|
| |
SPORTS RECRUITING.
Term Paper ID:23415
|
|
|
Essay Subject:
History, regulation, ethics, economics, criticism, scandal, athletes' expectations, focusing on college recruitment of high schoolers.... More...
|
18 Pages / 4050 Words
11 sources, 33 Citations,
APA Format
$72.00
Return to List of Papers
|
Paper Abstract:
History, regulation, ethics, economics, criticism, scandal, athletes' expectations, focusing on college recruitment of high schoolers.
Paper Introduction:
INTRODUCTION
Colleges and professional sports teams alike pay coaches and scouts to find a certain number of players each year for sports teams. College coaches try to find likely prospects to add to their roster and perhaps to catch the eye of the public in a way that redounds to the credit of the school. Professional scouts watch players in college in an attempt to find those who could make the leap from amateur to professional sports. There are rules by which both types of scouts have to live, and the players as well have to follow certain rules as they decide what college to attend or what team to join. Questions are often raised as to the ethics of certain practices undertaken by coaches or scouts, but all in all the system seems to work. At the same time, those with prospects for recruitment need to be careful because there
Text of the Paper:
The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper.
It is clear that they should know better. The result is thatmoney that could go to regular students is siphoned off to the athleticdepartment (Sperber, 199 , 1 2). Economist, 86. Thishas led to attempts on the part of different states to increase regulationof these events, such as legislation in Florida making it a felony for anagent to solicit college athletes without being licensed by the state.Even those with a license are not allowed to sign underclassmen toprofessional contracts. This was a highly flexible system, looselymonitored, and at the extreme were some players who played for differentuniversities on different days or for a college team one day and aprofessional team the next. The majority of college graduates were entering the ministry, hence the need for intellectual growth took precedence over physical education (Rooney, 1987, 12).This situation changed between 182 and 1852, with Harvard being theinnovator as it established both intramural and interclass athleticprograms. (1995, August 28). The host department pays first for their traveland then to house and entertain the potential recruits during their on-campus visits. And the deal does not even include international coverage of the tournament, which in 1987 was broadcast to 19 countries and will be broadcast to 1 countries in 1995 ("Foreign giants," 1995, 86).The coffers are swelled even more by prospective NFL player contracts andtelevision and bowl revenues, and all of these sources have been causingthe amount received by "amateur" sports such as college football toincrease, potentially leading to seedy practices by sports agents. This school isSouthwestern College of the Assemblies of God, and it has been used by anumber of athletes as a way of getting enough points to transfer to a four-year college. The NCAA has doubled its force from 1 to 2 in theenforcement department to police all recruiting activities as well as tomonitor the in-house care and feeding of athletes, and such a smallinvestigative force has little chance of making much headway (Rooney, 1987,3 ). College sports inc. (199 ). Some of the basic rules governing this process deal with theidentification and description of the student-athlete, the role of alumnior friends of the university, gifts to potential recruits, transportation,and regulations concerning "tryouts," talent scouts, and sports camps(Rooney, 1987, 28). Inthe past the recruiter could get to know the prospect, but now a recruiterhas to work through the summer coach. The recruiting game. New York: Henry Holt. Some believe that revenues come to theuniversity indirectly as a result of the sports program through grants,endowments, gifts, and bequeathals from wealthy alumni and fans who havefollowed the team. It was also found that only one in seven athletes was beingsubsidized, and it was strongly recommended that there be a return topurely amateur sport (Rooney, 1987, 18-19). Telander, R. Dr. James Frey, a sociologist who has studied the matter,states, The performance of athletic teams, particularly basketball and football, is purported to stimulate financial donations to general university development efforts, especially from alumni. Athletic scholarships come in all shapesand sizes. In 1989, 25underclassmen entered the draft under a special hardship exemption, and ayear later the draft was opened to any player who was at least three yearsout of high school. Intercollegiate footballstarted as an offshoot of a heated baseball rivalry between Princeton andRutgers, and a challenge brought about the first American