Memphis and Academic Fraud

In late August, the NCAA announced that it would be stripping the University of Memphis’ Men’s Basketball team all 38 wins (an NCAA single season record) that they obtained during the 2007-2008 season. The announcement came 16 months after the Tigers lost to the Kansas University Jayhawks in the championship game. The reason: academic fraud committed by a member of the team, alleged to be Derrick Rose, the star freshman of the Tigers that year.
The player (Rose) was accused of having another person take the SAT exam for him, making that player ineligible for the next season which would have been the players freshman year. SAT officials conducted their own investigation and notified the university, the NCAA and the player that the tests scores were going to be cancelled. The committee was not very lenient with its penalties based on the fact that the player was used for the entire season. Memphis has appealed the NCAA’s decisions and Derrick Rose is still denying the allegations.
The Kihl and Richardson article, “Fixing the Mess”, showed how an athletic program can be affected by academic fraud. Whether it is taking away wins, taking away money, losing recruits or losing trust, there are a lot of people who are deeply affected when an infraction occurs.
“Corruption impacts an organization in a variety of ways including via sanctions, a negative reputation, loss of public confidence, and assorted financial losses Organizational stakeholders who are not involved in malfeasant activities but continue to work within the organization during the post-corruption period experience various types of harm that is associated with their respective roles and responsibilities. (Kihl and Ricardson 278)”
The two people under the most heat for this infraction are no longer with Memphis. Derrick Rose departed from Memphis after that season and was drafted number one in the NBA draft. Head coach John Calipari is now the head coach at Kentucky. What about the people who are still at Memphis, the players and administration? What about the kids that worked so hard all year to obtain those record setting 38 wins? Every player on that team wasn’t taken in the NBA draft, so that record setting season was probably going to be the greatest basketball memory of their lives.
Both Calipari and Rose “allegedly” made a mess while at Memphis, abandoned the school before things blew up and left the mess for other people to clean up/suffer the consequences. This isn’t anything new with Calipari, academic fraud was committed while he was at UMASS in 1996. He left for the NBA that following year. If the allegations are true, Rose owes it to his teammates to come out and admit that he screwed around. Despite the fact that Rose is a great player and Calipari is a great coach, I think that they are both cowards.
Memphis will also suffer financially. Every single penny that the basketball program earned that year is going to have to be returned. The money that was earned for being in the NCAA tournament is going to be handed over to Conference USA. Memphis will also be prevented from receiving future shares doled out in the conferences revenue-sharing program.
The Stinson and Howard article came to the obvious conclusion that success will lead to an increase in financial donations to the athletic department. “Successful athletics programs, they noted, were successful at increasing the donor base.”(Stinson 18) After Memphis reached the finals in 2008 I am sure that donations were through the roof. Will the lingering effect of the Rose situation have an overall effect on donors? Will donors question the validity of the program the next time that it has a successful season?

The Importance of Donations to College Sports

College sports are a huge part of sports society, particularly on a state and local level. Proving this point is the fact that many fans and alumni show their school spirit by donating the one thing every school wants – money.

Especially at universities where there are high levels of school spirit as it pertains to athletics, donations are one way for alumni and fans to feel connected to their team, even part of it. It’s a way for them to say, “Yeah, I helped my team win” because for all they know they just wrote a check that will help put a scholarship together for a key recruit.

There have been several studies that have found a team’s success and post-season survival rate affect just how much people are willing to donate. In the article “Winning Does Matter,” Stinson and Howard reveal, “…it is clear that successful athletic programs often lead current donors to make larger gifts, and perhaps more importantly, attract additional donors to the institution” (p. 17).

Because many schools believe winning is everything, some of course are willing to bend the rules and get ahead and stay on top.

Over the summer, the men’s hockey team at the University of New Hampshire was penalized by the NCAA for multiple recruiting violations. After sending 923 impermissible emails to 30 student-athletes, UNH received two-years of probation and a reduction in recruiters as part of their punishment. UNH reported their rule violations to the NCAA themselves, claiming they had sent the emails as a mistake. Whether or not that’s true is debatable, as NCAA violations are nothing new.

For some universities, getting caught violating NCAA rules can be detrimental to the program’s image. In “Fixing the Mess,” Kihl and Richardson explain, “…the consequences of corruption appear to linger well into the post-corruption period where the coaches and players will continue to experience distrust, ostracism, and embarrassment” (p. 299).

So why break these rules and risk sanctions and the public relations backlash?

The answer is pretty simple - money. Donors are more likely to back a winning team than a losing team. Winning brings more recruits, more hype, more press, and more students – and all of these bring more money.

