoring his athletic department offered wasn’t helpful to him after his freshman year,

because they were geared at providing assistance to the underperforming students that

needed them most. As an engineer, the available tutoring did not cover the material in the

high-level mathematics courses he was enrolled in. Sadly, students on the other end of the

academic spectrum also faced difficulties as they tried to utilize the support services.

Frankly, a large number of PFC athletes enter college so severely unprepared, they

cannot benefit from their mandated sessions with support services, because they haven’t

been properly remediated or brought up to speed in terms of college level course work. It

was in these support service spaces that many became aware of the extent to which

institutions made ethical compromises to admit standout athletes that fell considerably

91 short of their academic standards. One high-achieving participant expounded on how

his teammate continued to struggle with coursework despite considerable effort:

People are a lot different in terms of how prepared they are for college. One of my buddies I came in with tried really hard in school. He goes as hard as he can. He’s a good student, but he just wasn’t as prepared for college as I was. For him, the cost is huge. He’s going to tutoring sessions and still struggling with classes. I had tutoring sessions, but stopped after my first year. I didn’t need them. But guys like him and a bunch of other guys that were struggling in classes put in like 20 plus hours with tutoring and individual study sessions and stuff. The cost is even greater for them in terms of having to keep up. You obviously have to sacrifice your time, but there are a tremendous amount of benefits not everyone can utilize.

Extracurricular

The time dedicated to playing football came with the opportunity cost of not

getting involved in and around campus. Extracurricular costs included not being able to

participate in academically purposeful activities like student government, research, study-

abroad, Greek life, etc. Though expectedly busy during the season, the football schedule

inhibited campus engagement year round because even summers were spent at school

training and preparing for the season rather than school or work.

I feel a lot of the guys haven’t been able to really experience involvement in the campus and with the school. When I was DIII, there was not as much of a time commitment. I was in student government. I was in tons of clubs and still had a job on campus. In DI, they’re football oriented all the time. I don’t think they’re given the opportunity to engage in any non-football related activities.

For any PFC athlete, especially the football players, the biggest challenge was time. After

they have done all of the work that is required for sport, the question remained: how

much time was left for coursework and extracurricular activities?

Going to concerts, going home in the summer, traveling on the weekends… I’m in Colorado, so going skiing. There are all kinds of events going on, but the meetings and the film study and classes and homework and projects, are a major, major time commitment on your part.

92 One especially poignant moment occurred when a participant looked me in the eyes

and said with a tinge of envy, “You could have a normal college life. I would venture to

guess that my college experience was different than yours, Collin.” He continued, “You

could travel to other schools, study abroad, go out on weekends, and if you wanted, join a

fraternity (all of which I did). I wanted to do a lot of those things, I couldn’t.” The

sentiments above echoed a recurring theme prominent among so many: revenue-

generating athletes do not really get the college experience that most other students get.

Social

The revenue-generating athletes also reaped social rewards for their participation

in intercollegiate athletics. Whether they opted to play football because of athletic or

academic aspirations, the bonds the seniors built with each other were the most frequently

cited benefits. Consistently, they reported that the relationships they formed with their

teammates were perhaps the greatest benefits of them all. Though they formed quickly,

these relationships developed organically, and the men confidently reported that they

would last a lifetime. They provided the support they needed to stick with football

throughout the 4 or 5 years and established their families away from home. The benefit of

“the brotherhood” referred to their particular kind of camaraderie enhanced by sharing

meaningful moments and experiences. This recurring theme, when juxtaposed with the

quantifiable scholarship or professional contract, was perceived to be “invaluable.” Here

are just some of the comments offered by the revenue-generating athletes:

I remember being a freshman coming in. I knew 100 guys, and I knew that they had my back. It’s pretty unique. You have this brotherhood that you’re with for 4 or 5 years. That’s something, along with the alumni network, that you have for the rest of your life.

93 You have a built in friend group from the day you walk on campus. You have a group that basically becomes like family to you. I know from talking to other people they first get here when they're a freshman or whatever and they struggle to find a home in college. That's not the case for athletes, not most of them at least.

The reason I played for three years after not playing very much is because I didn’t want to let the other players on my team down. Those were my best friends in the entire world, and I enjoyed spending every single minute with them. I think one of the biggest benefits of playing football was the network you develop. I thought that was absolutely huge. You gain lifetime bonds. You also meet a ton of people that are going to help you for the rest of your career, for the rest of your life, and that's really something important and something that you really need to cherish. The experience is invaluable, building relationship, making friends, being a part of a team, and just life lessons in general.

Though not near the extent they did with those within the football network, a few of the

revenue-generating athletes reported being able to make meaningful connections with

their nonathlete peers.

Despite not having much time to socialize and develop strong interpersonal

relationships with their nonsport peers, the long hours the revenue-generating athletes put

in on the field earned them the respect of their peers and other football fans. As America

watched these ambassadors travel across the country representing their schools on

national television, so too did their nonathlete counterparts. Few of the seniors I spoke to

were NFL-bound, household names. Nevertheless, they confirmed that being identified as

a football player (from something as simple as wearing sporting apparel) elevated their

celebrity on campus. When people found out that they were on the football team, the

revenue-generating athletes were seen as “cool for some reason.” Unsure how or why this

happened, participants admitted that they enjoyed the positive assumptions their peers

made about them. For the most part, they were famous on campus. “It was kind of nice.”

94 Occasionally, athletic fame transitioned into meaningful relationships, growing

revenue-generating athletes’ networks and building social and other forms of capital. As

one athlete put it, it’s about more than just people liking them: “ If you get to know them,

fans can be “great assets” in terms of who and what you know.” As players on PFC

conference teams, the revenue-generating athletes got to meet a range of people. “Many

of them are connected and willing and able to help you with getting a job in the future.”

Reciprocally, some athletes discussed the pleasure it brought them to know that

they could be assets for their fans. Impacting people was something they perceived to be

a benefit. One athlete spoke about visiting, sending messages to, and playing for fans that

were sick in the hospital. “Whatever was going on, you could really lift them up just

because they identify with you and the team. That was cool.” All things considered, the

social benefits can be understood as the ways in which the relationships built through

football add value to the lives of the revenue-generating athletes and their fans.

As it pertains to sacrifices, the revenue-generating athletes reported that social

lives were one of the costs they incurred when they signed up to play football in college.

You give up a social life. You give up going out on Friday nights. You give up going out at all for the most part, so your social life is out the window. You really can’t chase girls, because you’ve got to focus on football and academics. That’s what you have to give up.

Presented with so many popular culture images of college athletes partying, drinking, and

appearing to be fully integrated into the campus social culture prior to getting to campus,

the participants in this study were stunned by how little time they had to socialize with

their nonsport peers. Media depictions, campus visits, and interactions with athletic

personnel did not adequately inform them of the rigors of PFC football. For the most part,

95 they did not really get to have a social life, except during select parts of the offseason.

As one athlete put it:

You’re definitely giving up having much of a life outside of football and school. There's not really time for very much else unless you’re really willing to really push your limits and wear yourself thin a little bit. The mental and physical grind is significant… Out of 365 days a year, about 330 are football, the nonstop mental and physical parts of it.

Another student detailed his athletic calendar to show exactly how little time there was.

He broke it into three periods: fall, spring, and summer. In the fall, they did not go out at

all much because they are playing football. In the spring, they had their weekends to

themselves, but still had to wake up early Monday through Friday for 6AM workouts,

which means, they were not out very late. During the summers, they had to give up their

vacations, because they were in summer school. The older they got, the more they got

accustomed to not going home and staying on campus year round. By mid August, they

were back in training camp and giving up even more of their social lives.

Repeatedly, the men in the study described how, absent these social interactions,

their college experiences were drastically different from “the typical” college experience.

They emphasized the frequency with which they were unable to do the things their peers

did, like spontaneous trips to nearby campuses and nights out on the town. One of the

men recited a brutally honest speech his coach gave him at the beginning of training

camp: “It’s 3 things: Football life, school life, and a social life. You can’t have them all.

You can’t have a football life and chase women. You can’t have a social life. Certain

things you have to just give up.” The participant appreciated his coach being direct, but

reported wishing that this level of honesty came “before he signed his life away.”

96 The revenue-generating athletes also had to sacrifice their family lives to

participate in big-time college sports. Mentioned throughout, their demanding athletic

schedules minimized the amount of time they had to be engaged on campus as well as

back in their home communities. A participant at an institution in the Midwest noted that

he went to school 30 minutes from where he grew up, but a lot of his teammates were

guys from Texas, California, and Florida. He chose to stay close, because he could not

handle the sacrifice of only getting to go home once or twice a year. Another participant

was forced to miss his entire honeymoon, as his wedding was the day before training

camp started. For him, the cost was not going on a honeymoon, because he had to move

into the dorms and report to practice.