intercollegiatefootball match. Recruiters will go anywhere they can to see potential material fortheir teams. after all, if each of these athletes is qualified to be a student in the American university system, then each should be smart enough to know all; of the germane rules (Levine, 1994, 118). How can we set one set of rules for the coaches and administrators and a different set of rules for the student? THE RECRUITING PROCESS The recruiting process is carried on at a high level of energy forbasketball and football, and college basketball coaches resort to a numberof ploys in trying to get athletes to sign with a specific college team.Rushin (1993) reports that one coach sent his requests in the form ofpoetry. The NCAA condemned recruiting, but stillthe system grew in importance. Most of the big-time athletic programsspend at least half their team travel money on football (Sperber, 199 , 1 6-1 7). This has involved a major change in the way sports itself isviewed in the college setting: Among gentleman, prior to 182 , there was a general contempt for physical prowess. Suchscandals often involve recruitment issues or issues of eligibility. The expense for this is about $5 , for football, thoughhere again, the expense can be much higher. Walker, chancellor emeritus of North Carolina Central University,told a congressional panel, The facts are that in football 4.5 million young men play high school football, 39, will play college ball, 1,5 will make the professional recruitment list, 5 will be drafted, but less than 1 will make it in professional football. On occasion, more than recruiting propaganda is used to convince an athlete to sign with a school. The NCAA started looking into the case and brought thescandal to light, finding cases where a coach had filled out a test withhis own answers to replace those of the student-athlete and other instanceswhere the final grade of an athlete does not match what he did over thecourse of the semester (Wolff and Yaeger. Recruiting travel for coaches is estimated at about $15 , a yearfor the average Division I-A football team, and the widely accepted gaugethat football accounts for about 5 percent of all recruiting costsincreases the item to a total of about $3 , a year for all sports(Sperber, 199 , 112-113). Recruiting can itself be an expensive proposition, and it firstinvolves a good deal of traveling. Thehead football coach and the recruiting coordinator divide up the state andother important supply areas and use their contacts to continue theirsearch (Rooney, 1987, 24-26). The most expensive are those that pay all tuition and fees,books for required courses, room and board, and miscellaneous expenses suchas tutoring. CONTINUING CONTROVERSY The matter has hardly remained settled, however. BACKGROUND The recruitment process is an outgrowth of developments beginningover a century ago as American intercollegiate sports developed and changedover time. Access remains limited even in the summer. Some critics also statethat the situation breeds cynicism among athletes, and one such critic isRepresentative Cardiss Collins, Democrat from Illinois, who noted recently, How can one explain to the athlete, who is attending ... Baseballcompetition was firmly established by 186 . "College sports: will reform helpor hurt student athletes?" CQ Researcher, 747-763.----------------------- 2 The remainder was handled by the athleticdepartments. This has been countered by those who examine the factsand the statistics on college sports, and they find that any relationshipbetween athletic success and fund-raising is tenuous and perhaps non-existent. The NCAA wants scholarship money to remain "outside the control" ofthe athletic department, for many departments have direct access touniversity funds to the degree that they can tap into them regularly to layoff part or all of the cost of their athletic scholarships. Lapchick, R.E. and D. (1995, November 29). "Don't just blame the agents: Let's fixthe NCAA's system." Sport, 118. In fact, the rulebook was filled with a number of silly provisions, such as that holdingthat a recruiting letter could not be printed on stationery with more thantwo colors of ink (Rushin, 1993, 96). The result hasbeen such things as Nike's National Prep Basketball Championship andAdidas's Big Time Classic. According to the Knight Foundation Commission onIntercollegiate Athletics, a group that has proposed a reform agenda forcollege sports, about 7 percent of major college programs today losemoney, and many of them operate deeply in the red. The NCAA limits the number of prospects a school can bring in andexamine. "Leap of faith." Sports Illustrated,1 4-1 9. The American Council on Education estimated in 198 that for big-timeathletic programs, the total bill for recruiting, including personnel, was$4 , . The National Associationof Intercollegiate Athletics is the supervisory agent for another group ofsmall institutions. (1989). It is estimated that this