College Sports Business News - The Publication for College Sports Administrators

In the last few weeks there have been a number of responses to the emerging scandals at Penn State and Syracuse. What has been interesting to me has been the shift in the tenor of the commentary of late. Immediately after these stories surfaced, much of what was said focused on the tragedy and the human element. Yet what has been highlighted in the last few weeks has been more about the state of college athletics. More to the point, rather than asking how this could have happened, the question has now become, “What’s happened to college sports?”

Let’s not be naïve and suggest that college sport is any better or worse than the grand old days of yesteryear. Instead, let’s be more honest and forthright and realize that college sport is perhaps more tainted than before because of the grossly large sums of money at stake, but that the tension of athletic competition and the aims of higher education are still as taut as ever. With these latest scandals the line of questioning has been diverted to ask about the damaging power of intercollegiate sport in higher education.

One of the overlooked responses to these scandals came from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in late November in a statement titled “The Dangers of a Sports Empire.” The AAUP is a quite powerful association of university faculty which aims “to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good.” In many cases the AAUP has served as the influential faculty voice on issues in higher education, often protecting both the priority of academic endeavors on campus and the necessity of faculty to contribute to the directions of colleges and universities. Moreover, the AAUP has over the last twenty years provided a number of observations on the burgeoning state of college sports and the need for faculty involvement in athletics programs.

In this most recent statement regarding the Penn State scandal, the AAUP’s National Council said:

“Genuine shared governance, which involves meaningful participation by faculty in all aspects of an institution, could have resulted in these alleged crimes being reported to the city and state police years ago, and might have spared some of the victims the trauma they endured, and indeed continue to endure, because of the memories that remain, and the legal and judicial process they still face.”

It’s taken me reading this statement a number of times to get at what I perceive to be the intended meaning.  In essence, the statement – in concert with the reference to the “Sports Empire” – seems to suggest that the scandal at Penn State erupted precisely because the athletics department operated outside the norms and expectations of the institution which are often guided by the faculty, that in effect, the athletics department grew to be such a monolithic presence that it created its own rules and regulations. Such isolation not only pushed away the primacy of the academic enterprise and the supportive hand of faculty governance, but also gave rise to a culture where the protection of the department was paramount above all else.

I’ve heard this argument before in many forms and in many disguises. The very core of the argument from faculty is one of cultural difference. They will proclaim that intercollegiate athletics and all its departmental members do not value the same things as the academic side of campus, therefore faculty – to the good of the institution – should control athletics. It’s really that simple.

But let me push on this a bit. While it is easy to acknowledge that some faculty care little about students and care deeply about arcane academic subject matter, it also must be acknowledged that there are many coaches who see the value of college athletics in its ability to shape and direct young lives. For them it has nothing to do with the riches at play in contemporary college sport. We are left with a mixed bag with no end in sight. Some care, some don’t and still the problems persist.

No, let me instead argue that the issue at play for faculty is not one of control of athletics, but of shared intention and what is or should be valued. Let me instead make a modest proposal of two points to address the cultural divide.

Point #1 – Abolish athletics departments as “centers” of financial activity and instead make them academic departments subject to the norms and rules that govern faculty.

Point #2 – Make all coaches and key administrators members of the faculty, again subject to the norms and rules of faculty including contract length, salary, and evaluation.

As to the first point, the idea here is that the athletics department often operates outside the norms of faculty department because … well, because it is a different department! It operates more often as a functioning business rather than a teaching center. If faculty want to change it, then they (or the Presidents or the Boards) will need to make it more similar to a faculty department. Certainly there are academic departments that raise money through consulting or grants; athletics could operate in a similar way. Yet the primary function of an academic department is to teach and department policies and intentions shape that very function. That is just not the case in athletics. The athletics team is now less a class or laboratory and more a dress rehearsal for the forthcoming (financial) show.

As to the second point, making coaches and key administrators members of the faculty brings them in line with the core personnel in any institution. It still baffles me that the highest paid persons on campus are not the president or star professors, but instead are often the head football coaches and his coordinators. Creating coaches as faculty not only may address the salary issue, but might also reinforce the connection of faculty to one another and to what they do in the classroom. Instead of firing a coach after two years because of a losing record, perhaps evaluate the coach from the student perspective. Have the players grown in that coach’s presence? Have they developed and learned from being on that team? Essentially, is the coach a good teacher? Moreover, coaches as faculty members might be subject to an evaluation from an outside personnel committee; they might also have something akin to tenure or a more secure job situation which doesn’t have coaches leaping from job to job in search of better paydays.

I’m not naïve to think that many would go for this. It’s not just a modest proposal of only two points, but it’s a bit crazy and scares some folks I’m sure. But our current model of coaching and athletics in higher education is without doubt highly professionalized. My own experience as a college athletic director was rich with this model. At two of my stops as AD, no one in the athletics department possessed faculty rank of any sort nor did they teach in any meaningful way. That very thing in my opinion made my job all the more difficult, but more directly created a divide between athletics and academics. Integration? Mind and body together? Community? Hardly. Coaches at times had little interest in the academic side of things beyond admission and eligibility, while faculty members in general seemed to marginalize and ostracize those in athletics as doing something less worthy. It contributed to a poor environment and made connection of athletics and academics in our college community all the more challenging at the very least, and impossible at worst in some cases.

But perhaps, just perhaps, if we begin to think of coaches and faculty and of academic and athletic departments as somehow being equal and having similar aims, then we might have a better state of affairs. We can all dream, can’t we?

#  #  #

Dr. Travis Feezell currently serves as an associate professor of sport management at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, North Carolina. He received his doctoral degree in education from the University of Idaho in 2005. In addition, he received his master's degree in British medieval studies from the University of Wales-Cardiff in 1992 and his undergraduate degree in English from the University of Wyoming in 1990.

Dr. Feezell has served in a variety of positions in higher education and athletics over the last 20 years. He has worked as both an assistant and head baseball coach at the college level. In addition, he served as an athletics administrator at the Division I level but worked more recently as the athletics director at two different Division III institutions. During the 2009-10 academic year Dr. Feezell served as the interim athletics director at Belmont Abbey, a Division II school.

During his work as athletics director, Dr. Feezell held membership on a number of NCAA committees including the Division III Management Council, the Division III Financial Aid Committee, and the Strategic Planning Committee. In addition, Dr. Feezell served as president of the National Association of Athletics Compliance Coordinators (NAACC) from 2005 to 2008; NAACC is the primary professional association for those working in intercollegiate athletics compliance.

Prior to his appointment at Belmont Abbey College, Feezell served as the athletics director at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota from 2005-2008. While there Feezell oversaw all facets of the athletics department including varsity, club and intramural sports. He was athletics director at a time when Macalester made over $50 million in investments in athletics facilities including a new baseball/softball complex, new synthetic surface for the football/soccer stadium, and the new $45 million Leonard Athletics and Recreation Center.

Prior to his tenure at Macalester, Feezell headed the Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA) athletics department for five years, overseeing 18 varsity programs, intramurals and teaching classes on sports culture and great books. He was the baseball coach for six years as well. Before working at Whitman, he was an academic adviser in the athletics department at Northwestern University.

In addition to his extensive work in athletics, Dr. Feezell has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses at a number of institutions including Whitman College, the University of Minnesota, the University of St. Thomas (MN) and Winthrop University. His areas of research and publication/presentation include administration, governance, policy and leadership in intercollegiate athletics. He can be reached at TravisFeezell@bac.edu.