Physical

The PFC athletes reported lack of sleep, constant fatigue, and bodily exhaustion

as well as the risk of both long and short-term physical and mental injuries without

guaranteed medical coverage as the physical costs of participating in intercollegiate

athletes. In the passage below, one participant detailed his thoughts about the physical

costs of college football, highlighting many of the ways in which revenue-generating

athletes must consider their health:

Your health is always on the line. Anybody will tell you that. You’re reminded almost everyday. Your body is your moneymaker, and it’s at risk every time you step on the field. Football can vanish in an instant. You can tear your knee up. You can blow something out. You can have nerve damage. All these things can be taken from you right away. It’s a scary thought. I thank God I never had any serious injuries. I’ve never even had to have surgery. Worst thing that happened to me was some nerve damage in my left arm from hitting too much, running into a wedge too much. I definitely have some injuries that are lingering, a lot of tendonitis in my ankles and knees and things. I’m able to deal with it just fine. I know plenty about physical therapy and exercise science that I can take care of myself, and I know my long-term health is probably not going to be affected

97 physically by the injuries I’d suffered. Mentally is a whole another story; you have no idea. All this concussion research is coming out. I like to call myself somewhat of a health field professional. I have a master’s degree in exercise physiology. I never actually suffered a concussion. I can tell you that. I know I haven’t based on just what the symptoms really are. I’ve got probably some minor trauma to my brain that may manifest as some kind of Parkinson’s or early onset dementia later in my life. It’s scary to think about it. If I’m 55-years-old, and I’m having a hard time remembering my wife’s name, I’m going to be like, “Wow. You got me football, you got me.” Like I said right now, I couldn’t trade those experiences. Maybe I wasn’t completely informed of the risks. I know that’s a big topic everybody talks about, but I knew that the cost was there. I knew that the cost of my health was on the line every day, and I knew that it was my job to protect myself. I knew that, first and foremost, if I didn’t want to get hurt, if I wanted to enjoy my experience, that’s up to me.

Revenue-generating athletes’ greatest health concern was the possibility of injury. They

“regularly sacrificed their bodies” with the amount they put them through. While the

player above spoke of minimal bodily damage, others in the sample were not as fortunate.

Participants listed a number of injuries sustained over the course of their tenures

as college athletes. One participant had five different surgeries including multiple back

surgeries, ankle reconstruction and more. For him, needles have become routine. Another

spoke about his football career coming to an abrupt end when he tore his ACL in a game.

“As athletes, our bodies are freaking just beat to crap. We really don’t even get enough

time to rest and heal up.” By the nature of his position, an offensive lineman was

confident he would continue to have knee, back, and shoulder problems for the rest of his

life. One participant’s knee was in such bad shape after four years of college football, the

doctor said he had the knee of a 100 year-old, and that it had to be replaced. Football

literally cost him his knee. Common language used to describe the physical toll that PFC

football takes on players’ bodies was “always hurt.” “Everyone plays hurt. We are never

100% healthy. When you can’t play, that’s an injury. But most of the time, you’re

98 playing hurt.” Constantly in pain, he and others were left wondering: twenty years

down the line, will I think it was worth it?

The unknown trauma done to the brain was another major health concern.

Particularly telling was the passage on the previous page, in which a revenue-generating

athlete majoring in the health sciences considered himself to be lucky for never actually

sustaining a concussion; he only has to worry about Parkinson’s and early on set

dementia. Another lineman spoke about football exacerbating his short-term memory

loss. “I forget things… I forget why I go into a room sometimes, or I’ll talk to my mom,

and I’ll tell her a story that I forgot I told her a day ago.” Beyond physical and mental

damage, the revenue-generating athlete body often was sleep-deprived and fatigued. In so

many ways, they surrendered their bodies to football because they loved the game.

PFC athletes also wrestled with questions about their long-term health. Though

willing to take the risks, what the athletes found disconcerting was after you “give up

your whole body playing the sport, and as soon as you get done playing, it’s like they

don’t care about you. You’re done.” The medical care and insurance packaged into their

scholarships covered them throughout their undergraduate years, but do not offer much in

terms of assistance for injuries sustained in football that may linger past graduation.

Despite the constant risk of injury, revenues-athletes were in great competition shape

during college.

Developmental

As seniors, the men in this study have persisted through college and reported

developing a variety of personal skills including time management, accountability and

99 teamwork as well as learning values like hard work, dedication, and commitment. As

one participant eloquently stated:

Once you get in, it’s tough. But if you make it out the other side, you have a whole new perspective on life. You have a whole new set of tools that will help you further your career. You’re going to have good work ethic. The biggest thing is time management. You’re going to be able to take criticism well. You’re able to conduct yourself through adversity. You’re going to be able to make adjustments on the fly. You work well with others. You respect authority figures. You understand that there’s a hierarchy and respect it. You learn so much just beside how to play football. You become a better person…

One benefit was learning how to deal with a diverse cadre of teammates and athletic staff

from different racial, geographic, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Many of the

athletes came from environments that were in one way or another homogeneous. PFC

football removed them from their comfort zones, placed them in a variety of unfamiliar

college contexts, and challenged them to perform at unprecedented levels. With a

common goal bringing them together, the guys are “too busy trying to get that W to waste

time on those other things.” In fact, they also reported not having time to waste at all.

Always held accountable for being on time for football related activity, the guys were

forced to learn time management skills. They regularly spoke about doing everything

possible to avoid the intense conditioning penalties for arriving to practice late. These on-

the-field lessons helped them grow up fast, become men, and learn about themselves in

ways they do not believe a traditional classroom could have. A few even said real life

seemed “easier” after learning how to balance football and school in college.

Unfortunately, most were unable to transfer the skills they learned from football to other

aspects of their lives.

100 Identity-related issues, dependence on formalized structures, and relatively

rougher transitions out of college than their nonathlete peers were some of the

developmental costs reported by the men in this study. As participants in PFC football,

these men were unable to travel, socialize, and do a number of other things that “normal”

18-23 year old men do. The revenue-generating athletes dedicated four or five years of

their lives to the routine cycle of football—the cycle was daily, seasonal, and continuous.

Every winter, spring, summer and fall was the same. “It’s all just one big continuous

cycle.” Once their eligibility was exhausted, they were absent the football routine and

forced to find a new one. Thus, their identities were in flux as they struggled to figure out

who they were beyond football players:

Once I didn’t make it, and I was no longer able to play football, I kind of hit a wall. I had to discover who I was and what I’m into. I’m still in that process. I think that if I had gone to college, and I hadn’t played a sport, I would. You joined a fraternity; you started teaching on campus; and you just did different things. You developed an identity, several identities. My identity has always been… I’ve always been a football player. Once that’s taken away, it’s kind of like, “Now what?” It’s been irking me for a long time.

The revenue-generating athletes described the end of their commitment to sport as a wake

up call. After having all this structure, organization, and stuff given to them in college,

the athletes explain that it was tough adapting to a whole new environment where

everything was on them. All of a sudden, they were thrown into the real world where

things like taxes and health and car insurance became real. “It’s a rude awakening.”

Unsure if it was more because of the lack of time or the lack of preparation they received

from the classes they took, revenue-generating athletes felt less equipped to transition out

of college than other students. Ultimately, their goals were to have jobs lined up after

101 college, whether in the NFL, corporate America, or elsewhere, and many did not. One

group interview participant succinctly captured the essence of this section:

Unless you make it to the NFL, that undergrad degree doesn’t really give you much earning potential. A lot of these guys aren’t able to do what would benefit them the most if they actually had time, the time to think about, “Hey, what would give me the most future value in terms of a degree?” The big payoff of being in college is making the most of your degree and getting lifelong benefits out of it. Honestly, now that I think about it, that’s the real cost of playing college football.

Because being a participant in the most competitive, popular, and lucrative division of

intercollegiate athletics did not necessarily translate into steady employment after

college, the PFC athletes in this study argued that overall the costs outweighed the

benefits.

Revenue-Generating Athletes’ Responses to NCAA Amateurism Rhetoric

Article 2 of the 2014-2015 NCAA Manual (henceforth the Manual) lists sixteen

Principles for Conduct of Intercollegiate Athletics. The Principle of Amateurism, or

Bylaw 2.9, states:

Student-athletes shall be amateurs in an intercollegiate sport, and their participation should be motivated primarily by education and by the physical, mental and social benefits to be derived. Student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation (henceforth “hobby,” as this synonym was used in the interview protocol), and student-athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises. (NCAA, 2014, p. 4)

This section juxtaposes the amateurism rhetoric above with revenue-generating athletes’

educational and professional expectations and experiences. Mentioned earlier, rhetoric

can broadly be defined as the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. Below,

the amateurism principle rhetoric is broken into four digestible parts, each clause

representing an espoused goal:

1) Student-athletes shall be amateurs in an intercollegiate sport

102 2) Participation should be motivated primarily by education

3) Participation in intercollegiate athletics is a hobby

4) Student-athletes should be protected from exploitation

In the each of the subsections that follow, I synthesize participants’ responses to each of

the espoused goals above. Collectively, these syntheses can be referred to as revenue-

generating athletes’ appraisals of the amateurism policies governing college sports.

“Student-Athletes Shall Be Amateurs in Intercollegiate Sport”

The first independent clause of the NCAA’s amateurism principle reads: student-

athletes shall be amateurs in an intercollegiate sport. Before questioning them about

whether or not they identify as amateurs, the participants in this study were first asked to

define amateurism in their own words. They offered three main responses. Their first

response was, theoretically speaking, amateurism is “to be playing a sport for the love of

the game.” In their experience, however, amateurism has simply meant that they, as

student-athletes, do not get paid. Finally, some responded a simple “I don’t know” or

“I’m not sure.” Aware that revenue-generating athletes played football for more than the

love of the game, and that to some extent, scholarship athletes are paid via room, tuition,

and board, some men in the study were unable to reconcile the inconsistencies between

theory and reality. The participant below, for example, struggled to define amateurism

during his interview:

I’d probably start with saying it’s a made up term by the NCAA. There would be, I guess, a theoretical definition of it, and then and actual realistic definition of it. Theoretical would be playing for the love of the game, like intramural football or something you do on the side. You wouldn’t think of money too much with it in a theoretical perspective. From the realistic perspective, we all know it’s a huge business. I would say it offers guys the opportunity to go to schools they wouldn’t

103 have otherwise been able to get into and helps them pay for their education. Realistically, it’s way more of a business. It’s way more... I don’t know...