expense stands at about $45, peryear per major football program, though the amount can be quite a bithigher. TheNCAA states that for Division I schools with football teams, athleticscholarships comprise 17 percent of their total expenses, and forinstitutions in other divisions, the costs were as high as 3 percent(Sperber, 199 , 1 -1 1). Yaeger (1995, August 7). The least expensive are known as "partial grants" and provideonly a percentage of an athlete's costs, typically between 33 and 5 percent. Baseball at that time emphasizedsocializing in clubs, but after then Civil War baseball spreadgeographically and broke through many class and economic lines: American pride in place, an outgrowth of the democratic booster enthusiasm for life, has helped to shape the locational pattern of present-day sport, particularly its unique intercollegiate structure. "The wooing game." SportsIllustrated, 96. Rushin also notes that the NCAA rule book is essentiallymeaningless in regulating what coaches do in recruiting. As part of the process, the coach will try to observe each recruitudder consideration in an actual game, and if the prospect is stillconsidered worthwhile, the coach visits with him, his parents, appropriatehigh school officials, and anyone else who might help in convincing theyoung man to sign with a particular school. A recruiter for the NCAA recently let out what heconsidered a secret, that he knew of a small college in Florida thatoffered cheap, quick, and easy credits by mail. This means a shift in the athlete population,and different regions are more or less successful in retaining their bestplayers and in attracting players from other regions (Rooney, 1987, 97).The athletic conferences that have been created collectively exemplify therecruiting behavior of their membership. practices, flying back and forth across the nation in tournaments, watching the coach cut lucrative deals with a shoe company, that this is amateur sports and that the acceptance of a pair of shoes is illegal? ATHLETE EXPECTATIONS It is important to consider what the athletes themselves expect fromrecruitment, and often they have unreached and even unreachableexpectations about their chances for a professional sports career aftercollege, which is one reason they are so anxious to be recruited for acollege team, as a way of gaining entrée to the professional sports world.LeRoy T. On the mark. The impulse to boost one's place, and the pride in community, state, region, and country which underlies the impulse, is simply the American way (Rooney, 1987, 15). In 1952 the NCAA established a new set of national standards.Financial aid to collegiate athletes was legalized, and athleticscholarships and grants-in-aid were formalized. (1994, August 26). (Worsnop, 1994, 749).The high school athlete who can play in college has already beaten the 5 to 1 odds against his playing in college. The hundred yard lie. The college or university supports itssports program at least partially on the basis of a belief that it bringsrevenue to the institution. When subjected to closer scrutiny, much of what we believe to be true about this relationship is, in fact, false (Telander, 1989, 128).In fact, as Frey notes, it is peculiar that this idea has come to beaccepted given the evidence--since athletic programs are known to havedifficulty raising their own money, it is odd that people believe theprogram raises money for the rest of the university (Telander, 1989, 129). After 188 ,there was a slow but steady growth in both intramural and intercollegiatecompetition, though this remained largely in the Northeast. Wolff, A. In practice it is far more complicated. 1995, 46-53). The process for both is much the same, though collegeathletics are restricted by the NCAA while professional recruiting isgoverned by law and professional organizations for the individual sports.Scandals erupt from time to time and bring about calls for reform, and theincrease in money for college basketball and football has been anotherreason why reform is sought. This creates a problem because thecoaches as well have their own agenda--some want to parlay theirfriendships into a college coaching job (Kirkpatrick, 1995, 57). "The big boys of sumemr."Newsweek, 57. There are other costly itemsthat can be used as well: Recruiters like to bury high school athletes in printed and visual material, including elaborate videotapes. This raises serious questions for the schools involved, for ineconomic terms, it is unclear if it is economically feasible to spend$2 , to bring in an athlete and only a fraction of that to recruit aregular student, even if it is assumed that the athlete will become theschool's future alumni and important benefactor: More significantly, in social terms, should an institution of higher education pay huge sums to recruit potential pro athletes but relatively little to find and attract future scientists, doctors, teachers, and other citizens? Some 225 