High-profile college teams can use their television exposure, especially their post-season television appearances, to help them drag in more donations. And they do. According to Stinson and Howard, appearances in bowl games and the NCAA tournament can both lead to an increased level of donation (p. 4). For smaller programs, however, it’s all about marketing. Athletic directors must essentially market their teams to potential donors – make the university’s programs look appealing and worthy of investment in.

In this economical environment, universities are looking for new ways to get money and draw in new donors. Many programs have been cut in schools across the country because athletic departments just don’t have enough money for scholarships and other expenses.

Since money is tight, winning might be even more important to a program than before – in fact, it might just save it.

Winning & Donations In College Athletics

Washington State University recently announced they would be upgrading their football stadium. Jim Sterk, WSU’s athletics director announced last week that the university will be able to move forward with the project because construction costs have dropped. The new stadium will be very luxurious with 16 luxury suites, 21 boxes, and 1,200 club seats. The total cost of the project is estimated at $30 million and they plan to pay for it without state help. The university is relying on donations and the money made from the sale of the premium seats that are sold. WSU hopes to have the stadium ready for the 2012 season. Here is a link with more information about the stadium upgrade.

In Stinson and Howard’s article Winning Does Matter we learned that people are more likely to donate to athletic programs over academic ones. This did not really surprise me because as we have learned thus far in the semester people love sports and can often feel connected to teams. By donating directly to these sports teams I think people feel like they helped the team win and are part of the success story. The article goes on to say that teams that do well are more likely to receive donations: “Both an NCAA tournament appearance and the one-year lagged variable of an NCAA appearance are associated with an over $400 increase each in the average total gift” (Stinson & Howard 9). Why do you think WSU is able to move on with this stadium upgrade? Do you think it has to do with fandom?

When reading the article about WSU’s new stadium I was surprised that they have already received about $16 million through various donations. The team has not been playing well and is 3-13 in the past two seasons. If they team was playing better and winning more games I am sure they would be able to raise the funds quicker. However I also thought back to when we discussed the idea of fandom and what a major part of peoples life sports can be, especially football. I am sure many people donated money to have a closer connection with the team.

When reading this article I also wondered if the women’s facilities are as nice as the men’s and when was the last time one of their stadiums was updated. The other article we read for class, NCAA Website Coverage looked to see if women’s athletics receive the same about of coverage as men’s on schools web pages. The research showed that in most cases there was an equal amount of coverage: “In fact, outside of a couple of coverage discrepancies between men’s and women’s soccer, the data show that men’s and women’s sport teams received comparable allocations” (Cooper 237). Do you think that most schools provide women with the same quality facilities as men? Or is there simply a different in facilities necessary between men and women’s sporting events?

Should high school sports get national media attention?

A few weeks ago I saw this article on ESPNChicago.com that mentioned that high school sports will be covered on this website in the upcoming weeks. After reading this, I started wondering if this is a good thing, or a bad thing. Should we be exposing young, high school athletes to this sort of national media attention? Or would it be better to let these young minds develop, and save them from some of the pressure and embarrassment that can come with national attention?

We can all remember some of the most recent high school standouts. Lebron James was on the cover of sports illustrated as a junior in high school, and was already dubbed as “the chosen one”. The other person that comes to mind is Matt Barkley, who was called the Lebron James of high school football back when he was a junior in high school. The fact that some of these high school athletes are made into celebrities at such young ages has had its impact on high schools. “The increasing and intense coverage of high school sports, fueled by media-created rankings that can make celebrities out of 11^th graders, has led some schools to hire sports information directors and has led educators to wonder if scholastic sports do not need NCAA – style oversight to protect athletes and academics.” (Hardin and Corrigan. 91)

ESPN, the self proclaimed worldwide leader in sports has now come up with a new branch called ESPN Rise, which is dedicated specifically to high school athletes. The claim to fame for high school sports was always the fact that it was considered pure. But with all this media attention that these high school athletes are getting, can we still say they are playing only for the love of the game? Even Hardin and Corrigan argue, “That high school sports and their relationship with media at the local and national levels are in need of closer scrutiny.” (Hardin and Corrigan, 90)

ESPN is now also showing high school football games of the week, which also adds to the national media coverage these high school athletes are getting, which could cause problems: “An admission from a high school football coach in The New York Times two years ago that he studied marketing and business plans as much as game plans is an indicator of how great the degree may be.” (Hardin and Corrigan, 91)

The move from print coverage to televised coverage is also examined in our handbook. “It is noteworthy that, to date, far more critical attention has been paid to television sports than to sports coverage in the print media.” (Handbook, 291) If the trends continue, and high school sports continue to receive more and more television coverage, then soon we will start seeing more and more of these athletes on TV.