Ideally, amateur sports are about the enjoyment of playing the game instead of the

benefits to be derived from them; participation is more for fun than it is for reward. While

none of the PFC athletes considered that to be the case within their athletic programs,

they provided examples of amateurism such as high school football, AAU basketball, and

intramural sports. In high school, they explained, sports were, for the most part,

uncontaminated by commercial considerations. Absent these financial concerns,

overwhelming time constraints, and myriad restrictions, sports were simpler. Because the

game was actually about having fun and enjoying yourself, competing for your

neighborhood, school, or merely to compete your competitive appetite was

commonplace. Much of that was lost in college.

The revenue-generating athletes explained, “NCAA amateurism isn’t real

amateurism.” In college, the potential myriad academic, professional, and social benefits

and opportunities that may result from participating were too substantial to be eclipsed by

the enjoyment they get from playing. For starters, many of the participants questioned

how they could be amateurs playing for “the love of the game” if the athletic scholarships

they received were touted as invaluable forms of compensation for their efforts. The same

can be said for a number of other stakeholders in high profile college sport programs.

Coaches and athletic directors have become some of the most lucrative and highly sought

after jobs in the world. For them, sports are undoubtedly their livelihood, the source of

their income. As they approach their jobs with the utmost levels of professionalism, they

expect their athletes do to the same. Resultantly, the revenue-generating athletes lift,

104 practice, watch film, and hone their athletic skills as much as NFL players do.

Acknowledging the only real difference between themselves and professional athletes is

their inability to be compensated beyond tuition, room, and board and benefit from their

likeness, the vast majority of the revenue-generating athletes conclude that in big-time

college sport, the sole purpose of amateurism is to prevent them from being paid. These

similarities considered, I found it important to investigate how participants in the study

self identify.

Revenue-Generating Athlete Identities

During the interviews and group interviews, I read off of a list of terms and asked

the men in study to rank them in order from the one they identified with most to the one

they identified with the least. As a follow-up, they were also asked to elaborate on why

they chose to identify the ways they did. Their options included amateur, athlete,

employee, student, and student-athlete. Participants were also invited to combine and

speak to as many or as few of the terms as they saw fit. The intent here was to afford

them the opportunity to express how they viewed themselves based upon their

experiences as participants in DI intercollegiate athletics. Most frequently, the

participants identified as employees or athletes primarily and as students secondarily;

almost no one identified with the term amateur.

Amateurs. Amateur was by far the least popular identifier. In fact, of the 40 men

in the sample, only one identified as an amateur. He explained that he felt like this

because athletes weren’t getting compensated the way they should if there were going to

be classified as employees. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of participants voiced

their disapproval of term, commenting: “I wouldn’t say amateur per se,” “I don’t feel like

105 an amateur whatsoever,” “you can’t say we’re amateurs,” and “you can’t call it

amateurism if everything is professional.” The revenue-generating athletes went as far as

to call it a “crock of shit” as well as other more vulgar expletives.

Students. Most participants in this sample viewed themselves, at least to some

extent, as students. Mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, high achieving students,

walk-ons, and students from middle to high socioeconomic backgrounds were

overrepresented in this sample. Likely due to response bias, more than half of the

participants informed me, during the interviews and group interviews that academically,

they were exceptions in their locker rooms. Typically, they invested more time and

energy into their coursework than their teammates. For example, half of the sample

identified as walk-ons, which means their athletic abilities had minimal to no impact on

being admitted to their institutions. Rather, their admission to their college and

universities were more akin to those of their nonsport peers. Simply, unlike their

teammates who were recruited for football and likely would not have been admitted

without their athletic prowess, these men came into college with strong academic

identities. Despite these background characteristics, only a couple of the participants

primarily identified as students. When asked how they identify, the men responded with a

several combinations of hyphenated terms like student-athlete, student-employee, and

student-athlete-employee. Seeking to better understand why they ordered the identities in

the ways they had, I discovered they put student before the other terms out of habit (i.e.

student-athlete) rather than intent. When reminded that the first term should be the one

that resonates most with their experiences, the majority of the revenue-generating athletes

106 reordered the terms, placing employee, athlete, or both in front of student. Here are

just a few revenue-generating athletes’ rationales for reordering the terms:

I would say I feel like an athlete first, then an employee, and then a student. The student-athlete, the idea of that has gone out the window in today’s sports world. Sports take precedence over academics at all times. I’m definitely not a student-athlete. Maybe they should switch up the priority of it. I’m more of an athletic student. I feel like a football player that goes to school in my extra time. It feels like I’m a full-time athlete and part-time student. I’d say I’m a student-athlete and an employee. I don’t really think we’re amateurs anymore, because you’ve got the best of the best in DI athletics. I feel like amateurs are high school students. I feel like the employee thing makes sense, because you can’t miss a practice. It’s all mandatory stuff like if you had a job. You’re not going to get paid if you don’t show up. That kind of resonated with me but then also student-athlete. I’d actually say athlete-student, because athletics takes precedence. It’s a big deal. The two participants that viewed themselves as students first and foremost

explained that as walk-ons, their orientation towards college was always going to be

academic. They “came in with different goals,” had “no serious aspirations to play

football professionally,” and viewed participation in intercollegiate athletics as a way of

offsetting the cost of their education. The other 38 revenue-generating athletes, despite

their personal academic backgrounds and the intellectual prestige of the institutions they

attended, perceived themselves to be primarily athletes or employees in college. This is

particularly interesting considering the breakdown of the sample. Perhaps this finding

corroborates what several participants indicated in the interviews and group interviews:

to survive on a PFC team, it’s absolutely necessary that players fully commit to their

sport, whether they experience that commitment as an athlete or employee.

Athletes. Of the 40 men in the study, 17 identified primarily as athletes. They

offered several reasons for why they felt more like athletes than students, employees, or

107 amateurs. Before they got to college, were referred to as student-athletes and

amateurs by the NCAA, and were subject to intense time demands and restrictions that

made them feel like employees, these men prioritized sports and lived their lives

accordingly. At their respective universities, their peers and coaches prioritized their

athletic identities over their academic identities. One participant explained:

I feel like an athlete, because that’s what you’re pinned as all the time. You walk into class, and they say, “oh you play football,” or you got everyone telling everyone that you play football. I don’t feel like an employee because you get told all the time that that’s not what you are, and you’re going to class everyday, but you don’t feel like a student whenever you’re out on the field. I would say athlete.

Similarly, coaches, the NCAA, and institutional policy prioritized revenue-generating

athletes’ athletic schedules over their academic ones. Not only were their academic

schedules built around their practice schedules, but also they were held more accountable

for athletic performance and attendance than they are academic performance and

attending class. Another participant admitted:

I just didn’t go to class very often, to be honest. There were definitely times where I wasn’t even feeling sick, but I would just not go to class because I had a lot of other stuff going on and it never impacted me. I feel like college, you can miss class and be fine, but football… you’re not going to miss practice and be fine.

Because they could have skipped class without penalty, but could not do the same with

practice, the revenue-generating athletes’ athletic identities were further reinforced.

Finally, a distinguishing characteristic between the participants that viewed

themselves as athletes more than as employees was their competitive drive. To be clear, it

takes incredible competitive drive to make it to and through a PFC athletic program;

however, the men who identified primarily as athletes did so without feeling forced by

the university to perform.

108 I don’t feel forced to workout. I workout because I know my competition are working out too, and I don’t want them to get the best of me on Saturday nights. That’s more about my family and where I’m from. I’m an athlete.

In comparison to the men who felt most like employees, those who feel most like athletes

saw their commitment to sport as doing what it took to win, rather than doing what was

required of them by their coaches.

Employees. More than half of the revenue-generating athletes in this sample

(n=21) reported feeling more like employees than amateurs, students, or athletes.

According to them, the amount of fanfare, the time commitment, and the competition at

this level were professional. Though any athlete can invest time and work towards the

10,000 hours that it takes to be a master of their craft, no other sports demanded this kind

of commitment to just survive out there. To make clear the difference between PFC

football and non-revenue generating sports, one participant juxtaposed his student-athlete

experience with those of his friends that played women’s soccer at the same institution.

Though they played DI soccer, they were first and foremost students. If they needed to

miss practice for class or handle other academic responsibilities, they simply informed

their coaches. It was obvious that they were not professional soccer players. “They are

definitely amateur athletes. They know that and their coaches know that.” In contrast, he

described the other players on his team who were much more physically talented than

himself. Were anyone to ask them what they did for a living, their answers would have

been football. In the PFCs, these men spent more than half of their day playing and

focusing on football. “That was all they knew themselves as.” If you asked him to

identify himself, he too would have described himself as a football player. This

participant, an honors walk-on student at his institution, allocated 80% of his time to

109 sport and 20% of it to his coursework. “By profession, I was a football player in

college,” he asserts. “I wasn’t a student. I would hardly describe myself as a student.”

Simply put, one reason that the majority of the men in this study primarily identified as

employees was because the only other sports that required participants to invest the

amount of time that PFC football does are professional ones in which the players are in

fact employees.

Compounding this sense of professionalism were the level of exposure, the non-

athletic requirements, and the seemingly corporate structure of the college sport system.

