'A predatory situation': Congressional Black Caucus seeks ways to protect NCAA athletes | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Your NCAA Tournament brackets are not yet busted, but scandal-plagued men’s college basketball might be — and Congress appears increasingly intent on doing something about it.

The 68-team men’s college basketball tournament — the NCAA’s biggest moneymaker and showcase event — begins in earnest Thursday, bringing to close a season that included FBI indictments of four assistant coaches from major schools, the suspension of several top recruits, the firing of a Hall of Fame coach for his role in multiple scandals and the creation of a special committee to guide the sport’s future.

Now the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus has created a task force to help solve the many issues facing college athletics and protect student-athletes from what he calls a “predatory situation.” That includes a look at the education student-athletes are getting, which was at the heart of the years-long scandal at UNC-Chapel Hill in which many athletes took no-show classes to remain eligible.

“It’s not limited to North Carolina. You worry about real classes. You worry about grades. You worry about attendance. You worry that the student is getting something out of it,” said the chairman, Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana Democrat. “We know that everyone won’t go pro, but we hope that they’re getting a skill set to go along with the relationships that they’re forming that they can sustain a family and prosper.

“But if they’re not taking real classes, if they’re being pushed through the system, then that does not serve the student-athlete well and it’s a great disservice. ... I don’t think it’s limited to one or two schools, either. I think it’s more the norm as opposed to the exception.”

At UNC, athletes made up nearly half of the 3,100 enrollments in no-show classes, with football and men’s basketball players leading the way. Athletes make up 4 percent of UNC’s student body. UNC officials successfully argued before the NCAA’s infractions committee last year that the classes were open to all students and athletes did not receive preferential treatment.

In its decision last October, the NCAA’s infractions committee said its rules prevented it from pursuing an academic fraud sanction against UNC. It cited a 2014 rule change that forces the NCAA to defer to universities in identifying academic fraud.

When the committee noted that UNC concurred in correspondence with its accreditor that the classes constituted academic fraud, university officials said that was a “typo,” according to the infractions report, and stuck by classes that had no instruction and were created and graded by an administrative assistant.

Critics say the committee’s decision has opened a loophole that allows universities to create academically deficient classes to help keep athletes eligible, so long as the universities stand behind the classes and make them available to all students.

‘So many adults that want to prey on them’

Richmond played college baseball at Morehouse, a Division II historically black college in Atlanta. His task force expects to meet after Congress returns from its two-week Easter recess in early April, he said.

“We’re not going into this with a solution in mind, but we do understand there’s a big problem,” Richmond said. “We have more of a responsibility, whether it’s fiduciary or just in general, to take better care of them and to protect them. We still have to remember that a lot of them are 17, 18 and 19-year-old young people playing in a multi-billion dollar industry and you have so many adults that want to prey on them that we should look at it in that sense and try to protect them.”

The FBI alleges that agents and financial planners paid assistant coaches to guide players to them after their college careers were over. Apparel companies, which have large contracts with school athletic departments and coaches and control much of the summer-league system that grooms young basketball players, paid money to top players’ families to steer them toward certain schools, the FBI alleges, shining a public spotlight on practices that many in and around the sport have known about for years.

Ten people, including four assistant coaches, were indicted before the season began on bribery and corruption charges. The scandal impacted some of the nation’s best-known programs, including Louisville, which fired its Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino and athletic director after the scandal broke. Arizona, Miami, Southern Cal, Oklahoma State, Auburn and N.C. State have been caught up in the scandal. Reporting from Yahoo! Sports has brought many of the nation’s top teams and many current and former payers into the fray, alleging improper NCAA benefits to dozens.

“We really want to know what role that apparel companies play, the role that agents play, the role that financial advisers play. There is a whole list of people who have financial incentives to be in there,” Richmond said.

Richmond wants to call NCAA officials, coaches and student-athletes before his panel. He also wants to talk with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is leading an NCAA-sponsored commission on college basketball. Rice’s panel is expected to deliver its recommendations when the NCAA’s leadership meets April 24-25.

Richmond’s task force is not the only panel in Congress looking into the NCAA. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating the NCAA for its role in the larger sexual abuse case involving Dr. Larry Nassar and is now looking into the issues raised by the FBI.

Said Rep. Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican and chairman of the committee: “You just wonder, ‘What’s going on there. What’s going on at some of these universities?’”

“Isn’t this something that Congress should be looking at? You have a major cultural and financial operation that’s in trouble,” Rep. John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat and long-time critic of the NCAA, said last month. His spokesman said Yarmuth wants Congress and the NCAA’s college basketball commission to examine the NCAA’s handling of the UNC scandal.

The Knight Commission has called upon the NCAA to make major reforms in the wake of the FBI investigation and the UNC decision. Amy Perko, the commission’s chief executive officer, said commission leaders Arne Duncan and Carol Cartwright will be meeting with the Rice-led commission in the coming weeks to push for rule changes that would give the NCAA more authority over cases involving academic fraud and impermissible academic benefits.

Change may be coming

March Madness focuses the nation’s sporting attention on college basketball, through wall-to-wall national television coverage and friendly office pools that have nearly everyone talking brackets. But the tournament also generates enormous revenue for the NCAA. The association signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract in 2010 with CBS and Turner Broadcasting and recently extended the deal for eight more years and $8.8 billion through 2032.

That money fills the coffers of athletic departments and the pockets of coaches, athletic directors and school administrators. It does not extend to the players, though the NCAA has in recent years allowed schools to offers cost-of-living stipends as part of its scholarships.

“There are athletic directors that get $50,000, $60,000 bonuses just because their team makes it to the tournament. The school gets money. The coaches get a bonus for making it to the tournament. Everybody gets something for making it to the tournament, except the athletes,” Richmond said. “I’m not saying that it has to be compensation that they receive but we ought to take a good look at the rules surrounding it.”

NCAA President Mark Emmert said his organization is against paying players, but said recently that the Olympic model — in which players can receive outside money from endorsements or signing autographs — is worth looking into.

Change, it seems, is coming. But will the NCAA move on its own or will it take congressional action to prompt it?

Richmond said his group would consider legislation, recommendations or even just asking the NCAA to implement reforms.

Said Richmond: “I’ve watched athletes go to schools and I’ve watched them do very well and I’ve watched them struggle when they finish and when you see that story personally so many times, at some point, you have to do something about it.”