Do you guys think this national attention is good for high school athletes? Does it affect recruiting? (OJ Mayo case) I argue that this national attention isn’t good for these young athletes. As mentioned before, high school sports should be about the love of the game. There are so many possibilities for things to go wrong when these kids start facing the pressure of media. What if they feel the need to use steroids to be even better? What if they start slacking off in school? How can they focus on a math test the next day, when they have a football game being televised the night before on ESPN? We can all remember the ones who got survived the early media attention and have excelled at the pro level. Sidney Crosby, Lebron, Kobe and others. But what about the ones who didn’t make it? The one’s who were dubbed as the next great thing, and now are not even known. This media attention affects the schools, the recruiters, and most importantly, the minds of these young athletes. I believe that they should be left alone, and given time to develop properly. Not physically, but mentally. Even Lebron James said that he felt all the pressure, and that it was hard for him to deal with. He said it got into his head, and the heads of his teammates. He should be lucky and proud of the fact that he made it past all that. There's even a debate online whether or not its good.

-Robin

Image Marketing for High School Athletes

Being an athlete in high school I never even thought of being paid to be one, but why not? After reading these articles I realized that high school sports are amounting far greater than they used to. They are now broadcasted more in the media. Instead of just reading about them from local towns they are getting time on the television. Like Hardin and Corrigan state, “parents, students, boosters, and college fans are eager to learn about potential recruits are now more demanding of coverage” (90). For instance, there are websites that scouts, and just people who want to know information about high school athletics, can go to for up to date feed about high school star athletes such as http://www.rivals.com/ or http://www.flavarsity.com/ where you need to pay a membership fee to get the stats. This is fine, except for the fact that the athletes featured on this website make no money from this, even though they are the stars of the website. Yeah, the owner of the website needs to find the information to post it, but at least a small percentage should be given to the athlete him or herself. However, it is argued that this is because in high school athletes play for the love of the game, and that should be suffice. Therefore those getting paid would seem ridiculous. Should high school athletes get paid for their image being marketed? If so, do you even think they would spend the money wisely? Or would this become a worse problem, where their parents would get involved and would begin to exploit their children more and more so that they could cash in for their children’s earnings?
In both of our readings the authors talk about newspaper articles and how baseball has been turned from being glorified to being hated because of the steroid scandal. But keep in mind it’s also been argued that by trying to pay the athletes they may resort to trying to become bigger and better at the fastest rate possible to become the front page. And do this by resorting to the usage of steroids. Which as we saw from Haigh’s article, caused major disruption to the fan base in believing that the major league baseball players were only doing so well, because they were taking drugs? When Haigh mentions how Rick Morrissey noticed the alarming rate of records being broken and “asked if it was fair to let players who were ‘juiced’ have credit for something that the would not achieve without the help of steroids”(3). The image of “purity” needs to be kept within the realm of high school athletics or they will begin to lose their fan base due to the fact that the one thing that kept them different from college and major league athletics would be gone.
People will continue to look at the coverage of high school athletics because of their image of “purity.” Meaning that, something that makes a high school student, a better, more rounded individual, is being an athlete. People love this because it tends to build the community stronger as a whole. As Hardin and Corrigan describe, “it erased class, race, gender and generational lines and coalescing neighbors around a single goal: beating the cross-town rival” (90). I can completely agree with this essay because it struck home. I went to a very diverse school in Florida, were there were always the hallway fights. But, when those Friday night lights turned on, it was like the fighting and hating stopped within the school but was used to scream at our rivals. We didn’t have hockey, lacrosse, field hockey etc. Yeah my basketball team was okay but, football was the big deal. “Perhaps it is not a stretch to argue that the relationship between high school sports, media and the culture urgently needs much closer scrutiny than it has received” (92).

Who Is to Blame?

