How Parental Responsibility Will Radically Change College Football

Every year we have certainty about three things: death, taxes, and national signing day.  Early February annually, virtually every high school football player dreaming of playing in college on a scholarship signs a national letter of intent (NLI). His intent is to be one of the greatest in the world at this uniquely North American job, and it starts with his choice of a school to hone his craft. This time something was different. Alex Collins decided he wanted to play at Arkansas. His mother decided he should be closer to home in Florida. Collins initially verbally committed to Miami.

The NCAA, author of NLI, requires that any prospective scholarship athlete under 21 must have the signature of a parent or legal guardian. No financial aid can be received unless there is the parent signature. On national signing day, when the highly recruited Alex had his press conference to announce his much anticipated commitment to Arkansas, his mother appeared, but then left abruptly without signing.

The fact that the father of Alex has reportedly signed, and the mother has hired a lawyer is not the story. It may be a momentary media soap opera, but not the real transformative impactful story.  This was just a light hearted oh-by-the-way story when first reported by the major media. After all, though he was a prized recruit, Alex was not the top player in the college “draft”, or even the top running back in the country. And this was just Arkansas, not Alabama, Notre Dame or some other elite tall cotton program.  This was just a family feud about location for a very good prospect.

But if Ms. McDonald’s reasoning for her signing strike were for other reasons, I suspect it would be no laughing matter. What if she remained adamant and it was Alabama or Notre Dame that lost out on the next Andrew Luck, Cam Newton or pre-sentenced OJ Simpson? And what if the highly publicized reasons for her holdout were the result of her doing some homework – homework so sophisticated it is called due diligence? What if the result of her due diligence about the beggar school (and this is purely hypothetical) was the following observations, giving new meaning to the term “Elite Eight”?

1.      During the 5 years of the coach’s tenure, the school elected to withdraw, rather than renew the scholarships of every single player that had a season-ending or career threatening injury. This was despite verbal promises when recruiting the teenager that his scholarship was safe.  In fact, each school has the option to offer multi-year scholarships.

2.      During that coach’s tenure, every teenager that had the same range of SAT or ACT scores as her son had 3 times as much football tutoring than classroom tutoring.

3.      During that coach’s tenure, every teenager in that range of SAT-ACT flunked out of school before the junior season and the school has worst graduation rates among the schools her son considered.

4.      For those academically at-risk teenagers of which her son would join, the school has not initiated any plan to change the status quo.

5.      Her son is African American.  There are no coaches or administrators in primary thinking positions, (head coach, offensive or defensive coordinators, Director of athletics or Assistant Director, etc.)

6.      During that coach’s tenure, neither the school nor the athletic department had a mandatory training for how teenagers with a future as instant millionaires should handle their money, or how to carefully screen for agents, or how the school proactively pre-screened agents to protect the teenagers from the savvy but unscrupulous.

7.      The institution did not provide insurance for injured players; make a request to the NCAA for access to its insurance fund for injured players, never encouraged or helped NCAA’s own Student-Athlete Opportunity Fund, or provided gap funds for the difference between the scholarship and the true total cost of the education.

8.      The institution never contemplated or established a trust fund for players who lost their scholarship, so they could then upon certain conditions being met, receive a return on the considerable royalties amassed by the school from the merchandise sales from the numbers worn by those teenagers.

So imagine the press conference where Ms. McDonald stands at the podium stoic as Condoleezza Rice, charismatic as Michelle Obama, and says,

“I have convinced Alex to attend a school that not only promised to take care of him, but actually did the best job of teenagers much like him. They earned the opportunity – and here is my list from which I found the right fit.”

 She shifts to the other foot and continues in a near whisper, “My son grew up without a strong father in the home, and he needs that role model. I don’t see that from the school he chose first.”

Then with a smile she continues,

“But I see it at school X, from the administration down to the coaches that will spend more hours with him than I will from this point forward. My instinct tells me they have the mix of folks who are culturally connected influencers. And I know, the way only a parent can know, that he needs those influences more than he needs that little oblong piece of leather everybody wants him to carry for the next few years.”

Imagine the impact of a Rice-Obama mother, and those who helped and rallied around her due diligence.  If other similarly situated parents operated in kind, the paradigm of decision making would change for most of the impact players in college sports.

The impact would be profound too because of the underpublicized power of that NLI. The NLI creates a monopoly.  Once a teenager signs it, other schools must stop recruiting the prized young man. The youngster gains a guaranteed one year scholarship from his – and his parents – school of choice.  That is why prior to that fateful date of February 6^th, grown men hold up in hotels and driveways for hours on end, waiting for a return call and opportunity to be an influencer with a teenager. They want to stay in the hunt in hopes of the future monopoly. 

If the Elite Eight factors become a reality, I suspect all the top football schools will re-evaluate their promises and programs.  Some schools already pass the grade.  But all would have to consider their “ranking” in a wholly different way. For many, that new “way” is what would finally put their student-athlete mission statements in front of BCS ambitions. Perhaps at last there would be a near-uniform incentive program where all those who are paid from college football would have to align the best interests of the teenager with retaining their own salaries. Again, there are some already on board. And if the morally rich get the fruits, the sporting industries are better for it.

If the Elite Eight factors revealed a litany of verifiable facts about every school making promises to teenagers, and puts those promises under a microscope, it lead to an indictment against the transgressors that is far more curative than NCAA sanctions.  It would serve notice to other parents that they are indeed empowered to make decisions in what they consider to be the best interests of their child. And that they are not powerless against sports system in America.

We should remember the context. On this one day certain each year, the future best of a profession in the world are starting their journey. The teenagers are matriculating to two related industries, college and professional sports. Both are multi-billion dollar industries, with a lot of middle aged wealthy people very intent on exploiting their unique talents for their own personal profit. Those profiteers and millions of fans care more about their school, illogical rooting interests, than in what’s best for the gladiators they watch for fun and money. So who is left to care primarily for the players? Who but the parents have the plasma called love that makes people sacrifice for their children, and remain more purist about what is best for their child. It’s the love elixir that makes us say “I’ll forego that nice new Beemer so you can make ends meet at Yale”, when NW Nowhere U could do.  

The NCAA’s own website discussion of the NLI warns parents and their children that only 2 percent of high school athletes get college scholarships. The NCAA therefore makes the following admonition:

“…high school student-athletes and their parents need to have realistic expectations about receiving an athletic scholarship to play sports in college. Academic, not athletic, achievement is the most reliable path to success in life.”

So the NCAA advocates parental responsibility. In various political settings we talk about parental responsibility. But would we still advocate it if it meant we lost the best high school quarterback in the country?  If the Elite Eight factors dominated decision-making, sports bloggers and tweet-a-holics would create a social media mania that may bring more death threats than praise for a Ms. McDonald.  That’s because we have a priority problem in the industry. But that problem would only be uncovered by some radicalized movement where schools are actually ranked by a “best interests of the child standard” including an analysis of a school’s educational and financial support systems. Don’t shoot me, but I am working on it.