underclassmen declared themselves eligiblefor the NFL draft, and only 149 of those (or 66 percent) have been drafted. Worsnop, R.L. Aftermuch consideration, the number of athletes to be pursued is reduced to afew hundred, and it is then that the personal contact period begins. New recruiting rules have severely limited the access ofcollege coaches to a star prospect. First, early departures, along with scholarship reductions, have changed the manner in which teams are built and programs maintained. The dean ofadmissions was a very powerful individual in this process, for hecontrolled who got in and how much the athlete would receive for hisservices (Rooney, 1987, 16-17). There are controls on every aspect of the recruiting process today.Major college recruiting is overseen by the NCAA, and the NCAA also hasresponsibility for a number of smaller schools. In this and subsequent contests, local rules prevailed.By 188 a number of competitive frameworks had been created, with leaguesand conferences linking schools together in track, rowing, and baseball(Rooney, 1987, 12-13). Only 28 have been among the first 1 selected in the first round. Professional scouts watch players in college in an attempt to findthose who could make the leap from amateur to professional sports. Violations of the code must be brought to theattention of one of these organizations before an investigation can bestarted. Each university develops a network ofdependable coaches, and this usually includes a significant number fromoutside the local area. . (1995, August 7). and the debate hasbeen raging over the need to reform college athletics. If an averageschool signs 25 new football players, 1 basketball players (5 men and 5women), and 15 freshmen for its main nonrevenue sports, the cost is $2 , each. The first organized baseball team in America was the New YorkKnickerbockers from the 184 s. it was concluded that over 3 percent of the recruiting washandled by alumni and 1 percent by administrative, academic, or executiveofficers of the university. Such aprogram involves early departure from college, and certainly this is acontroversial program: In theory the early-departure option is nothing more than an opportunity for the best college players to bypass their third or fourth year for a rich pro contract. The establishment, and eventual success, of a great many American communities and institutions of higher learning stemmed from boosterism. RECRUITING AND FINANCES The NCAA prefers the term "grants-in-aid" to "athletic scholarships,"though the latter is more accurate in describing the money that changeshands, indicating as it does that the athletes receive money solely on thebasis of their sports abilities. Efforts such as this have been fed by variousscandals. Still, critics find that college sports are cloaked as amateur sportswhen in fact they are big business and both cost and raise big money: Broadcast rights for the NCAA's national championship tournament were recently sold to CBS for $1.7 billion spread over an eight-year period. Usually, oneuniversity dominates a given region (Rooney, 1987, 118-119). If the young man wants to be seen, hehas to play during the summer when the coaches can watch. CONCLUSION The process of recruiting is one of the major elements in the growthand success of college sports and the primary means of rejuvenatingprofessional sports. . Rooney, J.F. INTRODUCTION Colleges and professional sports teams alike pay coaches and scoutsto find a certain number of players each year for sports teams. Rushin, S. For that matter, mostof the revenue that is made is spent seeking more revenue for the program.Deficits are not the only problems faced by these programs, and those beingrecruited should understand the nature of some of the issues that have beenraised because they will be affected by them. The questionnaires are meant to gatherdata on a player's position, size, and speed, and each coach is asked torank the players from his school. Levine, M. References "Foreign giants" (1995, January 28). Football recruiting today has a national dimension, and it seems thatdifferent states produce more viable athletes than do other states. A year inresidence at a public institution now costs each student from $6, to$12, , and at a private college as much as $2 , , so paying forhundreds of grants is an enormous expense for all athletic programs. In 199 the total has risen to over $1 million. In the 192 s there were numerous violationsof the amateur athletic code, bringing a call for reform. Lexington,Massachusetts: Lexington Books. The player then had to gain a two-year associate degreebefore he could transfer to or be eligible to play at any NCAA school.Some college coaches then began to pride themselves on their ability toguide academically deficient young men through the loosely regulated worldof the junior college. and R. Lapchick and Malekoff(1987) offer advice to those who consider college a route to