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| Nocera in a December article proposed plan for paying athletes |
The NCAA "has faced a barrage of criticism in recent months over its perceived injustices," and the N.Y. Times' Joe Nocera is “the latest -- and loudest -- to pile on, faulting the NCAA for, among other things, exploiting college athletes on the field while stripping them of basic rights off it,” according to Brad Wolverton of the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. Since December, when he wrote a Times magazine article "proposing a plan for paying big-time college football and basketball players," Nocera "has cranked out more than 11,000 words about college sports, some weeks devoting each of his twice-weekly columns to the topic." Nocera said, "I cannot believe an organization is allowed to do the things they do in modern America. It's as if the Constitution and rules of society don't apply to them." The NCAA has “lashed back, publishing a 2,700-word rebuttal on ncaa.org that points out reporting mistakes and dresses Mr. Nocera down for failing to ‘do justice’ to what the association sees as a substantial conflict of interest involving his fiancée.” Wolverton noted Nocera's fiancee, Dawn Schneider, “is director of communications at a law firm that is peripherally involved in a class-action suit against the NCAA," a fact that Nocera "disclosed when writing about the case." The NCAA “struck again this month, complaining of the columnist's ‘monthlong, error-laden, and questionably motivated mugging.’” Elliot Schreiber, Exec Dir of Drexel Univ.’s Center for Corporate Reputation Management, said that the NCAA has been "more aggressive than many companies in pushing back against mistakes in the news media -- an approach that may not serve it well." However, NCAA VP/Communications Bob Williams said that “correcting mistakes is necessary self-defense at a time when misinformation can spread quickly.” Williams: “I don't believe I've read anything that would be considered not appropriate, at least coming from our end. I've read a lot that others have posted that I would consider inappropriate about us." ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas on Twitter said that even if the columnist “has gotten some facts wrong … that doesn't invalidate his underlying positions” (
CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 2/17 issue).
NOT ALL BAD: The N.Y. TIMES' Nocera wrote he “finally found an example of the NCAA doing right by college athletes.” Here is “the catch, though: It does so by averting its eyes from the systematic violation of one of its typically awful rules." It turns out that “most big-time junior hockey players have professional agents,” but they are “not usually called agents.” They are called “advisers.” And although hockey, “like most sports, attracts unscrupulous agents, by and large, the system works well for everyone involved.” The NCAA “despises sports agents -- hates them so much so that it once helped promulgate an anti-agent law.” NCAA Associate Dir of PR & Media Relations Stacey Osburn in an e-mail said that the rules “are the same for athletes in all sports.” That it “is not against the rules for an athlete to talk to an agent.” Nocera noted it is “only because the use of agents is so ingrained in hockey culture that the NCAA has chosen to look the other way” (N.Y. TIMES, 2/14).
AN OPEN BOOK: The AP’s John Marshall reported the NCAA, “for the first time this season, is giving the public the same information the men's basketball committee uses to select teams for the NCAA tournament.” The NCAA “added a link to its website that ranks teams by RPI, including an expanded comparison of overall and conference records, strength of schedule and records against teams within various categories of RPIs.” Marshall noted there is “also a link for the team sheets of all 344 Division I teams, which break down the raw RPI numbers for every game on a team's schedule -- the same sheets the selection committee looks at when deciding which teams to include in the bracket” (AP, 2/15).