Beyond on-field training, practice, and competition were all the obligations outside of

sport that were not really optional. Regardless of whether or not they wanted to go to

dinners and events or do work in the community, they had to in order to make the football

team look good and remain in good standing with their coaches. The revenue-generating

athletes explained that their responsibilities included much more than developing

physically for competition. They were expected to also be brand ambassadors for the

team and the university and participate in autograph signings, media days, and other

activities typically associated with professional athletes. As one participant explained:

When I played football, I definitely felt like an employee. I was here to help the coaching staff survive, fill the stands, and build our brand. So many things felt like a job instead of playing a sport for enjoyment. Also in line with playing professionally was the extent to which revenue-

generating athletes appeared on television, especially during the season. “Big-time

college football is on ESPN everyday, and everyone’s focused on it as much as they are

on NFL teams.” Consequently, the work these men needed to put in was commensurate

110 with that of professional players, but as student-athletes under the NCAA bylaws,

they were also full-time students.

Finally, the revenue-generating athletes also described feeling like employees

because of how similar the “football system” was to working in a corporate environment.

It would be no different if we were working at some Fortune 500 company, and there are people above us in this system. We are at the bottom. The coaches are our bosses. Then our coaches have their bosses, the athletic directors and staff, etc. Everyone has someone who can fire them. Regardless of what I do, even when I’m in class, that still reflects upon our coaching, our coaching staffs, and our team.

This subsection provided insight into how the men in this study identified. It is important

to remember that the purpose was not to deem them wrong or right or more plausible than

the other. Rather, it was to investigate the extent to which they, as participants in

revenue-generating intercollegiate athletics, perceived themselves as amateurs.

“Participation Should Be Motivated Primarily by Education”

The second clause of the NCAA’s amateurism principle asserts: [student-athletes']

participation should be motivated primarily by education and by the physical, mental and

social benefits to be derived. During the interviews and group interviews, I read them the

amateurism principle several times. When asked to respond to the parts that they most

agreed or disagreed with based upon their experiences, the revenue-generating athletes

indicated “motivated primarily by education” was among the most fallacious.

The revenue-generating athletes contend participation in football is not motivated

by education. In most cases, it was the opposite: your education is motivated by football.

As one participant phrased it, “I’m not going to school to get an education and play

football. I’m going to school to play football and get an education.” Further, the guys

111 expressed, were it not for the opportunity to play football, a lot of their teammates

would not have pursued a college education at all. “You cannot make someone motivated

by education when they do not value education in anyway. Maybe that’s a problem with

society in general, but you can’t blame somebody for not valuing education if they

weren’t raised to value it.” Not only did they deem it inappropriate for the NCAA to try

to dictate what their motivations should be, but they also believed it would be incredibly

difficult, almost futile, to even try to target players’ motivations. The revenue-generating

athletes quickly recognized how erroneous the phrase “motivated primarily by education”

was. On a regular basis, they witnessed firsthand the academic compromises made to

pursue professional and financial gains.

One major reason the revenue-generating athletes refuted the NCAA’s claim

participation in intercollegiate athletics is motivated primarily by education is the

percentage of PFC players for whom that was not true. According to participants, most of

the guys on their teams desired to play professionally. In order to do so, they had to first

compete at the collegiate level; it is the only feasible pathway with which to actualize

their NFL aspirations. One athlete regrettably admitted:

Less than 25 of the guys on the team take their education as seriously as they should. I don’t say that to knock them, but it’s the truth. Football is their entire world. Even in recruiting, student-athletes get an overinflated sense of self, which leads to them thinking football is everything. If you ask my teammates, probably 98% would say they are going to go to the NFL. That’s obviously not going to happen. It’s unfortunate, because a lot of guys don’t maximize their education and graduate with less valuable degrees.

Though the men in this study believed participation should be motivated primarily by

academics, they recognized that the opportunity to go professional immediately

afterwards changes everything. Academics obviously do not come first when five star

112 athletes leave for the league after three years and before procuring a degree. Whereas

their primary motivation is to play professionally, going to college is merely a

developmental stepping-stone to. The men in this study report amateurism rhetoric does

not take that into account.

Some of the revenue-generating athletes argue the clause shouldn’t even be in

there, because although they believe it should, playing football does not have a positive

impact on their education. If it were not for football, the men would have more time to

dedicate to academics; they would not have to take easier classes or transfer into less

rigorous majors. But with football there, being the best on the field took precedence.

They want to put more effort into sport than school, and with football’s extensive time

constraints, the athletes were more focused on maintaining their scholarship and

eligibility than getting a quality education. One participant clarifies, “Everything trickles

back to so I can play football, not so I can get a great education.” Ultimately, many of the

men concluded there is no point in the NCAA pretending that academics are the primary

motivation if they are not going to hold the athlete in school until he has procured a

meaningful degree.

The revenue-generating athletes also contend that there are motivations that go

beyond education and the physical, mental, and social benefits.

People are playing for jobs and bonuses. I think it’s a part of the story, and we try to act like it’s not. It should be educationally driven. I 100% agree with that. It should be, but it’s not. Guess what? I can recite a million lines of Shakespeare, and that’s not going to make the school multiple billions of dollars. But if I can get ten sacks in a season, put a jersey number in the bookstore, and create more exposure and money for Stanford… It just trickles down. It’s all about money. That's why it’s not an amateur sport.

113 The men in the study recognize the institution and coaches are motivated by financial

incentives, and critique the amateurism principle for failing to address this part of the

narrative.

“Student Participation in Intercollegiate Athletics is an Avocation”

The third clause of the NCAA’s amateurism principle states: student participation

in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation. Defining avocation was imperative. Not only

did I have to look it up when first examining the amateurism principles, but also all six of

the first revenue-generating athletes requested clarification of the term. An avocation is

an activity regularly done in one’s leisure time for pleasure or relaxation. It is secondary

to one’s actual occupation and not a job or primary form of employment. In a word, it is a

hobby. Replacing avocation with its synonym hobby on the protocol seemed an

appropriate measure to maximize clarity.

The revenue-generating athletes scoffed at the idea of football being categorized

as a hobby. In interview after interview, the participants detailed similar reasons PFC

football feels like full-time employment, and nothing like a hobby. The quotation below

captured the essence of their sentiments:

I highly disagree with the statement intercollegiate sports are hobbies. Football hasn’t been a hobby since you were in second or third grade. For some of us, this is what we do. In some cases, you call it a job. It could be your livelihood, but it’s anything but a hobby. I hope to use this sport to feed my family some day. It’s like a start-up to my career, and I hope to continue playing long after college. Typically, a hobby is something you enjoy doing for fun in your free time. If you ask most of my teammates, they’ll tell you football monopolizes any leisure time they may have had and that it isn’t fun most of the time. I don’t think, especially at this level, college football is a hobby. I definitely disagree with that.

Though they grew up loving football, playing in DI quickly began to feel like a job

because of the 40+ hours they had to put in per week. This was compounded with a long

114 list of commitments, expectations, restrictions, and pressures associated with

representing a PFC institution on national television. At this level, football also creates

opportunities for athletic scholarships, national exposure, and getting drafted to the NFL.

While football comes with numerous costs and benefits opportunities, their existence

inherently contradicts what it means to be a hobby. While they visualized a hobby as an

activity more akin to collecting stamps, sewing, or building model planes, they regarded

DI football as fundamentally different. When college football is making billion dollars,

there’s inherently more pressure, so I think their definition is a little contrived. It’s not a

hobby, but a way of life for the revenue-generating athletes, the cities they live in, and the

cultures they are a part of. The professionalization and commercialization of big-time

college sport have completely changed the outlook of what exploiting a student-athlete

looks like.

“Student-Athletes Should Be Protected from Exploitation”

The final clause of the NCAA’s amateurism principle affirms: student-athletes

should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises. Thus,

the exploitation of revenue-generating athletes, specifically undergraduate men on

revenue-generating NCAA DI men’s at institutions in the power five conferences, is the

focus of this section. The “multi-faceted intercollegiate sports phenomenon” of

exploitation embraces a collection of meanings and “contains fiscal, educational, racial,

social, and moral overtones” (Leonard, 1986, pg. 38). Most simply, exploitation can be

thought of as an unfair exchange between two parties, in this case, the individual

(revenue-generating athlete) and the institution (the NCAA). Though scholars often

circumvent the term, as it is typically controversial and difficult to define, it is the

115 language employed by the Association. To avoid contaminating revenue-generating

athletes’ perceptions of what exploitation meant, no attempts to explain or clarify the

term were made by the interviewer. After leading with the prompt, “In what ways does

the NCAA protect student-athletes from exploitation?” only participants understandings

of exploitation were taken into account.

Generally speaking, the revenue-generating athletes do not feel the NCAA

protects them from exploitation, but that they disguise themselves as proponents of

fairness and safety, when they are most guilty of exploitative behavior. In response to the

question above, the participants in this study said the following:

It’s funny that they’re trying to say they’re trying to protect us from exploitation. It’s like they’re protecting us from exploitation, just so they can exploit us exclusively. They’re the exploiters, so they’re trying to protect against other exploiters coming in and taking money from them. They’re really just protecting themselves. They make us sign a contract that guarantees them a monopoly over every single college athlete in the United States. Rather than allowing us the procure endorsements and make some money off of them, they take it all themselves. It’s how they want to do it. When, at any other time in your life, would you ever sign away your likeness to somebody to use at their own discretion and receive nothing in return? Nobody in their right mind would ever just sign away their likeness for nothing. In my opinion, that is the definition of exploitation. They have these commercials about athletes graduating and stuff like that, but they’re not helping them graduate. They try to use that as good PR, so that they can continue to do what they do right now, exploit all the players. They need to restructure their own system to protect us from the biggest exploiters of them all, themselves. It’s pretty humorous that they’re trying to sell themselves as our protectors, when it’s really them we need protection from.

