Rethinking athletes' rights in the NCAA

Bob Timmons' chances at having the NCAA insert a form of his proposed student-athletes' bill of rights are dwindling quickly.

And overcoming the precedent that nothing so monumental has ever entered the NCAA manual is only half the battle.

The NCAA claims that Timmons' proposed Bill of Rights is not a viable option in its current form, because it only accounts for issues in Division I.

"There's no way to tell whether [the bill of rights] would be accepted or not because of the way that it is structured right now," NCAA spokesperson Gail Dent said. "If it was structured differently and included all three divisions, maybe it would include be considered."

While the Bill of Rights does not assert itself to represent only Division I athletics, the rights do not specifically claim to be universally applicable, either. The Bill of Rights do mention historical precedents from all three divisions, however.

But perhaps more demoralizing to Timmons' contentions for the NCAA to adopt the Bill of Rights is the national Student-Athlete Advisory Committee's recent publication of its "Commitment to Student-Athlete Excellence."

Published in July, the document outlines 10 guiding principles that the NCAA and its institutions "may provide" student-athletes at the current time. But the "Commitment to Student-Athlete Excellence" does not provide any new information pertaining to what student athletes can expect from the NCAA -- it simply organizes what is currently available in the 460-page 2002-2003 NCAA manual.

"It's nothing groundbreaking or guaranteeing something that doesn't exist," Division-I SAAC chairman, Mike Aguirre said. "I just think it's important to give a commitment."

While Timmons contends that there "is nothing sacred about [his] particular bill of rights," unlike the "Commitment to Student-Athlete Excellence," his proposed Bill of Rights suggests new issues that the NCAA does not currently provide its athletes.

But many of his assertions are objective statements, beginning with the first amendment, which demands that the NCAA focus on "devising effective policies and creative solutions to problems related to Title IX."

While the issue of reforming Title IX stands as the first amendment to the document, and requires more pages in the rationale than any other single right, co-author of the Rights, John Van Slyke asserts that the doctrine is about much more than reforming Title IX.

Throughout the document, Timmons addresses his concerns completely from the standpoint of what may be best for the student-athletes, sometimes disregarding how the NCAA could practically implement the changes.

Amendment II of the Bill of Rights suggests that universal punishment of both athletes and teams is unfair because it punishes the whole for one person's transgressions.

"In my opinion, you should punish guilty parties and let innocent parties play," Timmons said. "That's just basic."

But Jeff Orleans, the executive of the Ivy League suggests that in many cases, sanctioning an entire team may be the NCAA's only option.

"You have to make it clear that other athletes are going to be affected," Orleans said. "Because I think that's what we're trying to teach."

Orleans contends that by the nature of punishing a program, it will affect the athletes that make up the program, whether or not the particular athletes remain on the team.

While Timmons asserts that the NCAA may be ignoring many of student-athletes' basic rights, in the case of health and safety, the NCAA simply has a different concept about what it needs to provide.

Despite a few semantic differences in the wording, both the fourth amendment of the Bill of Rights and the fifth statement of the "Commitment to Student Athlete Excellence" address the notion that the NCAA should provide athletes with a safe environment, both on and off the playing field.

But Timmons feels that the NCAA has not accomplished this objective yet, asserting that the NCAA must establish a universal requirement for health and safety. To fulfill this requirement, Timmons suggests that the NCAA should mandate a physical for all of its registered athletes.

And while he cites that as of January 1975, 40 of 50 state high school athletic associations required that its athletes have a physical conducted before every season, he fails to mention that the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) encourages, but does not mandate, that each state's participants' seek a physical.

"Much of it has to do with a particular states' statute," said a representative in the sports medicine department of the NFHS.

The Penn athletic department currently requires every student-athlete to have a physical examination "conducted by his own doctor" and also to inform the athletic department about all prior medical conditions before competing interscholastically.

Were the NCAA to mandate that schools meet specific safety criteria, it would be forced to assume responsibility for many of the individual misgivings that occur under its jurisdiction.

"The NCAA has a certain set of principles by which every member has agreed to run its athletics program," NCAA Executive Director, Cedric Dempsey, wrote in a letter to Rev. Jesse Jackson, after Rashidi Wheeler's death at Northwestern's Aug. 3, 1991 football practice. "The most important one is institutional control."

If the NCAA oversaw a national health and safety test, Timmons feels that while injuries and death would dramatically decrease in college athletics, the NCAA would open itself to law-suits.

"In this day of nationwide efforts to hold high school and college athletic departments liable for damages from wide and varied types of accidents and injury," Timmons says in the rationale for the fourth amendment, "there is value in preventing injuries and accidents instead of reacting to threats of lawsuits after accidents have happened."

The Penn athletic department refused to respond to any specific questions pertaining to the proposed Bill of Bights.

While Timmons proposes that the Bill of Rights be a national document, there is little chance that the Ivy League would be willing to conform to particularly asserted statutes.

Amendment III suggests that students should receive the same benefits and privileges that non-athletes do -- specifically referring to practice time.

Timmons explains that while a University does not limit musicians' access to an instrument, in the same way, the NCAA should permit an athlete to seek practice time, should he seek it.

Though ex-Stanford swimmer and Olympic Gold Medalist Janet Evans carried an above-3.0 GPA in her time at Stanford, she was not permitted to practice with a coach for more than the maximum eight hours out-of-season and 20 hours in-season. Subsequently, she chose to drop her college career to train for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

Acknowledging that coaches could overwork their athletes, Timmons explains that he is not petitioning for more mandated practice time, but rather the option that athletes could request more practice time should they deem it necessary.

"If you earn the right to add practice time through high academic achievement, you should be able to have it," Timmons said.

"But it would be a mistake if a coach added time when athletes didn't want it."

And while the Ivy presidents would never permit more optional practice for athletes, and in fact recently eliminated seven weeks of practice per-year, hypothetically speaking, the Bill of Rights would need to hold a loophole for the Ivy League, were it to approach the NCAA management board.

"The Commitment to Student Athlete Excellence" also accounts for specific contentions that a conference or program may have with NCAA dictum. The NCAA prints at the bottom of its new educational document that "a member institution, at its discretion, may provide those items that are permissive, inasmuch as the institution determines which benefits and services it will provide."

Aguirre says that this is necessary when dealing with such a large constituency.

"The NCAA is dealing with very different political, social and economic climates," Aguirre said.

"And it's therefore very difficult that every school has to do it 'this' way."

Timmons wrote the Bill of Rights because he believes that the NCAA is currently asserting issues other than student athletes at the top of its agenda.

And while the NCAA may claim to strive for athletes' "welfare"-- a notably ambiguous term -- it also may be hiding behind concerns about potential lawsuits.

About the Series For the next four days, The Daily Pennsylvanian will investigate student-athletes' rights. The DP will focus on how student-athletes can approach the NCAA with concerns, and will discuss the contention that student-athletes lack a voice within the NCAA hierarchy. Using documents penned both within and outside of the NCAA, the DP will also examine how these works will serve to accentuate student-athletes' rights in the future.

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