In this day and age, it is pretty much safe to say that the media controls all. News coverage on a specific topic can make or break a person (Johnny Drama as we continue to watch in “Entourage”), a television program (the show “Joey”), or even a sport as a whole. This is especially true as we examine the sport of baseball. For the past several years, there has been a dark shadow over the game of baseball’s reputation, the games integrity due to the ongoing battle of steroids.
Some of Baseball’s greats have been under constant surveillance and have been called to testify before Congress about the use of steroids in baseball including Jose Conseco, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro to name a few. In the Mitchell Report, it is said that 85 names appeared in the report and have been linked to evidence in the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs.
There is no question of the total turn around that the game of America’s pastime has taken in today’s media. In the Haigh article, “‘The Cream,’ The ‘Clear,’ BALCO and Baseball,” it states “In the early days of baseball, newspaper coverage about baseball was positive because baseball taught “valor: integrity, individualism, patience and temperance, as well as certain modern values such as team work” (Haigh, 3). That, however, is not totally true anymore. News paper article would target players who were suspicious of being cheaters, and in New York you would find titles such as “Boot the Bum- Why the Yankees Must Fire Ugly Drug Cheat Jason Giambi Today” (Haigh, 4).
With the pastime of baseball, and its obvious importance to this country, it is no surprise how much coverage the game receives. There has been a content analysis designed in order to examine questions regarding the game of baseball’s overall tone of coverage in newspaper articles, determine the amount of credibility the sources of information were giving out, and how the baseball industry was depicted during the 3 year span this study was taken place. In the results found, the overall tone of coverage was negative, the sources were deemed credible, and the depiction was also found negative. Yes, most of these articles were written by the same handful of authors, but they were found across the country in papers and magazines such as New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
This brings me to my question: who is to blame? Is it safe to say these 85 individuals found in the Mitchell Report have temporarily, and single handedly ruined the name for baseball? Or is this constant, negative- toned coverage in the media making it more than it really is?
Haigh goes onto argue, “a content analysis could be conducted to examine how the National Football League has tried to repair its image given the constant media attention of players getting arrested, fined, or indicted. Such coverage is usually about individuals, but as this study found, news about individual players tends to influence the tone of coverage about the league as a whole” (Haigh, 20). So how much influence and power do the media actually have on the subject?
On the flip side, in the article "Media and the Business of HIgh School Sports: A Case for Closer Scrutiny," it states "High School sports are not hard to sell. As coverage of college and professional sports has focused increasingly on scandals and commercialism, high school sports have retained their reputation for "purity"" (Hardin, Corrigan, 90). The article goes on to say that it is an unwritten law that journalists broadcast young athletes with "kid gloves" and they be treated with special care in light of their immaturity and inexperience ( Hardin, Corrigan, 91). What if they were no such "unwritten law"? Would the media find a way to sneak into the corruption of young athletes just like they are able to with professionals?

Team Vs. Player fandom

Fandom stems from many different sources, including, but not limited to, geography, family, community and players (Raney 315). Most fans won’t hesitate to give you the latest statistics of their favorite players or explain why their favorite team is better than your favorite. If you walk around the Quinnipiac campus on any given day, you will see hats, jackets, shirts and many other articles of clothing showing off the logos of all different kinds of sports teams. One of the more heated debates at this school is centered on the Boston vs. New York sports rivalry, and not just in baseball. However, Raney goes on to say, “I acknowledge...that fans often root for a team primarily because of one or two specific players” (315). This leads me to ask where is the line drawn? When does a player become bigger than the team?
With nearly all powerhouse teams in sports, there is one player that is the face of that team. For the Yankees, it’s Derek Jeter. For the Patriots, it’s Tom Brady. At one point, the face of Green Bay was Brett Favre, until he signed with Minnesota, unretired for the 85th time, and proceeded to say “If you’re a true Packer fan, you understand.” In an article by Charles Robinson on Yahoo! Sports (found here), Packer fan Gary Nixt attempts to explain the quote by stating, “If you’re a Packers fan, you’re behind the team and you’re going to have that tunnel vision. If you are a Brett Favre fan, you’re going to stand behind him no matter what he does.”
Is this the case with every athlete-team relationship? According to Thomas Patrick Oates, “Vicarious management invites audiences to identify with the institutional regimes of the NFL…rather than with the athletes…In contrast to the heroes of the past enshrined in statuary outside many NFL stadiums, athletes framed by this mode of fandom are positioned as property, often valuable, but ultimately disposable” (32). Once a player leaves your favorite team, do you still root for him? Even if he joins your archrival? How far does fandom extend past a team?

The proliferation of fantasy football

Sports fans live and die by their teams. Though fans think they can affect what goes on on the field by following various superstitions, it's obvious that the athletes and coaches themselves are the only people who can really decide the outcome of any given game.

However, this is all rapidly changing due to the proliferation of fantasy sports, especially fantasy football. This is perhaps best evidenced by this page on ESPN.com. If you clicked around before Week 1 of the 2009 NFL Season, you'd come across the position-by-position fantasy rankings by not one, not two, not three, but four (!) fantasy football analysts.

However, before we talk more about that, let's backtrack a bit. What motivates fans in general?

Arthur A. Raney, in his piece entitled "Why We Watch and Enjoy Mediated Sports," details what he calls the "eustress motivation."