The revenue-generating athletes explained they are exploited all the time; there are so

many different levels of exploitation; and some forms are more difficult to recognize than

116 others. The more obvious forms include the long 40+ hour work weeks, the use of

their images in NCAA video games, and the selling of replica jersey sales with their

numbers on them. “None of us are stupid,” they argue. They know the number 12 in the

Stanford bookstore is Andrew Luck, the guys in the video games with the same physical

attributes and on the same teams as them are supposed to be them, and regularly

surpassing the 20-hour rule by double are all ways in which they are being taken

advantage of. They also referenced graduating with less valuable college degrees, a lack

of professional experience, and generally being underprepared for life after college

relative to their nonsport peers as unfair. Perhaps most frustrating for them was hearing

about how lucrative college athletics was for everyone involved but them. For example,

the talk about how extending the football is going to bring more money highlighted the

imbalance between those who created the revenue and those who profited from it. The

college football playoff means more games. While more games means more profit for the

rest of the college sport enterprise—coaches, sponsors, broadcast companies, venues,

etc.—it also means more work and practice for them, none of which comes with an

increase in compensation games. The revenue-generating athletes cynically applauded the

Association for being “masterminds” who regularly compound what their employees

must produce, but never gives them raises. All of their compensation is lumped into this

“free education” that many do not even want.

It’s all a higher, more sophisticated level of exploitation. It’s not an individual tricking you into taking this picture and using it without your permission. It’s more like “hey come here, play this sport, play this game” and we’re going to market this game so that everybody, all these TV stations, all these commercials and all of America strategically exploit you.

117 “If they really want to protect us,” the revenue-generating athletes assessed, “they’ve

failed horribly.”

Summary of Findings

The primary research question in this study was, “how do revenue-generating

athletes experience college and the NCAA’s amateurism policies?” The other research

questions include: (1) What do revenue-generating athletes perceive to be the costs and

benefits of having participated in intercollegiate athletics? (2) How do revenue-

generating athletes juxtapose the NCAA’s amateurism rhetoric with their own

educational and professional expectations and experiences? (3) What are student-athletes’

appraisals of amateurism policies governing college sports? As reported throughout this

chapter, it is important to first acknowledge the variety of educational, socioeconomic,

and geographic backgrounds from which the participants come, as well as the

overrepresentation of white men, walk-on athletes, and athletes with strong academic

identities. Despite the diversity in their background characteristics, many commonalities

exist among the ways in which they experience intercollegiate athletics and the

amateurism policies governing college sports.

Important people in their lives, including parents, siblings, friends and other

relatives, introduced revenue-generating athletes to sports at a young age. The

interpersonal relationships formed with other participants and the success derived from

their physical abilities and commitment to sport led to a “love of the game” and the

development of athletic identities. Many dreamed of playing sports in high school,

college, and professionally. As they grew older and others recognized their athletic

prowess and potential, their motivations began to change. Most frequently, revenue-

118 generating athletes reported that playing football in college became a means to a

financial end. While other enticements include competing at the highest level, continuing

a family legacy, enhancing fame and celebrity, and the admiration of family and peers,

the vast majority saw playing football in college as an opportunity to help their families.

The participants in this study—many of who were walk-on, white men from middle class

families—had strong academic identities before entering college and viewed an athletic

scholarship as a way to get a subsidized education and alleviate the burden of college

tuition. According to them, this was not the case for most of their teammates, particularly

the scholarship athletes recruited from low-income communities. College, more often that

not, was merely a requirement for them achieve their primary goal, playing professionally

and earning a salary to support themselves and their families. For them, it was NFL or

bust. Were it not for football, many would have forgone college. Either way, few felt

prepared for the rigors of being a college student and a high-profile athlete.

Shortly after they arrive on campus, revenue-generating athletes realize the

realities of playing big-time college football are much different their childhood dreams.

They knew they would have to improve their time management skills to balance their

academics and athletic responsibilities, but they had no idea how quickly football would

be professionalized. While media and recruiting trips tend to glamourize the value of

representing your school on game day, coaches typically wait until training camp to make

clear the exactly how much it takes to earn those opportunities. The extent to which

politics influence the allocation playing time is not explicitly stated, but understood. As

the revenue generated, coaches’ job security, and school pride are predicated on winning,

players and coaches expectedly prioritize athletic performance over academic success and

119 engagement in other academically purpose activities. The most pervasive message is

sent both overtly and covertly: football comes first and everything comes second.

Revenue-generating athletes’ lives are built entirely around football, are not permitted to

schedule classes during practice hours, and are at all times expected to put forth

maximum effort in their athletic endeavors. For those with professional aspirations, there

is a rigid 5-year window to display your talents on the national stage. Contrarily, there is

no set timeline for conferring a college degree, spending time with your family, preparing

for a career after sports, or having a social life. Further, the NFL drafts less than 2% of

college athletes, and even fewer procure the lucrative contracts reserved for the best of

the best. Accordingly, as college is the final breeding ground before professional play,

power five conference football programs demand revenue-generating athletes, regardless

of their personal motivations, spend as much time on their craft as possible. Participants

estimated that they spent at least 40 hours a week on football related activity—practice,

watching film, and competing. These time estimates often exclude study hall, “voluntary”

practices, travelling for competition, and resting. Every single athlete reported his athletic

program completely disregarded the NCAA’s 20-hour rule, and the NCAA does little to

nothing to enforce it. Meanwhile, the association disproportionately focuses its energy on

punishing student-athletes for accepting extra benefits. Coupled with expectations of

always comporting themselves as ambassadors of their respective programs and

universities, the time demand placed on revenue-generating athletes causes them to assert

big-time college football is a full-time job for which they are inadequately compensated.

Participation in high-profile college sports affords revenue-generating athletes

opportunities that no other students have, but simultaneously prevents them from

120 engaging in nonathletic activities that comprise the “full” college experience. The

perceived benefits include athletic scholarships, elite training facilities, academic and

support services as well as opportunities to travel, represent their universities, and

showcase their talents on a national level. There are also the intrinsic values derived from

football, like time management, discipline, and the ability to work on a team. No benefit

was more frequently cited than the camaraderie and brotherhood formed between the

revenue-generating athletes and their teammates. Unfortunately, many of these perceived

benefits are directly related to perceived costs. Revenue-generating athletes reported that

the greatest cost of big-time college sports are the arduous schedules resulting from

professionalization and commercialization. As mentioned earlier, athletic scholarships are

granted to elite athletes in exchange for the 40+ hours per week spent on football related

activity. With the majority of their time dedicated to perfecting their athletic craft, there is

minimal opportunity to engage in academically purposeful activities that result in positive

college outcomes—interacting with nonathletic peers and faculty, participating in extra

curricular activities, studying abroad, and procuring internships and other professional

experiences. Not only do their grades suffer, but so do their critical thinking, social, and

professional skills. Bound by their highly structured schedules and engulfed in their

athletic roles and communities, revenue-generating athletes perceive their experiences to

be drastically different and almost completely separate from those of their nonathlete

counterparts. Many are not even permitted to enroll in their desired classes or declare

certain majors, and as a result, struggle with decision-making after transitioning out of

college. Other costs include the risk of injury without comprehensive health insurance

and minimal interaction with family. In sum, the athletic prowess that afforded them the

121 opportunity to attend college doesn’t allow them enough time to accrue transferable

skills and other real benefits of postsecondary education.

When they juxtaposed their educational and professional expectations and

experiences with NCAA amateurism principle, the revenue-generating athletes realized

that they agreed with little of the rhetoric. Contrary to the Association’s espoused goals,

participants in DI intercollegiate athletics identified as employees and athletes primarily

and students secondarily; almost none considered themselves an amateur. They also

rebutted the claim that participation is motivated primarily by education, highlighting the

myriad enticements that incentivize their commitment to sport. Of the four espoused

goals, none was as vehemently contested as labeling FBS football a hobby. In their

experience, football ceased to be leisurely or relaxing in college. Finally, the men in this

study find it humorous that the Association brands itself as the protector of student-

athletes, when it’s them they need protection from most. The revenue-generating athletes

assert the only reason the NCAA protects them from exploitation is so they can exploit

them exclusively.

122 CHAPTER 5

DISCUSSION, CONCLUSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS

This study explored how 40 revenue-generating athletes from 28 colleges and

universities experienced college and the amateurism policies governing intercollegiate

athletics. It juxtaposed the NCAA’s espoused goals with participants’ educational and

professional expectations and experiences. The sample was comprised of seniors on

football teams in each of the power five conferences (PFC)—the Atlantic Coast

Conference (ACC), the Big Ten Conference (B1G), the Big 12 Conference (Big 12), the

Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12), and the Southeastern Conference (SEC). This chapter

discusses the similarities and inconsistencies between the participants’ experiences and

the published literature; provides a set of practical implications for the NCAA, member

institution stakeholders (coaches, university leaders, faculty, and athletic and other

administrators), and student-athletes and their families; as well as offers

recommendations for future research on revenue-generating athletes.

