Does college admission need a commissioner? That may seem (or be) an odd question, but I have found myself pondering it as a result of two recent events.
The first was an email exchange I had with a friend and loyal reader after a recent post about early decision. During the back-and-forth one of us began a sentence with the clause “If I were the commissioner.”
The other, more substantive cause has been the mayhem in college sports. Two legendary college coaches who have each won multiple national championships recently called for the appointment of a commissioner to reign in the chaos in their sports.
Retired Alabama football coach Nick Saban called for a college football commissioner to reign in the changing rules (or lack of rules) regulating payment of players and transfers. More than 6000 Division One football players, close to half of those on D1 rosters, entered the recent transfer portal. One of those was Duke quarterback Darian Mensah, who entered the portal at the last minute after previously announcing he was returning to Duke and apparently signing some kind of agreement. That happened a year after he transferred to Duke from Tulane. Duke and Mensah looked like they were going to court, but ultimately reached an agreement, allowing him to move to Miami (Florida), where he will make too much money to afford to turn pro. If three colleges in three years sounds like a lot, it is, but it is also not unusual. The transfer portal has turned into a kind of free agency for college football players. A recent article in The Athletic highlighted a quarterback who will be at his seventh university in seven years next fall.
College basketball seems determined to make college football seem rational, leading University of Connecticut coach Dan Hurley to call for a commissioner. That came in the aftermath of the NCAA declaring a former NBA draft choice who had played professionally in Europe eligible to play at Baylor. Since then we have seen another player who had signed an NBA contract but not appeared in a game declared eligible to play at Alabama by a state court judge who just happens to be an Alabama athletic booster. And now a former UCLA player who has played in the NBA wants to be declared eligible to play in college again. What’s next? LeBron has college eligibility, doesn’t he?
The issues in college sports have been well-documented. The introduction of payment for college athletes and liberal transfer rules have created a more even playing field for both athletes and teams, as illustrated by the fact that Indiana won the national championship in football, something that would have been unthinkable two years ago. It’s also created a widening chasm between the “college” and “athletics” in college athletics.
I won’t weigh in on whether the changes have improved college sports, other than to note that I am not nearly the fan I used to be, but there is no way they enhance the education that athletes are receiving. The reason for the portal frenzy in college football at this time of year is driven by the need to replenish rosters but also to have players enroll at their new institution in time for the second semester. Transferring mid-year does not make for a smooth academic transition, but the need to have players on campus in time for spring practice trumps any academic issues.
I wonder what the transfer portal will do to graduation rates for athletes. It’s probably too early to make sense of the data given how new the portal and mass migration phenomena are. But even if students who attend three or more institutions are ultimately getting college degrees, are they receiving any semblance of a college education or a legitimate college experience? I also wonder how much scrutiny transfer athletes receive in the admissions process. I recognize that admission for athletes is its own process at most institutions, but is anyone evaluating transfer credits for all the football and basketball players changing colleges through the transfer portal? Is there any attention given to the educational needs of the student, or is it all about eligibility?
I am sympathetic to the calls for commissioners to come in and restore order to college basketball and football, but don’t think that’s a viable solution. For one thing, modern sports commissioners are not czars protecting the “good of the game” but rather corporate CEOs. Think Bud Selig, not Bart Giamatti or Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis. Second, if there were a commissioner, his or her edicts would most likely be taken to court by the losing party in our litigious society. Most important, the only problem big enough to justify a commissioner would be a huge loss of revenue. The money in college sports drives everything.
Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari recently published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for restoring sanity to the collegiate athletics landscape. You are not alone if you find that ironic, given Calipari’s central role in the “one-and-done” phenomenon, where basketball players spend a year in “college” before turning pro. Calipari’s ideal solution, which he recognizes as unlikely, is for Congress to pass antitrust legislation allowing the NCAA to create “effective rules.” Barring that, he calls on athletic conferences to form alliances and engage in collective bargaining with athletes “as a special class of nonemployees” and regulate things like multiple transfers and age-eligibility requirements.
Calipari’s solution doesn’t go far enough. It fails to rethink the assumptions that serve as the foundation of college athletics. It’s time to stop pretending that college sports are about the educational side of higher education and move them to the advancement side of the house. Let college teams, at least in the revenue sports of football and basketball, be recognized as vehicles for fund-raising and the players as university employees. If the players want to take classes and seek a degree, let them, but end the pretense of the student-athlete. If LSU wants to keep a university employee as football quarterback for nine years, let them. That proposal has its own issues, but it’s better than the fiction we have now.
And what about college admission? The issues in the admission world are nowhere near as dire, largely because there is a history within the admission and counseling profession for ethical professional practice. But we have learned all too well how fragile norms and precedents can be. Culture is only as strong as the individuals that buy into the culture, and as a new generation of enrollment management professionals take positions of influence at institutions, will they be as committed to the shared values of the profession? It is also the case that pressure and interference from federal and state governments in combination with the coming enrollment cliff create the conditions for college admission to turn into the Wild West.
When I originally envisioned this post, I was going to have the college admission piece be merely an invitation for readers to answer the question, “If I was the commissioner of college admission, I would…” And, dear readers, I invite you to submit your thoughts to me at jimjumpcollege@gmail.com. I’ll devote a future post to your suggestions.
But a communication from a reader convinced me that there are larger issues here. If you’ve read ECA for any length of time, you know that we love larger questions. This post is long enough (you may think too long), so I’ll address the larger questions in Part 2.