He writes, "Studies have demonstrated that sports viewing can in fact lead to increased arousal (Berhardt, Dabbs, Fielden, & Lutter, 1998). Similarly, viewers consistently descrbite viewing sports as exciting (e.g., Krohn, et al., 1998), arousing (e.g., Wangg, et al., 2001), and able to 'get me psyched up' (e.g., Gantz, 1981) or 'pumped up' (e.g., Wann, 1995)" (317).

Fans have now complemented their love of getting "pumped up" by watching their teams on television with managing fantasy teams on their computers.

Thomas Patrick Oates talks about fantasy football in his essay called "New Media and the Repackaging of NFL Fandom."

He writes, "Fantasy games are now a $1.5 billion industry, drawing nearly 20 million players ('Fantasy sports conference demographic survey shows continued growth,' 2007). There are many versions of fantasy sports, ranging from baseball to bass fishing, but football easily draws the majority of players" (36).

That there is fantasy bass fishing shows one just how popular the entire "fantasy" genre has become.

The arousal factor that Raney mentioned in his essay is demonstrated by that fact that fantasy football is most popular. In fact, this morning when I tweeted that I'm not playing fantasy football this year and that I feel liberated by not doing so, I got a reply that I'm "missing the fun and thrills." I don't think so. I usually stop caring about my team midway through the season. In fact, it gets to the point where I only make a team so I can get clever with the name I give it.

Going back to what I said at the beginning of this post, fans live and die by their teams. But with that advent of fantasy football, fans sometimes have to take on the tough task of deciding which teams carries their rooting interest: their favorite NFL team or their fantasy team. Does a Giants fan root for Brian Westbrook to put up great numbers when the Giants are playing the Eagles? Does a Jets fan root for Tom Brady when the Patriots trek to Giants Stadium? These questions are rhetorical - for our purposes - but they're bound to arise at one point or another each football season.

So I ask you: Do you have a fantasy football team? If so, why do you have one? If not, why not? Are the questions I asked in the previous paragraph too much to handle for you to actually make one?

The emergence of women as fans

As long as I can remember, men were considered the overwhelming majority of sports fans. Sure, there were the occasional women that enjoyed baseball, football or hockey, but they were so few and far between that they could barely be counted.

But over the last few years, at least in my eyes, more and more females have become fans and have begun to consume just as much sports as their male counterparts.

As I can see when I look around the room in my sports studies or sports journalism classes, many more women are in the class than I would have used to think. I had a discussion with a fellow classmate the other day about some girls who try to fake their way through sports with talk of Derek Jeter, but for most of these female fans, that is not the case.

In the article "If It Ain’t Rubbin’, It Ain’t Racin'," Hugenberg and Hugenberg cite a statistic that really surprised me about the audience for NASCAR.

"The rapid growth in the number of female, especially young female, NASCAR fans is easily documented through casual observation at the tracks and reported in Retail Merchandiser as over 40% of the NASCAR fan base. Soon female fans will likely constitute the majority of fans attending NASCAR races." (pg. 637)

This flat out shocked me. Women as the majority of the NASCAR audience? It's a sign of the times.

Sports are no longer a "man's game." They are now excitedly consumed by both genders.

One of the most prolific women in sports is none other than Erin Andrews. Her fame has jumped from "just" a sideline performer to a full-on media celebrity. Heck, she was on Oprah! Unfortunately, she was on Oprah for a terrible reason. Though she's a professional woman in sports, she hasn't escaped the role of a "sex symbol." As you likely know, she was video taped changing in her hotel room.

Women have come a long way in sports, but it seems they still have a ways to go.

Still, there are some differences, as pointed out by the study that Raney cited in his article "Why We Watch and Enjoy Mediated Sports."

The study compared reactions from male and female fans based on the closeness of the score. They ranked the disparity between the two scores in groups from "minimally" to "extremely suspenseful."

"Enjoyment for male participants increased as the final score became closer. The same pattern was observed with females only through the "substantial" catergory. The reaserchers hypothesized that the close scores in the "extremely suspenseful" catergoy led to distress among female viewers. ... Specifically, uncomfortably close games may lead to stress (or distress) among some (particularly female) viewers." (pg. 317)

I don't know about the rest of the guys out there, but if the score can be described as "extremely suspenseful," I have a lot of distress going on in my head.

Still, I think it's a great thing for women to finally be elbowing their way into the usual male fraternity that is sports. If you know your sports and you know your rules, enjoy the game and we'll argue about it later, male or female, sports fan to sports fan.

The way it should be.