Discussion

The experiences of student-athletes have been examined by a host of scholars in

the 35 years since the NCAA implemented eligibility criteria to address concerns about

this population’s academic performance. An extensive body of interdisciplinary literature

has explored the impact participation in intercollegiate athletics has on the college

experience overall, and, more specifically, the extent to which DI student-athletes benefit

from college relative to their nonsport, DII and DIII peers. Too often, they are treated like

“passive victims of systemic exploitation” in the abundant editorials and exposes and

scant scholarly research that fail to enlist their voices and perspectives (Van Rheenen,

123 2012, pg. 11). The one large-scale survey (Van Rheenen, 2011) and the two single-

institution qualitative studies (Adler & Adler, 1991; Beamon, 2008) that have

circumvented this misstep raise more questions than they answer. While they suggest a

majority of revenue athletes do feel exploited, we remain largely unaware of what leads

to these perceptions. In this study, 40 interviews with PFC athletes from 28 institutions

were used to address that concern directly. Further, the qualitative approach to research

adds significant depth and texture to national level discourse that is typically survey-

based. The reflexive sense making that occurred during the interviews when participants

were asked to juxtapose their lived realities and institutional rhetoric was also novel.

Perhaps the most salient example of this was the decision to never introduce

inflammatory language like “exploit” but instead to observe the ways in which the

delineation of the costs benefits allowed the PFC athletes to organically arrive at their

own conclusions.

While slight inconsistencies have been discovered, decades of research support

most of the findings reported in chapter four. The NCAA purports competitive athletics

programs are supposed to be a vital part of the educational system and that participation

in intercollegiate athletics is primarily motivated by education. Participants in the present

study reported the opposite. According to them, being a PFC athlete entails balancing two

completely separate worlds. Aside from time constraints and fatigue, what revenue-

athletes do on the field has little to no affect on how they perform in the classroom.

Gaston-Gayles (2004) used the Student Athletes’ Motivation toward Sports and

Academics Questionnaire (SAMSAQ) to better understand student-athletes’ academic

and athletic motivation. She found academic performance was only influenced by

124 academic motivation and athletic motivation had no significant impact on classroom

performance. This finding is consistent with the revenue-athletes lived experiences. The

scholastically high achieving students in the sample attributed their performance in the

classroom to the strong academic identities developed in middle and high school. Both

Althouse (2007) and Simons et al. (1999) corroborate this claim. Althouse (2007) found

student-athletes who were motivationally balanced between academics and athletics

typically had college-educated parents and higher GPAs in high school. In this study,

most of the participants both came from households with two college educated parents

and earned strong grades as high school students and undergraduate. Similarly, Simons et

al. (1999) found that the proper transferal of dedication, hard work, and focus from the

athletic realm to the academic realm can lead to success in both. Whereas female and

nonrevenue student-athletes were able to adequately transfer these skills from one

domain to the next, the same did not hold true for men on revenue-generating football

and men’s basketball teams.

The participants in the present study also described having difficulty establishing

and maintaining the right balance between academics and athletics, contending the

required commitment to and prioritization of sport were most responsible for these

tensions. Adler and Adler (1987) spent four years observing how the players on a DI

athletic team balanced their various roles and found the overwhelmingly demanding

athletic role, the prioritization of athletics over academics, the resulting frustrations and

failures in the academic realm, and the lack of positive academic reinforcement conflate

to cause conflict between players’ various roles (p. 452). Not only were social and

academic roles unrecognized, devalued, undermined by their peers, but also their athletic

125 roles were immensely privileged. Alleviating these internal tensions, the PFC players

explained, was most easily accomplished by focusing on their more externally salient

athletic identity. Eventually, their athletic or “glorified” self became the dominant master

status (Adler & Adler, 1989). As practice, conditioning, games, and travel continued to

engulf their time, the revenue-generating athlete themselves privileged their athletic roles

and responsibilities above their roles as students, a phenomenon Adler and Adler’s

(1991) coined role engulfment theory. Consistent with what the DI basketball players in

Adler and Adler’s studies (1987, 1989, 1991), sport became the predominant, and

sometimes exclusive, venue for student-athlete engagement for the PFC football players

in the present study.

When asked to describe what college was like for a DI football player, each of the

40 revenue-generating athletes I spoke to reported not having enough time to have the

real college experience where they could get involved in the types of activities regular

student were able to. Potuto and O’Hanlon’s (2006) national study of student-athletes’

perceptions of the impact of athletic participation on academic performance is also

consistent with the present study’s findings. While 62% percent of the participants

reported viewing themselves more as athletes than as students because of their student-

athlete experience, approximately 80% felt athletics was the main reason they were

unable to spend more time on academics and pursue more professional and educational

opportunities like internships and research. Not only were the men in the present study

unable spend as much time as they would like on school and career, they were also

implicitly and explicitly told to take easier classes that didn’t conflict with their athletic

schedules, lower their expectations for what they could accomplish academically and

126 professionally, and cluster in majors that were less academically-rigorous and time-

consuming. There was literally just enough time in the day to meet athletic requirements

and perform well enough academically to remain eligible. Ironically, the very nature of

their athletic commitment vastly undermines their ability to fully integrate into the larger

campus community and be academically successful.

Since the NCAA implemented eligibility criteria to address concerns about this

population’s academic performance, the graduation rates of student-athletes have

increased significantly. In fact, student-athletes’ overall graduation rates are currently

higher than their peers who do not play college sports (NCAA, 2010; Zimbalist, 1999).

Still, when they disaggregated the data by sport, race, gender, and division, Harper,

Williams, & Blackman (2013) revealed longstanding and pervasive inequities in revenue-

generating DI programs. Despite the overall increases in graduation rates, athletes in the

revenue-generating sports are graduating at lower rates than any other collegiate athletes.

Women as well as DII and DIII athletes all graduate at higher rates than the men on DI

football and men’s basketball teams. These findings are also consistent with what the

participants in the present study reported. Again, though they achieved academically, the

men with whom I spoke discussed the ways in which they were shocked at the

discrepancy between how prepared they had been for the rigors of college level work in

comparison to many of their teammates had been. In no way faulting their teammates for

their precollege circumstances, the revenue-athletes in this sample more often blamed the

system that sold NFL dreams to high school players who they knew had no chance of

succeeding academically in the postsecondary environment. In addition, one SEC athlete

shared that though all DI student-athletes dedicate a considerable amount of time to their

127 sport, they all paled in comparison to football and men’s basketball. His friends on

the women’s soccer team, he explained, were permitted to put academics first when

necessary. Missing practices, majoring in challenging fields and disciplines, and saying

“no” to their coaches was, in some cases, acceptable. For the football players at the same

school, this was never the case. Similarly, another student explained that before

transferring to play DI football, he was a DI track athlete at an institution where track

generated revenue. He attested to the fact that as a track star, he was more than just a

student-athlete. He was permitted to participate in student government and other activities

that helped him develop holistically; however, after walking on and earning a scholarship

to play DI football, engagement in activities outside of academic and athletics seemed

impossible. There were simply not enough hours in the day; the athletic demand, spoken

or unspoken, was too great.

Bowen and Levin (2003) examined the collegiate experiences of recruited

athletes, walk-on athletes, and nonathletes at 33 schools that did not offer athletic

scholarships, finding recruited athletes were considerably more likely than their similarly

credentialed walk-on and nonathlete peers to be admitted, end up in the bottom third of

their class, and perform worse than their high school GPAs and standardized test scores

predicted. In this study, though one of the more unanticipated findings, the divide

between the experiences of recruited and walk-on athletes was consistent with the

existing literature. Primarily accepted to their institutions on academic merit, the walk-on

athletes shared the ways in which they differed from the recruited athletes on the teams.

Whereas athletic talented influenced the admission of recruited athletes, the same did not

hold true for them. They applied to college like traditional students and then earned spots

128 on their teams. Recruits, on the other hand, earned spots on athletics teams and were

then admitted to the institution. It could be argued, to some extent, that walk-ons were

more representative of the student-athlete ideal, as their collegiate experience began with

academics and then expanded into athletics. In fact, several of the men in this study had

procured academic scholarships before earning athletics ones. When they analyzed 40

years of data from 30 highly selective postsecondary intuitions with rigid admissions

policies, Shulman and Bowen (2001) found even these schools were complicit with the

underperformance and lower graduation rates of student-athletes. Consistent with those

findings, the participants in the present study discussed how, regardless of institution, the

demand placed on PFC football players undermined their universities’ academic

missions. After they are shown preferential treatment in admissions’ processes and

recruited academically underprepared, revenue-generating athletes must marginalize their

academic responsibilities to handle their athletic ones.

The present study unearthed several findings previously unreported in the

literature. For example, the aforementioned nuances of being a walk-on PFC athlete were

fascinating. The demand placed on them was the same as that place on the recruited

athletes, but their tuition, room, and board were not guaranteed, nor were their meals or

playing time. On the field, their lack of athletic prowess—or as they reported, their

perceived lack of prowess relative to their recruited teammates—resulted in their bodies

being undervalued and sacrificed as tackling dummies. Simultaneously though, this

demographic reaped the most academic, professional, and developmental benefits, as

they developed strong non-football identities prior to college. They exchanged the

greatest physical risk for access to professional and academic resources they were almost

129 guaranteed to benefit from because they were more prepared to take advantage of

them than their teammates. With an average GPA of 3.7, walk-on athletes may provide

further insight in maintaining an appropriate balance of athletic and academics roles and

responsibilities.

Engaging college students in a process of sense making around the policies that

affect them was also a unique aspect of this study. Harper, Williams & Blackman (2013)

assert greater transparency is needed to increase accountability in high-profile college

sports and ensure equitable outcomes for all participants. What the 40 men in this study

shared regarding their appraisals of amateurism rhetoric highlighted the need to include

all stakeholders in policy making processes. In fact, not doing so seems irresponsible as it

led to feelings of exploitation. Participants in this study expressed displeasure with the

NCAA handing down legislation and enforcing extraneous rules they did not really

understand. Also unreported in the published research were the ways in which some

revenue-generating athletes come to experience secondhand the exploitation of their more

prolific teammates. Many of the men in the study learned about the world through the

experiences of their peers, recognizing their own privilege (SES and educational). The

participants in this study, for example, explained that they were not good enough to be

exploited, but watched as the standout athletes struggled to learn anything that was not

related to football. The athletes expressed frustration with the big-time sport enterprise

taking advantage of the guys who were not academically prepared for college.