professionalsports: Sports can be a very worthwhile part of your total college experience. Collegecoaches try to find likely prospects to add to their roster and perhaps tocatch the eye of the public in a way that redounds to the credit of theschool. Another aspect of the matter that has fueled calls for reforminvolves the scandals that have emerged in recent years, showing the waymoney has corrupted the amateur status of the college system. The CarnegieFoundation for the Advancement of Teaching responded with a study ofAmerican college athletics that showed that recruiting and subsidizing werein violation of the amateur code and brought students to colleges for thewrong reasons. It was a contempt in keeping with prevailing English attitudes toward frivolity, tied closely to the Puritan ethic. Enforcement of the rules is an impossible job becausethere is simply no way to maintain surveillance of over 7 activeinstitutional members. When university presidents and administrators absorb their athletic programs' deficits--and thus underwrite the million-dollar recruiting expenses--they provide disturbing answers to these questions (Sperber, 199 , 114). . Outsideobservers may believe that college sports programs make a large profit, butin fact they do not. . The lure of money affects not only the agents but also theplayers, though accepting money outside of the scholarship is forbidden byNCAA rules: The bottom line is that, just as the agents know that it's wrong to give out money regardless of sum, it is equally wrong for these scholarship athletes to accept it under any circumstances. This has been one of the major concerns for critics of the currentsystem, that it creates undue expectations and that it neglects the primaryneed of each athlete to gain an education and to be prepared for theworking world, in or out of professional sports. The success of a conferencedepends on their being located in the middle of talent pools and on thedegree of local recruiting intensity in which teams engage. The second highest cost in recruiting travel is bringing prospects tocampus, and expenses increase the more distant the location from which theyoriginate. Student athletes areallowed to receive only an athletic scholarship, and this can be lifted atany time for breaking NCAA rules (Worsnop, 1994, 747-748). Formost other kinds of athletic program, travel stood at around 15 percent oftotal costs, in the $1 , range. Malekoff (1987). Some claim that the athletes should be compensated asprofessionals, while others note that most athletic departments lose moneyand are in need of any funding they can get to protect various programs,such as women's athletics, which are traditionally money-losers. Many critics argue that this system is detrimental to the institutionas well as to the student body. . The typical university monitors the development of athletes in itsown region and makes use of questionnaires distributed to all state highschools and even to those in surrounding states asking high school coachesto comment on high school juniors. The first intercollegiate contest was an eight-oared barge racein New Hampshire in 1852, with Harvard and Yale competing. The system persisted, however, though it has been changed severaltimes. New York: Simon &Schuster. (1994, November). They have made recruiting more insidious, with coaches promising swift riches to teenagers (Layden, 1995, 1 6). They were designed for thepurpose of promoting athletic and other forms of competition, and they aregenerally organized along regional lines. Once an athlete is placed ona school's wanted list, he finds that the school stays in touch with him.The rules of the NCAA now limit recruiters to three home visits, buthelpful alumni in the community may be asked to help (Rooney, 1987, 27). No academicdepartment has such access to university scholarship money: Athletic departments accomplish their financial sleight of hand in a number of ways: they convince the central administration to pay for athletic grants out of student scholarship funds, and/or they exert influence over financial-aid committees. . Kirkpatrick, C. Wolffand Yaeger (1995) note that recruiters who seek the best high schoolplayers have often had to wait while those players went to junior collegeto get a high enough academic mark to be eligible under the NCAA'sProposition 48. NewJersey produces five times the number of players needed in that state,while Utah, Wyoming, and South Carolina together could supply less than 4 percent of their own needs. In some cases, the athlete isasked to sign a letter of intent, while in others he is asked to lookaround and investigate the campus on his own. The reason for thisis because of the increasing revenues that come to colleges anduniversities with major sports teams because of television and ticketsales. Layden, T. Lincoln, Nebraska:University of Nebraska Press. Sports such as football and basketball bring huge sums to theinstitution, while the athletes who make this possible get nothing but afree education. Most of the recruiting of the time was done bymail, and the major participants in this effort, aside from the players andthe college coaches, were alumni and high school mentors. A major football school will gather data on aminimum of 2, high school and junior college athletes each year. Only the best athletes weresubsidized, and the scholarships that were offered were usually vague, witha typical statement being that the athlete would be well cared for if hecame to the university. Most major college programs have at least 2 athletes on fullscholarship and an even higher number on partial grants, and athleticdepartments may also give scholarships to student managers. As the system developed and competition increased, opposition to therecruitment and subsidization of players also increased. THE STRUCTURE OF RECRUITING the business of recruiting is undertaken by universities in asystematic manner, and there are certain common denominators which apply toall the major institutions and to most of the schools that field athleticteams. The NCAA financial survey lists "Teamand Other Travel" for Division I football teams and says they spent anaverage of $554, in 1985, or 12 percent of their total expenses. Sperber, M. Such criticismwas highly ineffective, though. In 1988, a thousand dollars in fifty-dollar bills tumbled from a package of videotapes sent by University of Kentucky assistant basketball coach Dwane Casey to the father of Los Angeles recruit Chris Mills, and set off the most recent Kentucky basketball scandal (Sperber, 199 , 112). The obvious answer is for coaches to insist that players obtain another option--a degree (Worsnop, 1994, 748-749). While we want to believe that the above is an accurate assessment, it has to be concluded that the common beliefs about the relation of athletic success and voluntary contribution are based on casual observation rather than systematic analysis. Any college could recruitand subsidize athletes from any area of the country: Thus what had once been deemed out-and-out professionalism, buying and selling athletic talent on the open market, gradually, and without any real justification, became legitimate (Rooney, 1987, 22). The potential recruit needs to understand thenature of the process, the potential pitfalls, and ways in which to makethe recruiting process work for him. At the same time, those with prospects for recruitment need to becareful because there are a number of traps involved which they need tonote and avoid. It allows athletic programs to bring in 85 prospects in football,15 in men's basketball, 15 in women's basketball, and varying numbers inother nonrevenue sports. The systems of recruiting for college athletics andprofessional sports have developed over time and have also been muchcriticized for perceived ethical lapses. Before 19 , compensation usually consisted of sometype of employment, lodging, meals, and other kinds of factors, allprimarily funded by fraternities and alumni. (1987). . Questions are often raised as to the ethics of certainpractices undertaken by coaches or scouts, but all in all the system seemsto work. While some have been callingfor players to share in the revenue, for instance, in truth the rules laiddown by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) bar playersfrom sharing the wealth they create for so-called "revenue sports," whichtypically include just football and basketball. This latter maneuver involves channeling money to athletes on a direct or loan basis, and the effect is to give athletes money and not call it an athletic scholarship (Sperber, 199 , 1 2).The intent is to move this expense away from the books of the athleticdepartment and perhaps to get around NCAA rules on the number of grantsallowed in certain sports or for certain divisions. Thereare rules by which both types of scouts have to live, and the players aswell have to follow certain rules as they decide what college to attend orwhat team to join. Universities apparently learned from the recruiting and compensationpractices that the town baseball club sponsors had created. The odds against his playing inprofessional sports are much higher--12, to 1. [Tony] Barnhart [of the Atlanta Journal] estimated that $65, was spent on these items in 1988 by the average big-time football program. "Credit risk." SportsIllustrated, 46-55. Recruitment from college teams to the ranks of professional sports isthe dream of many underclassmen, but few achieve it. However, as you begin to think about choosing a college, try to balance your athletic dreams with the importance of a positive academic and social experience (Lapchick and Malekoff, 1987, 18). Recruitment ofcollege athletes started in the 188 s some ten years after the professionalmovement in baseball.
If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again:
or
Click here to request an essay written just for you.
|
|
|