Conclusions

Four concluding statements are warranted, given the findings of this study of

revenue-generating DI student-athletes.

130 1. Student-athletes participation in revenue-generating DI athletics is not

primarily motivated by education. While this claim may hold true at every other

level of intercollegiate athletic competition, the opposite is true at the highest

level. Rather, as mentioned throughout Chapter Four, PFC football players are

motivated by myriad fiscal, educational, professional, physical, mental, and social

benefits. The potential fiscal benefits of participating—earning athletic

scholarships, playing professionally, and procuring employment after college—

almost completely eclipse the educational components. In many cases, academics

are more of an obstacle and means to an end than they are a motivator.

2. For revenue-generating athletes, sports are not avocations, because they are not

leisurely or relaxing. Long before college, these men are aware of the myriad

benefits that may be derived, and the gravity of their participation only intensifies

as undergraduates. Coupled with the 40+ hours they dedicate weekly in season,

the bevy of commitments, expectations, restrictions, and pressures make football

feel more like a job. Few student-athletes at any level would refer to their sport as

a hobby, but the contracts and compensation in big-time college sports exacerbate

their professional feel.

3. High-profile college sport is a commercial enterprise. At the DI level, the role of

intercollegiate athletics has shifted to generating revenue and providing national

entertainment (Overly, 2005). College basketball and football have become

almost entirely commercial entities, facilitating the professionalization of college

athletics conferences. By the 1990s, competitive college sports “had all the

trappings of a major entertainment enterprise” (Knight Commission on

131 Intercollegiate Athletics, 1999, p. 5) and were “in direct conflict with nearly

every value that should matter for higher education” (p. 21).

4. Revenue-generating DI student-athletes should be protected from exploitation by

its governing body as well as external professional and commercial enterprises. In

all, the men in this study reported feeling exploited when they: were regarded as

amateurs not permitted to be compensated beyond athletic scholarships or benefit

from their likeness or image; witnessed a bevy of others reap myriad benefits

made possible by their efforts on the field; were not equipped to graduate or

actualize the lifelong benefits of a quality education at the same rates as their

nonsport peers; and are not developed professionally and struggle to transition out

of sports into the occupational sector.

Implications for Practice

The findings of this study suggest several practical implications for those who are

interested in the advancement of revenue-generating athletes on DI football and men’s

basketball teams and are committed to enhancing their undergraduate experiences and

postgraduate outcomes. Recommendations for the NCAA, member institutions, and

student-athletes and their families follow.

The NCAA

Article 1.3 of the Manual is the NCAA’s Fundamental Policy. It states, “The

competitive athletics programs of member institutions are designed to be a vital part of

the educational system.” Further, a basic purpose the Association is to “maintain

intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as

an integral part of the student body and, by so doing, retain a clear line of demarcation

132 between intercollegiate athletics and professional sports” (NCAA, 2014, p.1).

According to the NCAA website, the bedrock principle of amateurism is crucial to

“preserving an academic environment in which acquiring a quality education is the first

priority” (NCAA, n.d.a). As the governing body—and self-appointed judge, jury, and

executioner—of intercollegiate athletics pontificates such lofty rhetoric, the NCAA

should regard this period of imminent change as an opportunity to actualize its espoused

goals. The following recommendations seek to reimagine the amateur status of college

sports, prioritize academics, and treat athletes as students first to better align the values of

intercollegiate athletics and institutions of higher education.

Rewrite amateurism rhetoric. The NCAA should urgently amend its

amateurism principle. At present, the language is tremendously inconsistent with the

experiences and outcomes of the participants in big-time college sports. It needs to either

refer only to low-profile sports; be modified to encompass the experiences of revenue-

generating athletes; or be completely done away with.

Develop new models. New models of intercollegiate athletics need to be

developed, as high-profiles college sports grow more commercialized and increasingly

profitable. One potential model, the “scholarship-banking” model, separates revenue

sports from nonrevenue sports to create a Super Division with its own set of regulations

(Hawkins, Baker, and Brackebush, 2010). While the nonrevenue sports would proceed

with amateurism as is, the Super Division would operate as a minor league, allowing the

athletes competing the flexibility to: choose to either pursue their undergraduate degree

as a traditional full-time student, take a reduced academic course load during the season,

extend the window of time with which to graduate, or have infinite access to their

133 scholarship. This would afford participants the opportunity to pursue professional

aspirations and return to school after they transition out of sports.

Another version of amateurism that could be adopted is similar the Olympic

model (Hawkins, Baker, and Brackebush, 2010). The term would refer to the sports that

did not generate revenue, while the athletes that played in the most lucrative subdivisions

would be considered paraprofessional or “elite” athletes. This model would maintain the

current academic expectations of being a full-time student, but allow the athletes on

revenue-generating teams to profit beyond tuition, room, and board. High-profile athletes

would be able to earn extra income from endorsements, appearances, autograph signings,

as receive additional stipends based on their fair market value.

Modify the CARA 20-hour rule. The detrimental effects of revenue-generating

athletes not having enough time have been a recurring them in this study. To allow them

more time to become engaged on campus and benefit from participating in academically

purpose activities, the NCAA should modify and actually enforce the 20-Hour Rule.

First, there should be a reallocation of countable vs. non-countable athletic related

activity. Any activities where attendance is mandatory, spoke or unspoken, should be

designed as countable. These include Compliance, SAAC & SWD meetings; training

room, medical treatment, and rehab activities; travel to and from competition; recruitment

activities as a student host; training table and banquets; and fund-raising, community

service, promotional or public relations activities including media activities.

The NCAA should also set limits, perhaps 10 hours, on the amount of voluntary

hours, as dedicating too much time to football related activity, even at one’s own

134 discretion, could be detrimental to student development. This measure would also

make it difficult for coaches and other athletic department officials to manipulate the

rules.

Enforcing the new time restrictions and holding member institutions accountable

for exceeding them is critical to this type of reform. Instead of allowing high-profile

programs to impose more than 40 hours of athletic related activity, in season per week,

the NCAA should limit the total hours spent on sport to 30 hours (20 countable and 10

non-countable) and treat the violation of these rules as serious infractions. Though few

institutions endeavored to, one university effectively put an oversight officer in place to

monitor and report the how closely they adhered them.

The values of the activities should also be revisited. For example, an athletic

competition, between warm-ups, game prep, travel, and the competition usually occupies

considerably more time than the 3 hours the NCAA says it does, especially for weekend

away games where the teams may stay overnight.

Create 10-hour engagement requirement. I also recommend that the

Association mandate revenue-athletes spend 10-hours a weak on academically purposeful

activities and structured interactions with faculty, staff and non-sport peers. These

activities must be co-constructed so athletes get the opportunity to practice making

decisions about what they choose to do with their time. Essentially, revenue-athletes

would be afforded 10-hours for development outside of sports.

Standardize a professional development series. Without time to participate in

internships and work-study, revenue-generating athletes lack professional experience.

135 The NCAA should standardize a professional development and life skills curriculum

that prepares athletes for successful transitions out of sport and into career.

Greater compensation. At minimum, tuition room and board should be standard.

Students from less affluent backgrounds should be given an additional stipend to makeup

for the shortfall between athletic scholarships and the full cost of attending college.

Further, rather than living on the most meager budgets, revenue-generating athletes

should be allocated budgets that align with the top quartile of students at their respective

institutions.

Walk-on revenue-generating athletes who earn a spot on the team should be

awarded athletic scholarships. They should also be granted privileges (i.e. eating in the

athlete cafeteria and access to support services) that minimize the discrepancy between

their experience and that of the scholarship athletes. No students should be competing in

high-profile college athletics without some form of tuition subsidies or added benefits.

Learn from the athletes. The walk-on experience presents an opportunity to

learn firsthand how students in PFC teams can earn high GPAs and procure employment

after college, despite the time demands placed on them by their athletic commitment.

Simply put, institutions (colleges, universities, and the NCAA) interested in more

positive and equitable outcomes for their athletes should enlist the strategies and

techniques of their scholastically high-achieving students. Participants in this study also

expressed great desire for the NCAA to better explain rules and policies, rather than just

enforcing them. Specifically, revenue-generating athletes want a seat at the table during

decision-making processes. As a way of privileging their participants’ voices, the NCAA

should directly incorporate student-athletes’ feedback and insight while developing new

136 and amending old policies. The ways in which I engaged college students in a process

of sense making around the policies that affect them indicate that they are more than

capable of making valuable contributions. Perhaps most intriguingly, the PFC athletes

suggested being able to profit from their likeness would present them with academically

purposeful opportunities to learn about and become engaged in entrepreneurship and

business, the most popular major in the sample. Surely, the NCAA and its member

institutions can recognize the value of standardizing opportunities for experiential

learning about the business of sport.

Member Institutions

Member institutions consist of college and university faculty, leaders, and

administrators as well as coaches and athletic administrators.

College and university leaders should be particularly attentive to the ways in

which revenue generating student-athletes experience their campuses as well as how they

make sense of those experiences. This includes closely monitoring grades, encounters

inside and outside of the classroom, course enrollment and major selection trends,

participation in academically purposeful activities, and transitions from college to the

professional world. Provosts, deans, and department chairs should better prepare faculty

for interactions with diverse students groups, including student-athletes generally and

PFC students especially. Faculty must be made aware of revenue-generating athletes’

confrontations with low expectations and stereotypes in classrooms and elsewhere on

campus (Harper et al., 2013).

As the home of sport programs, athletic departments should take the lead in

increasing student-athlete engagement and narrowing the gaps in academic and

137 professional success. Because doing so would require compliance from both coaches

and athletes, they should not only be at the center of comprehensive and actionable

strategy plans, but also rewarded for achieving greater equity and engagement in similar

ways they are for winning athletic contests (Williams, 2015).

Several recommendations (Gaston-Gayles, 2015) for effectively engaging

student-athletes in the college experience are outlined below.

Assess Academic and Athletic Motivation. Member institution officials should

not assume what revenue-generating athletes’ motivations are based in sport, gender or

race, but assess them, as athletes have struggle balancing academic and athletic tasks

most. Understanding their perceptions of their ability to succeed is also important.

Gaston-Gayles (2004) SAMSAQ can help identify athletes with low academic

motivations and develop a plan to increase it.

Live on Campus. Adler and Adler (1991) warn of the detrimental effects of

athlete role engulfment: as they primarily live, eat, socialize, and take classes with

teammates and other athletes, student-athletes are afforded limited opportunities to

engage with non-athletic peers. Member institutions should be encouraged to live on

campus with non-athlete peers for the first two years of college, as this measure will

increase their opportunity to engage with peers, faculty, and staff.

Incentivize. Member intuition stakeholders should not hesitate to use creative

tools and idea to achieve desired outcomes. As such, I recommend they use incentives

and to motivate behavioral change for athletes and coaches, who can both benefit from

incentives that are linked to students’ academic performance (Harrison & Boyd, 2007).

138 Peer Interaction. Limited by the time demands associated with their sport,

student-athletes need to be able to interact with their peers as integrating into the

academic and social systems of the campus culture is significant (Tinto, 1993). As such,

university administrators should actively engage student-athletes with their non-athlete

peers.

Increase Faculty Interaction. Similarly, university administrators should highly

encourage interaction with faculty inside and outside the classroom, as it is an important

form of engagement for student athletes.

Student-Athletes and Families

Foster academic identities and motivations. This study makes clear the

important role that parents and other loved ones play in the lives of student-athletes,

particularly as it pertains to how they are introduced to, become involved in, and develop

a commitment to sports. Despite the numerous ways in which coaches, peers, relatives

and others in their communities may praise them for their athletic prowess, student-

athletes’ families must counterbalance this social reinforcement by strategically

emphasizing and positively reinforcing academic performance. The literature on student-

athletes routinely addresses balancing complex roles and identities as one of their greatest

challenges (Comeaux & Harrison, 2011; Gaston-Gayles, 2009, 2015; Gaston-Gayles &

Hu, 2009a, 2009b; Martin, 2009). Further, academic performance is only significantly

influenced by academic motivation. The revenue-athletes in this study, for example, were

high achieving scholastic exceptions that developed strong academic identities long

before arriving on campus. Regardless of how tired they were or how many hours of

practice they had in high school, their parents demanded the same commitment to their

139 coursework. By the time they got to college, scholastic achievement had become a

part of their self-identity and something they were committed to on their own. Many of

them credited this to the high academic expectations in their household. Thus, parents of

talented athletes should become actively involved in their sons’ academic lives, both

before and during college. It is imperative that academic success be prioritized over

athletic success in the home, because the opposite will almost always be the case outside

of the home.

Prioritize academics over athletics. The prioritization of academics over

athletics should continue as student-athletes and their families navigate the college choice

process. Specifically, student-athletes should view going to college as an opportunity to

learn rather than to play. Mentioned earlier, the NFL and NBA draft fewer than two

percent of college athletes each year (Martin, 2009). The 98% of these students who will

not must be adequately prepared to be procure employment elsewhere. Accordingly, it is

important student-athletes attend a university that is best suited to develop them

holistically, rather than the one that appears to be the most promising pathway to a

professional sport career. Because of the deceptive nature of the recruitment process—

especially the campus visits as reported by the men in this student—Harper et al. (2013)

provide a set of questions that may help student-athletes and their families assess whether

or not an institution is the right fit: What is the graduation rate for your team? Besides the

few who got drafted, what are recent graduates doing? Will you support my interest in

spending a semester abroad and doing a summer internship in my field? What will

happen to me if I don’t get drafted? How prepared will I be for a career in my field? Can

140 you provide me specific examples of ways you encourage academic success and the

holistic development of your players?

Make informed decisions. Based on the reports of the 40 men in this study, I

also recommend that student-athletes temper their expectations of what the student-

athlete experience will be like. Common misconceptions include how glamorous big-time

football seemed in high school relative to how physically and mentally tough and

grueling it became in college as well as the allocation of playing and practice time,

particularly for scholarship and walk-on athletes. Though they expected football to be

tough, it was not until they arrived that the revenue-generating athletes understood

exactly how challenging their sport commitments would be and how little time football

would leave for everything else. Some participants admitted that had they known then

what they know about what it takes to make it on the field, they may have thought twice

about playing. To circumvent surprises and mitigate these transitional issues and regrets,

student-athletes should not only anticipate coaches overselling their programs, but also

seek insight from the older players on the team who can best reveal how demanding

being on the team will be. Ideally, student-athletes and their families should be most

interested in college and universities where athletic personnel encourage and support

players getting involved in aspects of campus life outside of sports.

Get involved in campus life. Finally, as early as their freshmen year, student-

athletes should have honest conversations with themselves about their particular sets of

circumstances, how they came to be on the roster of a revenue-generating athletic team,

and most importantly, what they hope to get out of college? Whether it was for a free

education or the chance to play in the NFL, the athletes identified helping their families

141 out financially as the core of their motivations. Again, as the chances of landing a

lucrative NFL contract are highly unlikely, I recommend that student-athletes resist the

temptation to sacrifice the developmental aspects of college to commit entirely to football

and become engaged inside and outside of the classroom. Highly engaged students learn

more, earn higher GPAs, and develop a wider array of transferable skills that make them

more likely to graduate from college and be competitive candidates for employment and

graduate study. Though difficult to do with their myriad time constraints, we strongly

encourage revenue-generating athletes strategically take advantage of the clubs,

activities, and experiences outside of sports that align with their professional goals.

Implications for Future Research

This study was a phenomenological exploration of how undergraduate men on

revenue-generating athletic teams experience college and the NCAA’s amateurism

policies. Seeking to better understand what high-profile players perceived to be the costs

and benefits of participating in intercollegiate athletics, I interviewed 40 seniors on 28

football teams across all the power five conferences. Juxtaposing their own educational

and professional expectations and experiences with the Association’s amateurism

rhetoric, the PFC players shared insightful accounts illuminating myriad ways in which

the NCAA failed to achieve their espoused goals. Though I answered all the research

questions, the background characteristics of the participants from whom I got this rich

data did not match those of the men I intended to investigate.

At the FBS level, Black males compromise the majority of the top 25 football

teams, all of which are responsible for generating over 50% of their institution’s athletic

department budgets, many of which exceed $70 million annually (Hawkins, 2000). Of the

142 less than 1% of 480,000 college athletes that generate over 90% of the NCAA’s

annual revenue, Black male basketball players are 60%. These two sports generate

enough revenue to provide multimillion-dollar salaries to predominantly White coaches

and amateur athletic experiences for 99% of the predominantly White intercollegiate

athletes at the FBS level. Simultaneously, these Black men are rewarded with a “free”

ride to college, from which they are the least likely demographic to graduate. It was in

with this particular racial nuance I intended to examine student-athletes’ appraisals of

NCAA rhetoric. Instead, the men who opted into the study were academically successful,

White, well-off, walk-on athletes who described themselves as the exceptions in their

locker rooms. Their high GPAs, impending graduations, and jobs lined up after college,

were atypical. Still, despite success in actualizing their own personal goals, these

revenue-athletes perceived the exchange between individual and institution to be unfair

and exploitative for the majority of their teammates who weren’t prepared to navigate the

postsecondary environment in the ways that they had. Such a unique demographic of the

larger population, their discontent raises suspicions about how other, more vulnerable

populations make sense of NCAA policy.

Future research should ask similar questions of larger, more diverse, and

representative samples. It is my belief that students with whom I spoke, though

compelling, may just be the tip of the iceberg. I am curious to see how big-time college

athletes from low-income, minority, and less educated backgrounds made sense of

amateurism. Further, the sample contained no athletes that were nationally recognized

household names, no men who had failed to persist to senior year, and no men who were

a few years removed from their transition out of sports into the occupational sector.

143 These and other perspectives can have a significant influence on what direction the

NCAA goes in regarding amateurism.

Closing

The purpose of the present study was to assess the extent to which revenue-

generating athletes perceived to the NCAA to be achieving their espoused goals.

Overwhelmingly, they reported that amateurism rhetoric was antiquated, erroneous, and

exploitative. Were revenue-generating DI student-athletes to rewrite the amateurism

principle based upon their shared experiences, it would read something like this:

Athlete-Employee-Students are not amateurs in intercollegiate athleticism, and

their participation is motivated by myriad fiscal, educational, professional,

physical, mental, and social benefits to be derived. Athlete-Employee-Student

participation in revenue-generating college athletics is a profession. Because big

time college athletics is a commercial enterprise, its participants should be

protected from exploitation by its governing body as well as external professional

and commercial enterprises.

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